Latest / Decision Desk HQ Podcast / Episode 44: SCOTUS Blocks Trump’s Vote-By-Mail Order + Missouri’s Map Mess, with Nathaniel Rakich from Votebeat

Transcript

Episode 44: SCOTUS Blocks Trump’s Vote-By-Mail Order + Missouri’s Map Mess, with Nathaniel Rakich from Votebeat · Decision Desk HQ Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_01: The deadline for creating ballots is now.
0:03
SPEAKER_02: We have candidates who were nominated under the new lines,
0:06
SPEAKER_02: and myself and a bunch of people were like, well, how does this work, right?
0:09
SPEAKER_02: You have people voting in the primary in districts that they no longer live in,
0:13
SPEAKER_02: and in some cases,
0:14
SPEAKER_02: candidates don't even live in the districts that they are now running for.
0:17
SPEAKER_02: Democracy is resilient, despite what you may have heard.
0:20
SPEAKER_02: Again, I think that's a good example of a system that might get tested
0:23
SPEAKER_02: but would probably hold in the end,
0:25
SPEAKER_02: but we could be in for a bit of a white-knuckle ride.
0:41
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Decision Desk HQ podcast.
0:43
SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Geoffrey Skelley, the Chief Elections Analyst here at DDHQ.
0:48
SPEAKER_01: It is finally, indisputably general election time.
0:51
SPEAKER_01: Every state has held its primaries.
0:53
SPEAKER_01: We know the nominees for key races around the country.
0:56
SPEAKER_01: But we have two late developments that will also affect the 2026 electoral picture.
1:02
SPEAKER_01: First, a series of federal and state court rulings seem to have all
1:05
SPEAKER_01: but reset Missouri's congressional map to the lines used in 2022 and 2024.
1:11
SPEAKER_01: Republicans had redrawn Missouri's map to pick up an additional seat in the 2026 election.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: And additionally,
1:18
SPEAKER_01: as part of the Missouri situation,
1:20
SPEAKER_01: the state Supreme Court ordered a veto referendum on the ballot Regarding
1:25
SPEAKER_01: the legislation meant to establish those new lines.
1:27
SPEAKER_01: So that will now be a big ticket item on Missouri's 2026 ballot
1:32
SPEAKER_01: because it could mean that later on that map does come into effect.
1:37
SPEAKER_01: Second, the US Supreme Court blocked President Donald Trump's executive order
1:41
SPEAKER_01: to restrict mail voting.
1:43
SPEAKER_01: The executive order aimed to have the US Postal Service block delivery
1:46
SPEAKER_01: of mail ballots to voters not on a list pre-submitted by state election officials.
1:52
SPEAKER_01: SCOTUS' decision kept in place a lower court ruling that ruled against this executive order.
1:57
SPEAKER_01: Joining me to dig into these two late-breaking developments is Nathaniel Rakich,
2:02
SPEAKER_01: the managing editor of Votebeat,
2:04
SPEAKER_01: who has been following both of these situations very closely.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: So Nathaniel, welcome back to Decision Desk HQ Podcast.
2:12
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for having me.
2:13
SPEAKER_02: Yes, these courts,
2:16
SPEAKER_02: court rulings always have a way of finding their way into the late months and weeks
2:21
SPEAKER_02: before the election.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: And obviously, yeah.
2:24
SPEAKER_01: And the Missouri case, I think particularly they, they really was left late.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that was a whole saga really.
2:31
SPEAKER_01: Um, in fact, maybe, maybe,
2:32
SPEAKER_01: so I was thinking we would,
2:34
SPEAKER_01: we would start actually with, with the Missouri situation.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: So just for folks at home, uh,
2:39
SPEAKER_01: and folks who are watching,
2:40
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to share an image of, of,
2:46
SPEAKER_01: uh, in this case, the, the old map that looks to be likely coming back into effect.
2:52
SPEAKER_01: And the new map that may not come into effect and may depend on this veto referendum
2:59
SPEAKER_01: that is now going to be on the Missouri ballot.
3:01
SPEAKER_01: And Republicans essentially had attempted to undo the fifth district,
3:06
SPEAKER_01: which is a blue leaning seat around Kansas City,
3:09
SPEAKER_01: held by Democrat Emanuel Cleaver for a long time.
3:13
SPEAKER_01: And by doing so, they aim to pick up one net seat.
3:17
SPEAKER_01: So go from a 6-2 Republican advantage in Missouri's House delegation,
3:21
SPEAKER_01: And the US House of Representatives to a 7-1 advantage was the goal.
3:25
SPEAKER_01: And also the district that we should note also shored up Ann Wagner in
3:29
SPEAKER_01: the second congressional district in the St. Louis suburbs a little bit.
3:32
SPEAKER_01: And if this new map goes away and we go back to the old map,
3:36
SPEAKER_01: that seat becomes peripherally competitive,
3:38
SPEAKER_01: could be competitive in the fall as well.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: So I guess...
3:44
SPEAKER_01: Nathaniel,
3:44
SPEAKER_01: can you give us a I mean,
3:46
SPEAKER_01: I've sort of laid out the redistricting side of things,
3:48
SPEAKER_01: but I don't know if you wanted to maybe explain a little bit about how we got here.
3:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
3:55
SPEAKER_02: All right.
3:56
SPEAKER_02: Well, everybody strap in for about 45 minutes.
3:59
SPEAKER_02: It's a long.
4:00
SPEAKER_02: Don't scare them.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: Don't scare them.
4:03
SPEAKER_02: Oh, you guys are sickos.
4:04
SPEAKER_02: I know that you can handle it.
4:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
4:08
SPEAKER_02: So.
4:09
SPEAKER_02: As folks certainly know,
4:11
SPEAKER_02: you know,
4:11
SPEAKER_02: there was a redistricting war that began last year
4:14
SPEAKER_02: when Donald Trump started asking Republican led states
4:17
SPEAKER_02: to redraw their congressional maps in an attempt to hold the House for Republicans.
4:22
SPEAKER_02: So states like Texas, you know, Missouri, North Carolina all kind of heeded this call.
4:28
SPEAKER_02: Missouri was unique among these states in that they have a mechanism called
4:33
SPEAKER_02: a veto referendum,
4:34
SPEAKER_02: and this essentially allows the voters of a state to collect enough signatures
4:40
SPEAKER_02: to challenge a law that is passed by the legislature.
4:43
SPEAKER_02: You know, in this case, it was the new congressional map that gave Republicans an extra seat.
4:48
SPEAKER_02: So a group,
4:49
SPEAKER_02: you know,
4:49
SPEAKER_02: that was,
4:50
SPEAKER_02: you know,
4:50
SPEAKER_02: obviously more liberal leaning,
4:52
SPEAKER_02: you know,
4:52
SPEAKER_02: supported by by Democrats,
4:54
SPEAKER_02: collected enough signatures to put this veto referendum on the 2026 ballot.
4:58
SPEAKER_02: Now,
5:01
SPEAKER_02: When you do that with a law,
5:03
SPEAKER_02: what is supposed to happen is that that law is kind of put on hold until
5:07
SPEAKER_02: the voters get a chance to weigh in.
5:09
SPEAKER_02: That did not happen in this case.
5:11
SPEAKER_02: And that's because Secretary of State Denny Hoskins,
5:14
SPEAKER_02: a Republican, was very keen on obviously getting an extra seat for his party.
5:19
SPEAKER_02: And he basically engaged in a bunch of delay tactics in order to not certify this
5:26
SPEAKER_02: for the ballot.
5:28
SPEAKER_02: Said initially when they submitted the signatures,
5:30
SPEAKER_02: historically in Missouri,
5:32
SPEAKER_02: just the act of submitting the signatures was enough to put the law on hold.
5:35
SPEAKER_02: And he said, no, actually the submission of the signatures isn't what does it.
5:38
SPEAKER_02: You have to wait for my office to like verify all the signatures
5:41
SPEAKER_02: because obviously sometimes signatures are too messy and they just get disqualified
5:45
SPEAKER_02: and stuff like that.
5:45
SPEAKER_02: This group,
5:46
SPEAKER_02: for what it's worth,
5:47
SPEAKER_02: submitted three times as many signatures as is required to get something on
5:50
SPEAKER_02: the ballot.
5:50
SPEAKER_02: So it was very likely that they were going to get it on the ballot.
5:53
SPEAKER_02: But he said, no, we're gonna wait.
5:55
SPEAKER_02: And then he said,
5:55
SPEAKER_02: basically,
5:56
SPEAKER_02: he took the maximum amount of statutory allotted time to verify those signatures.
6:02
SPEAKER_02: He had until August 4th, which was the day of the primary.
6:04
SPEAKER_02: In fact,
6:05
SPEAKER_02: he had until 5 p.m.
