WEBVTT - Election Meltdown in the Iowa Caucuses 0:00:00.680 --> 0:00:05.000 This is Bloomberg Law with June Grasso from Bloomberg Radio. 0:00:05.280 --> 0:00:09.400 The confusion and chaos surrounding the Iowa caucuses reveals the 0:00:09.480 --> 0:00:12.719 distrust many voters have in the fairness and accuracy of 0:00:12.760 --> 0:00:17.560 American elections. Assurances from Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price 0:00:17.880 --> 0:00:21.600 that the data was always secure did not quiet renewed 0:00:21.680 --> 0:00:25.759 concerns about that state's first in the Nation caucus. I 0:00:25.840 --> 0:00:29.840 have caucused for twenty years, and I know how important 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:34.839 it is for to our party, to our states, and 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:38.000 to everyone from our neighbors to new voters to be 0:00:38.080 --> 0:00:40.880 able to come together all across the state. We want 0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:44.400 Iowans to be confident in the results and in the process, 0:00:45.200 --> 0:00:46.879 and we are going to take the time that we 0:00:46.960 --> 0:00:49.960 need to make sure that we do just that. Joining 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:52.720 me as election law expert, Richard Hassan a professor at 0:00:52.760 --> 0:00:56.880 u C Irvine Law School. His new book is Election Meltdown, 0:00:57.200 --> 0:01:01.120 Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy. You 0:01:01.240 --> 0:01:05.280 discuss four factors that are increasing mistrust in our elections. 0:01:05.640 --> 0:01:09.680 The escalation of voter suppression, in competence in the administration 0:01:09.720 --> 0:01:14.120 of elections, foreign and domestic dirty tricks, and inflammatory rhetoric. 0:01:14.600 --> 0:01:17.040 If you had to list the most important of these, 0:01:17.200 --> 0:01:19.360 which would it be, Well, I don't know that I 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:21.680 can name one, because a lot of these things work together. 0:01:22.080 --> 0:01:25.480 So the biggest concern about voter suppression, I think, is 0:01:25.520 --> 0:01:28.839 not how many people are not being able to vote, 0:01:29.000 --> 0:01:32.119 but what it does to people's confidence in the process. 0:01:32.480 --> 0:01:34.760 So take voter ID laws for example. We know that, 0:01:34.840 --> 0:01:37.040 in part thanks to countermeasures, they don't seem to have 0:01:37.080 --> 0:01:39.400 a big effect on turnout. There are other laws that 0:01:39.440 --> 0:01:41.520 are more suppressive that you have an effect on turnout, 0:01:41.600 --> 0:01:45.040 but claims of voter fraud there are used to justify 0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:48.520 laws like voter ID laws convinced Republicans that voter fraud 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:51.360 is a major problem, and the laws that are passed 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:54.360 in response to the claims of voter fraud convinced Democrats 0:01:54.360 --> 0:01:56.280 and voter suppression is a major problem. And so we 0:01:56.320 --> 0:01:59.520 have a double whammy where both sides believe that people 0:01:59.560 --> 0:02:02.600 are cheating in the elections, and it feeds into a 0:02:02.640 --> 0:02:06.520 general mistrust of the process. You mentioned that Phish feed 0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:10.240 Kobak is arguably the most important voting rights trial so 0:02:10.320 --> 0:02:13.280 far in the twenty one century. Tell us why, and 0:02:13.320 --> 0:02:15.799 this is a good example of a counter example to 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:17.880 voter I D laws where we're not sure that they 0:02:17.919 --> 0:02:20.720 have a big effect. Kansas had passed a law that 0:02:20.800 --> 0:02:22.919 required if you wanted to register to vote, not each 0:02:22.960 --> 0:02:24.640 time you go vote, but if you want to register 0:02:24.639 --> 0:02:27.119 and be eligible to vote, you had to produce documentary 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:29.480 proof of citizenship. So show me your paper's law, come 0:02:29.520 --> 0:02:32.600 up with your birth certificate or your naturalization certificate if 0:02:32.600 --> 0:02:34.