6:06
SPEAKER_02: on August 4th,
6:07
SPEAKER_02: and he did not hold a press conference on this until 4 p.m. on August 4th.
6:12
SPEAKER_02: At that press conference,
6:13
SPEAKER_02: he announced I'm actually not going to announce whether they qualified for
6:18
SPEAKER_02: the ballot because I believe this entire effort is unconstitutional.
6:20
SPEAKER_02: You can't put a congressional map up for a veto referendum.
6:24
SPEAKER_01: This, of course, prompted a lawsuit.
6:28
SPEAKER_02: It went up through state court.
6:29
SPEAKER_02: This is an important distinction.
6:30
SPEAKER_02: This was a state court case.
6:32
SPEAKER_02: And it went all the way up to the Missouri Supreme Court.
6:34
SPEAKER_02: And the Missouri Supreme Court said, nope,
6:36
SPEAKER_02: there is nothing in the Missouri Constitution
6:38
SPEAKER_02: that says congressional maps are not subject to these veto referenda.
6:43
SPEAKER_02: And in addition,
6:44
SPEAKER_02: The veto referendum,
6:45
SPEAKER_02: it's very clear,
6:46
SPEAKER_02: once it qualifies for the ballot,
6:49
SPEAKER_02: which by this point it had, it had enough signatures, the law is not in effect.
6:55
SPEAKER_02: And the Missouri Supreme Court said,
6:58
SPEAKER_02: this new congressional map,
6:59
SPEAKER_02: the Republican gerrymander,
7:00
SPEAKER_02: is not in effect currently and also has never been in effect because it was supposed
7:03
SPEAKER_02: to, it's retroactive.
7:07
SPEAKER_02: This was a problem because the August 4th primary was conducted under the new map.
7:13
SPEAKER_01: Same date, Denny Hoskins, by the way, is doing that press conference.
7:16
SPEAKER_01: The deadline is the same date as the primary.
7:18
SPEAKER_02: And there was also a whole thing between him and a lot of county clerks about,
7:23
SPEAKER_02: like, which map should we use in the primary?
7:24
SPEAKER_02: Like, you know,
7:25
SPEAKER_02: we all kind of know that this map is going to get put on hold legally later on,
7:29
SPEAKER_02: but he insisted to use the gerrymander, and it really kind of blew up in his face.
7:35
SPEAKER_02: So...
7:36
SPEAKER_02: We were essentially left in this situation where, okay,
7:39
SPEAKER_02: the Missouri Supreme Court has said,
7:40
SPEAKER_02: use the old map from 2022,
7:42
SPEAKER_02: but we have candidates who were nominated under the new lines.
7:45
SPEAKER_02: And myself and a bunch of people were like, well, how does this work, right?
7:48
SPEAKER_02: You had people voting in the primary in districts that they no longer live in.
7:53
SPEAKER_02: And in some cases, candidates don't even live in the districts that they are now running for.
7:57
SPEAKER_02: Of course.
7:58
SPEAKER_01: Though for Congress, that doesn't.
7:59
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
8:00
SPEAKER_02: You are not allowed.
8:01
SPEAKER_02: Sorry, you are not prohibited from running in a seat.
8:04
SPEAKER_01: Required to live in the district.
8:06
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
8:07
SPEAKER_02: You just have to live in the state.
8:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
8:10
SPEAKER_02: But anyway, it was a big confusion, a real cluster.
8:16
SPEAKER_02: But then what happened was that some of these candidates,
8:19
SPEAKER_02: the Republican candidates who were aggrieved by the fact that they now had to run on
8:24
SPEAKER_02: a more Democratic-friendly map, filed a federal lawsuit.
8:28
SPEAKER_02: And I think it was like three days after the Missouri Supreme Court ruling,
8:33
SPEAKER_02: a federal judge waited and said,
8:36
SPEAKER_02: Actually,
8:36
SPEAKER_02: this is an equal protection violation because you have people who voted in
8:40
SPEAKER_02: the primary in the wrong districts and that's not allowed.
8:43
SPEAKER_02: So actually,
8:43
SPEAKER_02: they do have to use the 2025 map,
8:45
SPEAKER_02: the Republican gerrymander,
8:47
SPEAKER_02: just for consistency's sake, even though under state law, that map is illegal.
8:52
SPEAKER_02: So now you have two court rulings, one state, one federal, saying different things, essentially.
8:57
SPEAKER_02: Meanwhile, election officials are like, this is early September, this was last week.
9:01
SPEAKER_01: The deadline for creating ballots is now.
9:05
SPEAKER_02: Right.
9:06
SPEAKER_02: So it was it was a real mess of a situation.
9:09
SPEAKER_02: The federal ruling got appealed out very quickly,
9:13
SPEAKER_02: made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court on the shadow docket.
9:16
SPEAKER_02: Finally,
9:17
SPEAKER_02: the U.S.
9:17
SPEAKER_02: Supreme Court,
9:18
SPEAKER_02: I think effectively,
9:19
SPEAKER_02: although we can talk about this,
9:20
SPEAKER_02: effectively ended the debate and issued essentially an emergency stay that said,
9:29
SPEAKER_02: We are gonna put this lower federal court ruling on hold.
9:33
SPEAKER_02: And that means that essentially the 2022 map is operative.
9:36
SPEAKER_02: I should also say,
9:37
SPEAKER_02: I failed to note that the Republicans had appealed the state Supreme Court ruling to
9:43
SPEAKER_02: the US Supreme Court as well.
9:45
SPEAKER_02: And the US Supreme Court just declined to take that case.
9:48
SPEAKER_02: And that wasn't necessarily surprising because federal courts rarely kind of intervene.
9:53
SPEAKER_02: They don't like to overrule state courts because that kind of sets a bad precedent
9:58
SPEAKER_02: and state law is just different from federal law.
10:00
SPEAKER_02: But essentially,
10:01
SPEAKER_02: the U.S.
10:01
SPEAKER_02: Supreme Court stepped in and said,
10:03
SPEAKER_02: you know,
10:04
SPEAKER_02: We don't want to like we're not going to step in on this matter of state law.
10:08
SPEAKER_02: And so as of right now,
10:09
SPEAKER_02: as we sit here on September 17th,
10:12
SPEAKER_02: and I think in all likelihood through the election,
10:13
SPEAKER_02: we are using the 2022 map, the 6-2 map that is likely to reelect Emanuel Cleaver.
10:20
SPEAKER_01: Right.
10:20
SPEAKER_01: So I would say that because it is September 17th, we have to be recording this.
10:24
SPEAKER_01: There is a hearing today in the 8th.
10:28
SPEAKER_01: Uh,
10:28
SPEAKER_01: circuit federal court of appeals where it's essentially sort of a last Hail Mary,
10:34
SPEAKER_01: uh, by, by Republican state officials to, to, to get the new map put in place.
10:39
SPEAKER_01: I think the expectation is that that will, that will, that is very unlikely to happen.
10:44
SPEAKER_01: And this process would play out anyway, uh, or too slowly maybe for that, for that to happen.
10:50
SPEAKER_01: But I, I do want to note that we are recording this the same day that sort
10:53
SPEAKER_01: of this final Uh,
10:55
SPEAKER_01: thing is going on or at least potentially final,
10:57
SPEAKER_01: maybe it's not final, you know, let me not speak too soon.
11:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
11:02
SPEAKER_02: So essentially,
11:03
SPEAKER_02: you know,
11:04
SPEAKER_02: you know, there,
11:05
SPEAKER_02: there are,
11:05
SPEAKER_02: this is obviously an oversimplification,
11:07
SPEAKER_02: but if you think about,
11:07
SPEAKER_02: you know, there,
11:08
SPEAKER_02: there are three levels of this has to go through and that most,
11:10
SPEAKER_02: you know, federal cases have to go through.
11:11
SPEAKER_02: It's kind of like the lower court level, which is the Eastern District of Missouri in this case.
11:16
SPEAKER_02: You have the appeals court,
11:18
SPEAKER_02: which in this case is the Eighth Circuit, and then you have the U.S. Supreme Court.
11:21
SPEAKER_02: So the lowest ruling there was that Missouri should use the gerrymander.
11:27
SPEAKER_02: The U.S.
11:27
SPEAKER_02: Supreme Court kind of,
11:28
SPEAKER_02: you know, the Democrats appealed all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
11:33
SPEAKER_02: The U.S.
11:33
SPEAKER_02: Supreme Court said basically like Use the, like,
11:36
SPEAKER_02: let's not make any changes until everybody has a chance to make their full arguments
11:41
SPEAKER_02: and make their full appeals, including perhaps all the way up to us.
11:45
SPEAKER_02: And so that's what's happening right now.
11:47
SPEAKER_02: This lawsuit is going through the regular process.
11:49
SPEAKER_02: So the Eighth Circuit, that middle tier of courts, is hearing the case today.
11:55
SPEAKER_02: The scenarios here are basically, you know, right.
11:58
SPEAKER_02: Obviously, we are, what, 47 days away from the election.
12:02
SPEAKER_01: Two days from now, overseas and military ballots on the 19th are supposed to start going out.
12:07
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
12:08
SPEAKER_02: So things are,
12:09
SPEAKER_02: you know,
12:10
SPEAKER_02: essentially the only hope for Republicans at this point is like
12:15
SPEAKER_02: the 8th Circuit rules like today in their favor.
12:19
SPEAKER_02: But here's the thing.
12:19
SPEAKER_02: What happens in that case is the Democrats would just appeal back up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
12:25
SPEAKER_02: And the US Supreme Court at that point has the choice of whether
12:30
SPEAKER_02: to do what is called granting cert, which is essentially, do we take this case?
12:35
SPEAKER_02: And if they take this case, then their stay from before stays in place.
12:43
SPEAKER_02: So all the Supreme Court has to do is agree to hear the appeal.
12:47
SPEAKER_02: In order for the 2022 map to be used because
12:49
SPEAKER_02: the Supreme Court will definitely not hear this,
12:51
SPEAKER_02: like the Supreme Court will hear this lawsuit if they decide
12:53
SPEAKER_02: to hear it like next year or something like that.
12:55
SPEAKER_02: And obviously at that point it's too late because this is a lawsuit about the 2026 election.
13:00
SPEAKER_02: So, so essentially like they're the only path for Republicans to win here is
13:04
SPEAKER_02: an immediate ruling in the appeals.
13:07
SPEAKER_02: On the appeals level,
13:08
SPEAKER_02: and then the US Supreme Court to agree to not take the case,
13:12
SPEAKER_02: which makes no sense given that they have already indicated there are five votes for
13:16
SPEAKER_02: the 22 map.
13:18
SPEAKER_02: So effectively speaking, I am confident that Missouri will be using the 6-2 map.
13:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
13:25
SPEAKER_01: So that then sets up a situation where,
13:29
SPEAKER_01: again, for folks who are watching this, the old map will be in effect.
13:35
SPEAKER_01: And You'll have safe Democratic seats around St.
13:39
SPEAKER_01: Louis, the first district, which was going to remain in place largely.
13:42
SPEAKER_01: It changed a little bit on the new map that is now paused.
13:48
SPEAKER_01: But more importantly,
13:49
SPEAKER_01: the fifth district around Kansas City would go back to being the Democratic-leaning,
13:54
SPEAKER_01: fairly compact seat around the city and its immediate environs
13:59
SPEAKER_01: that Emanuel Cleaver holds.
14:01
SPEAKER_01: And then the suburban second district gets a little less red.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: Outside of St. Louis and might actually be competitive.
14:09
SPEAKER_01: So, you know,
14:11
SPEAKER_01: all that can have,
14:12
SPEAKER_01: you know,
14:12
SPEAKER_01: if you're looking at sort of like,
14:13
SPEAKER_01: for instance,
14:13
SPEAKER_01: I should note right now,
14:15
SPEAKER_01: Decision Desk HQ,
14:16
SPEAKER_01: our election forecast,
14:17
SPEAKER_01: we have frozen what's going on in Missouri until this gets absolutely nailed down,
14:22
SPEAKER_01: finalized.
14:24
SPEAKER_01: But, you know,
14:25
SPEAKER_01: if the old map is fully going back into effect,
14:29
SPEAKER_01: then you can expect,
14:30
SPEAKER_01: you know, Democrats to basically be in a position to gain one more seat.
14:34
SPEAKER_01: In sort of our seat totals because the fifth district would would turn into a very,
14:39
SPEAKER_01: very likely Democratic hold instead of a likely Republican takeover
14:43
SPEAKER_01: where it is right now in our forecast.
14:45
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, that's one seat.
14:47
SPEAKER_01: But.
14:49
SPEAKER_01: It could matter in a world where we get a slightly more favorable outcome
14:53
SPEAKER_01: for Republicans and sort of the universe of midterm outcomes.
14:57
SPEAKER_01: So in that sense, it's notable.
15:00
SPEAKER_01: Also, if this turns into a really good year for Democrats,
15:03
SPEAKER_01: which it does look like it's going to be a Democratic leading year,
15:06
SPEAKER_01: to the extent of which sort of remains to be seen,
15:09
SPEAKER_01: a district like the second could actually be in play.
15:12
SPEAKER_01: And so the fact that it might be a little less red Could end up mattering in a very tight race.
15:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's could be two seats that are on the table here.
15:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but let's talk a little bit about, so that's sort of the congressional district picture.
15:27
SPEAKER_01: But then we have this veto referendum,
15:29
SPEAKER_01: which now, it's worth noting, Missouri, I believe they have a state auditor's race.
15:34
SPEAKER_01: But they elect their governors in most states,
15:37
SPEAKER_01: basically all their other statewide officials in presidential years.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: And there's no Senate race on the ballot this time around,
15:44
SPEAKER_01: US Senate race on the ballot this time around,
15:47
SPEAKER_01: just because this happens to be the cycle that Missouri's two seats are not up,
15:50
SPEAKER_01: neither of their seats are up.
15:52
SPEAKER_01: And so it feels like this proposition is gonna be one of
15:54
SPEAKER_01: the main statewide things going on, the veto referendum.
16:00
SPEAKER_01: And so I thought it was worth gonna,
16:03
SPEAKER_01: we should talk a little bit about the veto referendum process and the fact that
16:08
SPEAKER_01: At least per the data that I have gathered from Ballotpedia,
16:14
SPEAKER_01: 24 of 25 of these have failed.
16:16
SPEAKER_01: And when I say failed, essentially voters said, yeah, we reject the legislation.
16:21
SPEAKER_01: Like they defeated the legislation at the ballot box.
16:23
SPEAKER_01: And the only one that passed was in November 1920, which was alcohol prohibition.
16:32
SPEAKER_01: Narrowly voters upheld the legislature's legislation about that.
16:39
SPEAKER_01: But otherwise, it's basically failed.
16:41
SPEAKER_01: Now, there haven't been a lot of these, especially in recent times.
16:44
SPEAKER_01: There's really just the right to work in 2018, which was defeated overwhelmingly.
16:50
SPEAKER_01: But you can't say it's a terribly great track record if you're Republicans hoping to pass this.
16:59
SPEAKER_02: Right.
17:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, for sure.
17:02
SPEAKER_02: It's obviously it's a really interesting question, though,
17:04
SPEAKER_02: because,
17:05
SPEAKER_02: you know,
17:06
SPEAKER_02: so far we have seen two states vote on essentially new congressional maps as part of
17:11
SPEAKER_02: the redistricting war.
17:13
SPEAKER_02: That was, of course, California and Virginia.
17:15
SPEAKER_02: Those are both blue states that were voting on new Democratic gerrymanders.
17:21
SPEAKER_02: It passed in both cases,
17:22
SPEAKER_02: although obviously in Virginia,
17:23
SPEAKER_02: the Virginia Supreme Court eventually struck that one down.
17:27
SPEAKER_02: But this is going to be the first Republican state and, you know, hopefully Republican, right?
17:31
SPEAKER_02: I think, I mean, what, Trump carried it by, what, like 20-ish points, 15, 20 points?
17:35
SPEAKER_02: I was going to say it's like 20 or
17:37
SPEAKER_01: so, yeah, yeah.
17:39
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, this is not California.
17:41
SPEAKER_02: This is not Virginia.
17:42
SPEAKER_02: Almost 19.
17:46
SPEAKER_02: And so, you know,
17:48
SPEAKER_02: I think what you had in in California and Virginia was that you had both obviously
17:53
SPEAKER_02: the base partisanship of those states,
17:54
SPEAKER_02: but you had the fact that it was,
17:55
SPEAKER_02: you know, a generally good environment for Democrats because Trump is unpopular.
18:00
SPEAKER_02: You had the anger,
18:02
SPEAKER_02: I think,
18:02
SPEAKER_02: about like, oh,
18:03
SPEAKER_02: Trump is trying to,
18:04
SPEAKER_02: you know, redraw the lines to essentially give his party a leg up.
18:08
SPEAKER_02: Rig the midterms, you know.
18:10
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
18:10
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
18:11
SPEAKER_02: In square quotes, for sure.
18:14
SPEAKER_02: But and so I think that,
18:17
SPEAKER_02: you know,
18:17
SPEAKER_02: you had all of the kind of fundamentals pointing in the same direction there.
18:21
SPEAKER_02: In this case, you don't.
18:22
SPEAKER_02: Right.
18:23
SPEAKER_02: You have the base partisanship, which would favor Republicans.
18:25
SPEAKER_02: But I do think that, like,
18:26
SPEAKER_02: the enthusiasm is going to be on Democrats side,
18:29
SPEAKER_02: both because the environment and I think that all this has not gone over well
18:33
SPEAKER_02: in Missouri.
18:33
SPEAKER_02: There was a poll showing, you know, It's just one poll and it could be an outlier.
18:38
SPEAKER_02: We don't have a lot of state level approval polling,
18:41
SPEAKER_02: but it showed in the aftermath of all this that Donald Trump was unpopular.
18:45
SPEAKER_02: It was below water in the state.
18:48
SPEAKER_02: And so if you have a blue enough environment and people are Kind of pissed enough
18:52
SPEAKER_02: about the fact that Republicans essentially tried to bureaucracy their way into one
18:58
SPEAKER_02: or two extra congressional seats that might motivate voters.
19:02
SPEAKER_02: And like you said,
19:03
SPEAKER_02: if this is the only thing on the ballot or like the main thing on the ballot,
19:06
SPEAKER_02: we know that Democrats are have the advantage in turnout because
19:10
SPEAKER_02: of their demographics and their coalition.
19:12
SPEAKER_02: And I do wonder if those factors could be enough
19:16
SPEAKER_02: to overwhelm even Missouri's like pretty strong Republican lean.
19:22
SPEAKER_01: So we don't, uh, this obviously just happened.
19:25
SPEAKER_01: So we, we have,
19:27
SPEAKER_01: there has been one poll that I have seen on this question and it is not
19:32
SPEAKER_01: a very helpful one.
19:33
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'm not, that's not to take a shot at the pollster.
19:35
SPEAKER_01: I think it just reflects the fact that this just happened.
19:38
SPEAKER_01: It's just coming.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: Like it's kind of, this ballot measure is just coming online if you will.
19:44
SPEAKER_01: Uh, so, uh,
19:45
SPEAKER_01: you gov and St.
19:46
SPEAKER_01: Louis university, uh,
19:48
SPEAKER_01: We're polling a number of state issues and they asked about this proposition,
19:52
SPEAKER_01: which I believe will be Proposition A on the ballot.
19:55
SPEAKER_01: I think it'll be the only one.
19:57
SPEAKER_01: And 35% said yes.
20:00
SPEAKER_01: Now that would be to support the legislation.
20:03
SPEAKER_01: 32% said no, which would be to oppose the legislation, defeat it.
20:07
SPEAKER_01: And no, as we said, has usually won on these veto referendums.
20:11
SPEAKER_01: And then 33%, we're not sure.
20:13
SPEAKER_01: So not the most helpful of figures,
20:17
SPEAKER_01: but I think that reflects the fact that, yeah,
20:19
SPEAKER_01: people are just really starting to tune in, that this measure will be on the ballot.
20:25
SPEAKER_01: And obviously it's going to get a lot of attention because if it were to succeed,
20:30
SPEAKER_01: and by succeed,
20:31
SPEAKER_01: I mean, People voted yes and said, yeah, you know, we're OK with the legislation.
20:38
SPEAKER_01: We're good with it.
20:39
SPEAKER_01: Then it would take effect ahead of the 2028 election.
20:44
SPEAKER_01: And so this map would come into effect and it would set up Republicans
20:47
SPEAKER_01: to likely gain a seat that they were targeting for this election.
20:54
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, that that is very much on the table, as you just and you just laid out why.
21:01
SPEAKER_01: So I think at this point, there's just a lot to be determined on that front.
21:08
SPEAKER_01: I would note that 104 years ago,
21:13
SPEAKER_01: it's so insane to say,
21:16
SPEAKER_01: there was, in fact, you can see it on this list of veto referendums.
21:23
SPEAKER_02: In 1922, what was going on in Missouri that year?
21:25
SPEAKER_02: That's like a dozen veto referenda.
21:27
SPEAKER_01: So the context was, yes,
21:29
SPEAKER_01: a huge number of the referenda,
21:30
SPEAKER_01: the veto referendum,
21:33
SPEAKER_01: I keep wanting to say veto referenda because that's my, my tendency.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: Well, it seems now that, well, yeah,
21:42
SPEAKER_01: I agree,
21:43
SPEAKER_01: but people are saying referendums now and I'm like, I don't know what to do.
21:46
SPEAKER_01: It's veto referenda to me, man.
21:48
SPEAKER_01: Referendum.
21:48
SPEAKER_02: Make Latin Great Again.
21:50
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
21:51
SPEAKER_01: Make Latin Great Again.
21:54
SPEAKER_01: Essentially what happened is that Missouri was a Democratic-leaning state at the state level.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: Democrats had controlled things there for a while.
22:04
SPEAKER_01: But in 1920, which was a great Republican year, Republicans took control of everything.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: And there was a Democratic gerrymander on the congressional district,
22:12
SPEAKER_01: on the state Senate districts.
22:13
SPEAKER_01: There was a whole bunch of stuff that basically the Republican mood in 1920 overwhelmed.
22:19
SPEAKER_01: But then...
22:22
SPEAKER_01: The new Republican legislature passed the new congressional map attempting to undo
22:26
SPEAKER_01: the Democratic advantage.
22:29
SPEAKER_01: And then Democrats,
22:30
SPEAKER_01: along with a number of other pieces of legislation passed by
22:33
SPEAKER_01: the new fully Republican-controlled state government,
22:36
SPEAKER_01: they put a bunch of things on the ballot.
22:37
SPEAKER_01: And basically every single one of them got shot down in the 1922 Democratic midterm wave.
22:43
SPEAKER_01: Now, Democrats did not take back Congress in that election, but they did gain a bunch of seats.
22:49
SPEAKER_01: And in Missouri, they...
22:51
SPEAKER_01: Shot down basically all of this legislation because every single one of these, no one.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: So there was a lot going on,
22:57
SPEAKER_01: but importantly,
22:58
SPEAKER_01: just for our purposes of a historical precedent,
23:01
SPEAKER_01: yes, the congressional redistricting proposition, no got about 62%.
23:07
SPEAKER_01: So it failed overwhelmingly.
23:09
SPEAKER_01: And so this is just an example of sort of like,
23:11
SPEAKER_01: you know, the conditions, the electoral environment obviously played a big role.
23:14
SPEAKER_01: Missouri, you know, the political context is very different.
23:18
SPEAKER_01: This is over a century ago.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: But there is precedent for this failing at the ballot box.
23:26
SPEAKER_01: So fascinating a little bit.
23:29
SPEAKER_01: I really wanted to do this entire episode just to mention this had happened in the past.
23:36
SPEAKER_01: But I guess this is a good place to transition to maybe the larger national story.
23:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no,
23:43
SPEAKER_02: it's a really good reminder that,
23:45
SPEAKER_02: you know,
23:45
SPEAKER_02: even when things feel unprecedented,
23:48
SPEAKER_02: you know, for modern politics, you know, politics 100 years ago is crazy.
23:53
SPEAKER_02: And, you know,
23:53
SPEAKER_02: a lot of stuff actually,
23:54
SPEAKER_02: you know, has happened again in terms of these partisan fights and everything.
23:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but I think,
24:00
SPEAKER_02: you know,
24:00
SPEAKER_02: obviously the outcome of the veto referendum of Prop A in November is going
24:05
SPEAKER_02: to be really important to watch.
24:08
SPEAKER_02: That said...
24:09
SPEAKER_02: There is also technically not anything stopping if the referendum fails,
24:16
SPEAKER_02: by which I mean if voters defeat the 7-1 gerrymander and say,
24:22
SPEAKER_02: we want to keep the 6-2 map in place for the rest of the decade.
24:25
SPEAKER_02: Theoretically,
24:25
SPEAKER_02: there is nothing stopping Missouri Republicans from just passing a new law,
24:29
SPEAKER_02: re-gerrymandering the state,
24:30
SPEAKER_02: maybe a different 7-1 map or even an 8-0 map,
24:33
SPEAKER_02: which now theoretically they can do that the Voting Rights Act has been defanged.
24:39
SPEAKER_02: But there is a ballot measure on the ballot this year,
24:42
SPEAKER_02: a separate one that would potentially prevent that.
24:46
SPEAKER_02: So there's also a state constitutional amendment,
24:48
SPEAKER_02: Amendment 6 on the ballot in Missouri,
24:50
SPEAKER_02: that essentially makes it nearly impossible for the state legislature
24:57
SPEAKER_02: I think it's, you know, something like 80% in the legislature to override that.
25:02
SPEAKER_02: It enshrines like ballot initiatives in the state constitution as a fundamental right.
25:07
SPEAKER_02: This is kind of in response to a lot We have a lot of attacks on
25:09
SPEAKER_02: the ballot initiative process that Missouri and frankly other states have made as
25:15
SPEAKER_02: a lot of liberal priorities have passed.
25:17
SPEAKER_02: So in Missouri, we mentioned the Right to Work.
25:19
SPEAKER_02: They also expanded Medicaid.
25:20
SPEAKER_02: They had an abortion rights ballot measure
25:22
SPEAKER_02: and Republicans don't really want They want to make it harder to refer things to
25:27
SPEAKER_02: the voters.
25:28
SPEAKER_02: But if Amendment 6 passes,
25:30
SPEAKER_02: I think that it would make it legally dubious for the Missouri legislature
25:36
SPEAKER_02: to just turn around and draw a new congressional map.
25:38
SPEAKER_02: But if it doesn't, Then I do think that they could do that.
25:41
SPEAKER_02: And essentially you could just have a back and forth battle where every year
25:45
SPEAKER_02: or every two years- We could do it again.
25:47
SPEAKER_02: Passes a new gerrymander and then the Democrats have to collect signatures again for the map.
25:53
SPEAKER_02: And basically they try to wear each other out,
25:55
SPEAKER_02: which would obviously be a less than effective system.
26:00
SPEAKER_02: But to be determined,
26:02
SPEAKER_02: I think that they're basically,
26:03
SPEAKER_02: the upshot here is that I think there are two ballot measures
26:06
SPEAKER_02: that people should be watching Missouri.
26:08
SPEAKER_02: Um, this November very closely.
26:10
SPEAKER_01: And it's worth noting to your,
26:11
SPEAKER_01: to your point,
26:12
SPEAKER_01: like that we just had a vote at the same time as the,
26:15
SPEAKER_01: the August primary, uh,
26:17
SPEAKER_01: in Missouri,
26:17
SPEAKER_01: there was an amendment four on that ballot that attempted essentially to, to,
26:22
SPEAKER_01: I think that they have to have like a majority
26:24
SPEAKER_01: in every single congressional district was what the legislature.
26:27
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
26:28
SPEAKER_01: Basically the legislature was going to make it based almost impossible to amend
26:32
SPEAKER_01: the state constitution, uh,
26:36
SPEAKER_01: In terms of,
26:37
SPEAKER_01: I think via,
26:38
SPEAKER_01: via initiative,
26:39
SPEAKER_01: because it was,
26:40
SPEAKER_01: you were going to need a majority,
26:41
SPEAKER_01: not only statewide, but in every congressional district.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: And of course those were drawn out of the legislature.
26:46
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
26:47
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
26:47
SPEAKER_02: And obviously,
26:48
SPEAKER_02: you know,
26:48
SPEAKER_02: in Missouri,
26:49
SPEAKER_02: there are some very blue districts and, you know, St. Louis essentially.
26:52
SPEAKER_02: And then there's some very red districts and the type of it's just difficult
26:56
SPEAKER_02: to imagine a,
26:57
SPEAKER_02: you know,
26:57
SPEAKER_02: constitutional amendment that could get majority support in both of those areas.
27:00
SPEAKER_02: It would have to be something I think very uncontroversial,
27:03
SPEAKER_02: something like a no kind of no brainer fix.
27:07
SPEAKER_02: But yeah,
27:08
SPEAKER_02: it certainly I think would have stopped things like the abortion ballot measure
27:11
SPEAKER_02: or right to work.
27:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
27:12
SPEAKER_01: And it failed overwhelmingly.
27:13
SPEAKER_01: I've just brought it up.
27:14
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
27:15
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
27:16
SPEAKER_01: No got 80%.
27:17
SPEAKER_01: So it, it, it failed.
27:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
27:19
SPEAKER_01: And to my point,
27:20
SPEAKER_02: you know,
27:21
SPEAKER_02: I think this showed like,
27:22
SPEAKER_02: you know, and, and Republicans were pushing this amendment.
27:25
SPEAKER_02: And so like,
27:26
SPEAKER_02: I think this shows that the energy is on Democrats’ side,
27:29
SPEAKER_02: even in Missouri right now.
27:30
SPEAKER_02: You know,
27:31
SPEAKER_02: I don't think the veto referendum is going to be 80%-20%,
27:33
SPEAKER_02: but you know,
27:35
SPEAKER_02: it could be,
27:36
SPEAKER_02: I don't,
27:36
SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't assume that it'll just go according to partisanship of the way
27:38
SPEAKER_02: that it went in California and Virginia.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: Makes sense.
27:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: Well, let's transition to the larger national story.
27:46
SPEAKER_01: So this was what's been going on in Missouri and the bigger thing nationally and
27:52
SPEAKER_01: the story that's really dominated the last little bit here is that
27:55
SPEAKER_01: the Supreme Court recently,
28:00
SPEAKER_01: we can say they shot down,
28:01
SPEAKER_01: they blocked the executive order that President Trump had attempted to put in place
28:08
SPEAKER_01: to essentially have
28:09
SPEAKER_01: the US Postal Service pretty dramatically change mail voting rules around
28:17
SPEAKER_01: the country since the Postal Service is,
28:19
SPEAKER_01: of course, responsible for delivering mail ballots to folks around the country.
28:26
SPEAKER_01: Now, to be clear, they did not rule on the merits precisely here.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: They essentially left a lower court ruling in place.
28:34
SPEAKER_01: But it does seem like the suggestion from
28:37
SPEAKER_01: the Supreme Court was it would probably fail on the merits.
28:40
SPEAKER_01: And so we're not we're not taking this.
28:43
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
28:44
SPEAKER_01: And but but,
28:45
SPEAKER_01: you know,
28:46
SPEAKER_01: the upshot is mail balloting appears that will remain in place
28:51
SPEAKER_01: as it has been.
28:53
SPEAKER_02: Right.
28:53
SPEAKER_02: Yes, exactly.
28:54
SPEAKER_02: You know,
28:55
SPEAKER_02: for one of the most common questions that we get at Votebeat is basically,
28:58
SPEAKER_02: you know, can I still vote by mail?
29:00
SPEAKER_02: You know, what's going to change with mail voting?
29:02
SPEAKER_02: Because there have been a lot of headlines about this executive order and the court battle.
29:05
SPEAKER_02: And there were so many back and forth in this court battle.
29:08
SPEAKER_02: And I don't blame people for getting confused about it.
29:10
SPEAKER_02: But right.
29:10
SPEAKER_02: If you take away one kind of headline from it,
29:13
SPEAKER_02: it's that mail voting is going to work basically the same way that it has always
29:17
SPEAKER_02: or not always, but, you know, has worked in the last couple of elections.
29:20
SPEAKER_02: So if you are a mail voter, you You know, go ahead if you prefer to vote that way.
29:25
SPEAKER_02: If you prefer to vote in person, go ahead, do that.
29:27
SPEAKER_02: Obviously, depending on the laws in your states.
29:28
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, it was
29:32
SPEAKER_02: so essentially what this executive order would have done.
29:34
SPEAKER_02: He issued this back in March.
29:35
SPEAKER_02: And of course, it immediately became subject to a legal battle.
29:38
SPEAKER_02: But it would have given the Postal Service unprecedented control
29:42
SPEAKER_02: over like basically discretion over whether to deliver And
29:47
SPEAKER_02: so they only would have delivered ballots that were from people who were on
29:51
SPEAKER_02: a pre-approved list.
29:52
SPEAKER_02: So it essentially said to states,
29:54
SPEAKER_02: send us a list of all the people you have authorized to vote by mail,
29:57
SPEAKER_02: and we will only deliver ballots to those people.
30:00
SPEAKER_02: It also required kind of like standardized envelope designs,
30:05
SPEAKER_02: or at least like certain features to be on every ballot envelope,
30:08
SPEAKER_02: including a unique barcode for each voter.
30:10
SPEAKER_02: This is the part that would have been Really,
30:13
SPEAKER_02: I think problematic for election officials,
30:14
SPEAKER_02: particularly on the timeline that we're talking about.
30:16
SPEAKER_02: I mean, this was just decided by the Supreme Court the other day,
30:18
SPEAKER_02: you know, with like less than 50 days until the election.
30:21
SPEAKER_02: Those ballots or those envelopes have already been printed and stuff
30:24
SPEAKER_02: and it would have just been a very large expense and,
30:28
SPEAKER_02: you know, practically very difficult to go back and reprint them.
30:31
SPEAKER_01: Um, but, uh,
30:33
SPEAKER_01: but yeah,
30:33
SPEAKER_02: but now,
30:34
SPEAKER_02: you know,
30:34
SPEAKER_02: this went up to the Supreme court a couple of times that went up on kind of like
30:37
SPEAKER_02: a narrow legal basis, uh, earlier in the year, the Supreme Court.
30:42
SPEAKER_02: And at that point said,
30:43
SPEAKER_02: you know, you guys, the lower courts, you guys can continue talking about this.
30:46
SPEAKER_02: It's fine for now.
30:47
SPEAKER_02: Um, but then on a Monday,
30:49
SPEAKER_02: I believe it was the Supreme Court finally said,
30:51
SPEAKER_02: um, no, like, you know, as you mentioned, there were six justices probably.
30:56
SPEAKER_02: So on the shadow docket, the opinions are not signed.
30:59
SPEAKER_02: But in the main part of the opinion,
31:02
SPEAKER_02: it said we believe that this case is unlikely to succeed on the merits,
31:05
SPEAKER_02: essentially agreeing with the Democratic argument that
31:08
SPEAKER_02: the president does not have authority over dictating election laws
31:12
SPEAKER_02: and mail voting laws.
31:14
SPEAKER_02: Per the Constitution,
31:15
SPEAKER_02: which of course says that the states and Congress get to decide those things.
31:19
SPEAKER_02: One person,
31:19
SPEAKER_02: Justice Kavanaugh,
31:20
SPEAKER_02: dissented, or no, sorry,
31:22
SPEAKER_02: he concurred,
31:23
SPEAKER_02: saying he thinks that the executive order might be legal,
31:27
SPEAKER_02: but at this point, it's too close to the election.
31:29
SPEAKER_02: So I agree that it shouldn't go in place.
31:31
SPEAKER_02: And then two justices dissented.
31:32
SPEAKER_02: And those,
31:32
SPEAKER_02: of course,
31:33
SPEAKER_02: were Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito,
31:35
SPEAKER_02: the two most conservative justices on the court.
31:36
SPEAKER_02: And they said they would have let it go forward.
31:38
SPEAKER_02: But as you mentioned, this is still working its way through the lower courts on the merits.
31:42
SPEAKER_02: This was just kind of like,
31:43
SPEAKER_02: again, a question of an emergency appeal about should this go into effect for 2026?
31:48
SPEAKER_02: So theoretically, it could still go into effect in like 2028.
31:51
SPEAKER_02: But if you do the math,
31:53
SPEAKER_02: there were six justices that didn't sign on to either the concurrence or
31:57
SPEAKER_02: the dissent.
31:58
SPEAKER_02: So I think there are probably six,
32:00
SPEAKER_02: certainly at least five,
32:01
SPEAKER_02: possibly six votes to say, no, this executive order was unconstitutional.
32:06
SPEAKER_02: Only the states or Congress may kind of change mail voting laws.
32:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
32:12
SPEAKER_01: And so just to talk a little bit more about the executive order,
32:16
SPEAKER_01: my understanding of it is essentially that It's like the states were required
32:20
SPEAKER_01: to share certain information with the federal government as well.
32:24
SPEAKER_01: And that also was a big part.
32:26
SPEAKER_01: And, and,
32:27
SPEAKER_01: you know,
32:27
SPEAKER_01: in the end you had like,
32:28
SPEAKER_01: I think it was like 23 states that are led by Democrats were, were suing over this.
32:33
SPEAKER_01: And, and of course,
32:34
SPEAKER_01: a lot of those are some of the biggest vote by mail states like a California
32:38
SPEAKER_01: or Washington or Oregon or Vermont.
32:40
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Vermont's not big, but it is Democratic.
32:44
SPEAKER_01: Hawaii...
32:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean, these are all very blue places that, that, Oregon, usually blue.
32:49
SPEAKER_01: I will say that the governor's race is looking competitive, potentially.
32:54
SPEAKER_01: But you also do have, Colorado's become much bluer.
32:58
SPEAKER_01: But Nevada is definitely a swing state.
33:00
SPEAKER_01: Utah is a red-leaning state.
33:03
SPEAKER_01: I have a map up here right now from the National Conference
33:06
SPEAKER_01: of State Legislatures talking about mail voting.
33:09
SPEAKER_01: And those are pretty much all vote-by-mail states,
33:13
SPEAKER_01: although I live in Vermont, it's a little more complicated than that.
33:15
SPEAKER_01: Nathaniel and I were talking just before that there are some differences from state
33:18
SPEAKER_01: to state on this,
33:19
SPEAKER_01: but a place like Washington or Oregon that's been doing this for a very long time,
33:22
SPEAKER_01: they're very,
33:23
SPEAKER_01: very heavy vote-by-mail at this point,
33:26
SPEAKER_01: and almost everyone is voting by mail either by dropping it off in a dropbox or
33:31
SPEAKER_01: by using the Postal Service.
33:34
SPEAKER_01: And then there are other states that are not universally vote by mail,
33:36
SPEAKER_01: but have huge shares of the voters who do vote by mail.
33:40
SPEAKER_01: And that's like in Arizona or Florida and Alaska,
33:43
SPEAKER_01: particularly given the remote communities there.
33:46
SPEAKER_01: So yeah,
33:47
SPEAKER_01: all of this would have had a very big effect on a range of states,
33:52
SPEAKER_01: not just Democratic states.
33:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, it,
33:57
SPEAKER_02: you know,
33:58
SPEAKER_02: it almost, I think, so I think it's important to kind of like be precise, right?
34:01
SPEAKER_02: And obviously a lot of Democrats have,
34:03
SPEAKER_02: you know,
34:03
SPEAKER_02: painted this as,
34:04
SPEAKER_02: you know, an affront to democracy and, you know, assault on mail voting.
34:08
SPEAKER_02: And I suppose,
34:09
SPEAKER_02: you know,
34:09
SPEAKER_02: against a mail voting,
34:10
SPEAKER_02: it's certainly, you know, it was definitely a, you know, an assault on that.
34:14
SPEAKER_02: But, you know,
34:15
SPEAKER_02: I think that especially in this environment,
34:17
SPEAKER_02: You know, people, like I said, like this was a widely covered case.
34:21
SPEAKER_02: If the case had gone the other way,
34:23
SPEAKER_02: I think that, you know, Democrats would have figured out a new way to vote.
34:27
SPEAKER_02: It's almost like the reverse of the pandemic, right?
34:30
SPEAKER_02: The pandemic was obviously a time when the world shut down and,
34:34
SPEAKER_02: you know, there were primaries actively happening in March and April of 2020.
34:38
SPEAKER_02: And, but
34:41
SPEAKER_02: And it was chaotic,
34:41
SPEAKER_02: but we figured out a way to very quickly switch to
34:45
SPEAKER_02: a predominantly vote-by-mail system in the states that needed to do that.
34:48
SPEAKER_02: And I think that you almost would have seen the opposite,
34:50
SPEAKER_02: where these states that relied on vote-by-mail,
34:54
SPEAKER_02: if it was going to become logistically too challenging to get out those ballots with
34:58
SPEAKER_02: the right envelopes.
35:00
SPEAKER_02: And I should also be clear that some states already complied with these requirements.
35:05
SPEAKER_02: But If it was going to be logistically too difficult or if voters were afraid
35:09
SPEAKER_02: to vote by mail because they were like,
35:10
SPEAKER_02: you know, what if my ballot doesn't get delivered?
35:12
SPEAKER_02: I think that,
35:12
SPEAKER_02: you know,
35:13
SPEAKER_02: everybody would have election officials, voters would have figured out a solution.
35:16
SPEAKER_02: It just would have been messy.
35:17
SPEAKER_02: You would have maybe, you know, seen states that.
35:19
SPEAKER_02: Are normally vote by mail and are not used to high volumes at polling places.
35:24
SPEAKER_02: They would have had to have dealt with that.
35:26
SPEAKER_02: And that would have been that would have been messy.
35:28
SPEAKER_02: But I think for the most part, democracy is resilient, despite what you may have heard.
35:34
SPEAKER_02: So I do want to kind of put that out there.
35:36
SPEAKER_02: But but yes, it certainly would have been very chaotic for election officials in particular.
35:40
SPEAKER_02: All the ones that I talked to were just in fact,
35:43
SPEAKER_02: even a lot of Republican election officials filed an amicus brief with
35:46
SPEAKER_02: the Supreme Court to say,
35:49
SPEAKER_02: We physically cannot comply with this, which I would imagine had some barriers.
35:54
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, I think Brad Raffensperger in Georgia was a good example of that,
35:59
SPEAKER_01: or a prominent example, just to bring up a name that people may have heard.
36:04
SPEAKER_02: For sure.
36:04
SPEAKER_02: But like even he,
36:05
SPEAKER_02: you know,
36:05
SPEAKER_02: I think that a lot of Republicans be like,
36:07
SPEAKER_02: oh, well, you know, he's a squish, like, you know, he's not a real Republican.
36:10
SPEAKER_02: But like there were,
36:11
SPEAKER_02: you know,
36:11
SPEAKER_02: Republican,
36:12
SPEAKER_02: like the Republican Secretary of State of Iowa,
36:14
SPEAKER_02: like of like South Dakota,
36:15
SPEAKER_02: North Dakota, they were they were saying that this was not a feasible thing to do.
36:20
SPEAKER_02: So there are a lot of relieved election officials in addition to obviously,
36:24
SPEAKER_02: you know, millions of Democratic voters right now.
36:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
36:27
SPEAKER_01: And I, you know,
36:28
SPEAKER_01: I thought it was,
36:29
SPEAKER_01: it was worth noting you,
36:30
SPEAKER_01: you brought,
36:30
SPEAKER_01: cause sort of what you pointed out here,
36:32
SPEAKER_01: this is, uh,
36:33
SPEAKER_01: data from,
36:34
SPEAKER_01: from Charles Stewart at MIT, uh, MIT, the,
36:39
SPEAKER_01: the Election Data Lab, um,
36:42
SPEAKER_01: basically on the use of, of how,
36:44
SPEAKER_01: basically how people have cast ballots,
36:46
SPEAKER_01: uh, in, in federal elections, uh, federal election years, I should say.
36:51
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, you see a big increase in mail voting in 2020.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: And a big decrease in in-person Election Day voting.
37:00
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, it popped back up and mail voting has has sunk a little bit.
37:03
SPEAKER_01: And so actually,
37:04
SPEAKER_01: it's really an interesting mix now where in 2024,
37:07
SPEAKER_01: in the last presidential election,
37:10
SPEAKER_01: 40 percent of voters report or of respondents reported voting on Election Day
37:15
SPEAKER_01: in person.
37:17
SPEAKER_01: 31% reported voting early in person, which does seem to have become more popular.
37:23
SPEAKER_01: In fact, that's been the one consistent thing is that that has been growing.
37:26
SPEAKER_01: People are voting early in person.
37:28
SPEAKER_01: And then 29% voted by mail or voted absentee in some way.
37:33
SPEAKER_01: And so you have a real interesting sort of mix at this point.
37:37
SPEAKER_01: And I think to your point,
37:40
SPEAKER_01: if the decision had gone the other way,
37:43
SPEAKER_01: You know,
37:43
SPEAKER_01: it would have been chaotic,
37:45
SPEAKER_01: but I think you would have seen,
37:47
SPEAKER_01: you know,
37:47
SPEAKER_01: an effort to increase early in-person voting or, you know, those sorts of things.
37:52
SPEAKER_01: Certainly, though, for states that are extremely or very heavy vote by mail at this point.
37:57
SPEAKER_01: That would have been the most challenging thing.
37:59
SPEAKER_01: And considering one of those states is California,
38:02
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to underplay the mess that the decision would have had if it had gone
38:09
SPEAKER_01: the other way.
38:11
SPEAKER_01: But it is interesting at this point.
38:13
SPEAKER_01: I think that we saw this big increase in vote by mail because of the pandemic.
38:19
SPEAKER_01: But that has not continued in quite the same way because people do like voting
38:23
SPEAKER_01: in person, whether early or on election day.
38:28
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I personally like voting in person if I can.
38:31
SPEAKER_01: You get the sticker.
38:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you get a sticker.
38:34
SPEAKER_01: It's like democracy.
38:38
SPEAKER_01: I'm part of it.
38:38
SPEAKER_01: You stand in line with people.
38:40
SPEAKER_01: It's like, yeah, it's a nice feeling.
38:43
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, I mean, that's...
38:46
SPEAKER_01: I like to be able to do that,
38:47
SPEAKER_01: although I rarely can because usually I'm traveling and going to someplace
38:50
SPEAKER_01: for general elections, I should say, for covering all this.
38:54
SPEAKER_01: But it's, you know, it's really nice.
38:58
SPEAKER_01: But I guess actually this is maybe just to close out.
39:02
SPEAKER_01: Are there any other sort of, I don't know, administrative?
39:05
SPEAKER_01: I mean, obviously there's been a lot of,
39:09
SPEAKER_01: you know,
39:09
SPEAKER_01: a lot of challenges by the Trump administration to sort of
39:13
SPEAKER_01: the way our elections work.
39:15
SPEAKER_01: And I wasn't sure if there were any other sort of examples or things
39:18
SPEAKER_01: that you'd pick out that have been notable.
39:20
SPEAKER_01: Obviously,
39:20
SPEAKER_01: this has been gotten a lot of coverage,
39:22
SPEAKER_01: but I didn't know if there were some other administrative aspects of the election
39:25
SPEAKER_01: as we look ahead to the actual and the thing you cover at Votebeat,
39:29
SPEAKER_01: the actual functioning of our elections that that sticks out to you.
39:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, there there is so much.
39:37
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know,
39:37
SPEAKER_02: when you really think about it,
39:39
SPEAKER_02: there is a lot that goes into making sure that,
39:41
SPEAKER_02: you know,
39:42
SPEAKER_02: The elections and everything that we talk about as analysts,
39:47
SPEAKER_02: make sure that that goes off without a hitch.
39:49
SPEAKER_02: And at Votebeat,
39:51
SPEAKER_02: we have been thinking about the election in kind of three phases or
39:55
SPEAKER_02: the election administration in three phases.
39:56
SPEAKER_02: You have the before, the during, and the after.
39:59
SPEAKER_02: I think that this Supreme Court decision essentially puts a pin on the before.
40:05
SPEAKER_02: We are out of the before phase.
40:07
SPEAKER_02: And this is kind of a phase where You saw,
40:10
SPEAKER_02: you know, people,
40:10
SPEAKER_02: Republicans essentially trying to change the laws under which the election was run.
40:15
SPEAKER_02: So you had things like this executive order.
40:17
SPEAKER_02: You had things like the Save America Act that would have required new voters
40:20
SPEAKER_02: to prove their citizenship.
40:22
SPEAKER_02: You saw some action on the state level to do things like,
40:26
SPEAKER_02: you know, restrict mail voting or provide proof of citizenship.
40:31
SPEAKER_02: But we are now at the point where,
40:33
SPEAKER_02: as you point out,
40:33
SPEAKER_02: you know, Mail ballots are already going out in a handful of states.
40:37
SPEAKER_02: Some states send them out very early.
40:39
SPEAKER_02: So the voting period has technically begun.
40:42
SPEAKER_02: But we are at the point where the laws governing the process are now set.
40:47
SPEAKER_02: And we are transitioning into the during process.
40:50
SPEAKER_02: The during,
40:51
SPEAKER_02: of course,
40:51
SPEAKER_02: you know,
40:52
SPEAKER_02: This is your things like,
40:54
SPEAKER_02: you know,
40:54
SPEAKER_02: something goes wrong at the polls, you know, long lines or something like that.
40:57
SPEAKER_02: This year,
40:57
SPEAKER_02: there's,
40:57
SPEAKER_02: you know,
40:58
SPEAKER_02: a lot of questions about,
40:59
SPEAKER_02: you know,
40:59
SPEAKER_02: are there going to be,
41:00
SPEAKER_02: you know,
41:01
SPEAKER_02: the kind of worst case scenario is,
41:02
SPEAKER_02: you know,
41:03
SPEAKER_02: does the administration send some sort of,
41:04
SPEAKER_02: you know,
41:05
SPEAKER_02: federal agents,
41:06
SPEAKER_02: ICE or something to the polls or to the surrounding areas to,
41:10
SPEAKER_02: you know, You know, attempt to press turnout.
41:14
SPEAKER_02: You know,
41:15
SPEAKER_02: that is speculative,
41:16
SPEAKER_02: although I will say that the administration is kind of,
41:18
SPEAKER_02: you know, they're not totally closing the door to it.
41:21
SPEAKER_02: But it's something that is in the air,
41:22
SPEAKER_02: you know,
41:23
SPEAKER_02: a fear among a lot of Democrats and,
41:25
SPEAKER_02: you know, I think like non-white voter communities in particular.
41:29
SPEAKER_02: So that's something that we're going to be watching very closely.
41:31
SPEAKER_02: And then there is the afterward phase.
41:34
SPEAKER_02: And this is something like Challenges to certification, legal challenges to the election.
41:40
SPEAKER_02: I expect that as in 2020, these will fail if they happen.
41:46
SPEAKER_02: But it could be a time of a little bit of white knuckling it,
41:50
SPEAKER_02: a time of a lot of claims of fraud if Republicans lose the election.
41:55
SPEAKER_02: I do think if a race,
41:56
SPEAKER_02: like kind of the nightmare scenario is if the control of the Senate or I suppose
42:01
SPEAKER_02: the House It looks like the Senate is the close one.
42:03
SPEAKER_02: You know, it comes down to one state and it's, you know, maybe a five.
42:07
SPEAKER_02: Alaska.
42:08
SPEAKER_02: Right, exactly.
42:09
SPEAKER_02: If this is Alaska and,
42:10
SPEAKER_02: you know,
42:11
SPEAKER_02: it's decided by 300 votes, that's going to get legally challenged to death.
42:16
SPEAKER_02: And, you know,
42:17
SPEAKER_02: Especially Alaska being a state that is heavily vote by mail,
42:20
SPEAKER_02: takes a long time to report its results.
42:21
SPEAKER_02: That's kind of a situation that could be- And rank choice voting, just to
42:24
SPEAKER_01: add on to it.
42:25
SPEAKER_01: Yes, and rank choice voting.
42:26
SPEAKER_02: That's a situation that could lead to a lot of grievances,
42:29
SPEAKER_02: a lot of potential conspiracy theories about,
42:32
SPEAKER_02: again, quote unquote, rigging the election.
42:33
SPEAKER_02: So that is something we're going to look out for very closely.
42:37
SPEAKER_02: Another kind of like worst case scenario is this idea that-
42:42
SPEAKER_02: The Trump administration could send the FBI or some agents
42:46
SPEAKER_02: to seize ballot boxes two days after the election or something in order basically
42:52
SPEAKER_02: to say, oh, there were questions about fraud.
42:55
SPEAKER_02: We have to seize these and investigate these ballots.
42:58
SPEAKER_02: They, of course,
42:59
SPEAKER_02: conducted a raid in Fulton County,
43:01
SPEAKER_02: Georgia, and seized ballots from the 2020 election earlier this year.
43:05
SPEAKER_02: That was an unprecedented action, but at least those ballots were not live.
43:10
SPEAKER_02: That was from an election that was decided six years ago.
43:14
SPEAKER_02: If troops were to take possession of live ballots in an election that has not
43:18
SPEAKER_02: yet been certified,
43:20
SPEAKER_02: that would raise real questions about whether those ballots could be counted because
43:24
SPEAKER_02: the chain of custody had been broken.
43:26
SPEAKER_02: And so even if a court kind of immediately said the seizure was illegal, give them back.
43:33
SPEAKER_02: I think there would then be a legal fight over those ballots.
43:37
SPEAKER_02: Again, this is something that has been speculated a lot about,
43:40
SPEAKER_02: but there has really not been any concrete indication that it is going to happen.
43:46
SPEAKER_02: Brett's not doing it in 2020, but that doesn't necessarily mean he'll do it in 2026.
43:50
SPEAKER_02: But obviously this is not a concern that we have in a normal election year.
43:54
SPEAKER_02: So those are things that those are kind of some of the main storylines
43:57
SPEAKER_02: that we're watching, things for kind of aware citizens to be aware of.
44:02
SPEAKER_02: That said,
44:03
SPEAKER_02: I really would emphasize that,
44:05
SPEAKER_02: you know,
44:06
SPEAKER_02: There is still a good chance that this election goes smoothly and normally.
44:11
SPEAKER_02: These actions would be very dramatic and illegal.
44:16
SPEAKER_02: And so I don't want to give people the idea that all is lost.
44:20
SPEAKER_02: You should certainly still vote.
44:23
SPEAKER_02: Regardless of which side you are on, your ballot is overwhelmingly likely to be counted.
44:28
SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, but it is definitely an interesting time for election administration.
44:33
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, we at Votebeat will will be covering the heck out of it.
44:38
SPEAKER_01: You noted sort of the after period,
44:41
SPEAKER_01: you know,
44:41
SPEAKER_01: another thing that I think is is lurking is that sort of in the aftermath of
44:45
SPEAKER_01: the 2020 election, it does seem like a number of sort of local election officials.
44:52
SPEAKER_01: Um, who are,
44:53
SPEAKER_01: you know,
44:54
SPEAKER_01: sort of hardcore election denialist types have gotten into positions
44:58
SPEAKER_01: where they can affect certification.
45:00
SPEAKER_01: So we've,
45:00
SPEAKER_01: we've even seen that in some,
45:02
SPEAKER_01: some, you know, in some counties, uh, around the country.
45:06
SPEAKER_01: And so I was wondering if that was something, I think there was an Arizona case.
45:08
SPEAKER_01: Was that the 2024 election?
45:09
SPEAKER_02: Cochise County.
45:10
SPEAKER_02: That was 22.
45:10
SPEAKER_01: Cochise County, very Republican County in, uh,
45:13
SPEAKER_01: in Arizona, um,
45:15
SPEAKER_01: where essentially it wasn't the state courts were finally like,
45:18
SPEAKER_01: you gotta certify guys.
45:19
SPEAKER_01: Um, right.
45:20
SPEAKER_01: And.
45:21
SPEAKER_01: I imagine we could see some more situations like that.
45:25
SPEAKER_02: Yes, I think that is true.
45:27
SPEAKER_02: But like, right,
45:27
SPEAKER_02: as you note,
45:28
SPEAKER_02: courts have essentially unanimously found that certifying
45:33
SPEAKER_02: an election is not optional, right?
45:34
SPEAKER_02: It's not something you have the discretion of doing if you are a county leader or
45:37
SPEAKER_02: a state leader, right?
45:39
SPEAKER_02: It is a formality and you have to do it.
45:43
SPEAKER_02: And so, again,
45:44
SPEAKER_02: I think that's a good example of a system that might get tested
45:47
SPEAKER_02: but would probably hold in the end,
45:49
SPEAKER_02: but we could be in for a bit of a white knuckle ride.
45:54
SPEAKER_01: Well, Nathaniel,
45:56
SPEAKER_01: this has been,
45:57
SPEAKER_01: as always,
45:59
SPEAKER_01: a great run through of all the details of the Missouri situation and also discussion
46:06
SPEAKER_01: of this very important situation regarding mail balloting and
46:11
SPEAKER_01: the Supreme Court's decision.
46:13
SPEAKER_01: Do you want to plug Votebeat for a second?
46:14
SPEAKER_02: I know you've already kind of have, but I always, always happy to plug Votebeat.
46:18
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
46:18
SPEAKER_02: You know, we are,
46:20
SPEAKER_02: as I mentioned,
46:21
SPEAKER_02: we are a newsroom that covers election administration, voting access, democracy.
46:26
SPEAKER_02: We're at votebeat.org.
46:29
SPEAKER_02: I think the single best thing,
46:30
SPEAKER_02: if you are interested in this stuff,
46:31
SPEAKER_02: but I understand that not everybody is going to go to votebeat.org every morning
46:35
SPEAKER_02: to check out our coverage.
46:37
SPEAKER_02: I think what you can do is sign up for our weekly national newsletter.
46:42
SPEAKER_02: Every Saturday morning,
46:43
SPEAKER_02: you'll get a short article on basically what's happening in the world
46:46
SPEAKER_02: of election administration that week.
46:48
SPEAKER_02: It's a really good summary.
46:50
SPEAKER_02: We also have reporters in five different states,
46:52
SPEAKER_02: Arizona, Texas, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.
46:55
SPEAKER_02: If you live in one of those states, we have newsletters for those states as well.
46:59
SPEAKER_02: And yeah, we will be, like I said, we're going to be covering these issues.
47:03
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, if you have a question about those things.
47:09
SPEAKER_02: We are here to make sure that people understand the election process,
47:12
SPEAKER_02: which I think that, again,
47:14
SPEAKER_02: so many people take for granted and have a lot of misunderstandings about and think
47:18
SPEAKER_02: that maybe is more vulnerable than it is.
47:20
SPEAKER_02: But, you know,
47:22
SPEAKER_02: the more that,
47:23
SPEAKER_02: you know,
47:23
SPEAKER_02: as a journalist that I talk to election officials and study elections,
47:28
SPEAKER_02: the better I do feel,
47:29
SPEAKER_02: even though,
47:30
SPEAKER_02: you know,
47:30
SPEAKER_02: obviously there are people who are maybe interested in subverting the results.
47:36
SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, check us out, votebeat.org.
47:39
SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
47:39
SPEAKER_01: Well, again, this is Nathaniel Rakich, the managing editor at Votebeat.
47:43
SPEAKER_01: I'm Geoffrey Skelley, the Chief Elections Analyst here at Decision Desk HQ.
47:47
SPEAKER_01: I want to thank Eric Cunningham and Stephen Stover for their help with this episode.
47:51
SPEAKER_01: And you can check back in with us next week's podcast and going forward.
47:56
SPEAKER_01: We're obviously, you know, November is closing fast.
47:59
SPEAKER_01: We're fewer than 50 days out from the election and there'll be lots to cover.
48:04
SPEAKER_01: I think we're going to try to do some coverage of some of the key Senate races
48:09
SPEAKER_01: in particular, but also plenty of other stuff.
48:13
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for watching or listening.
48:16
SPEAKER_01: And Nathaniel, again, thanks for coming on.
48:19
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.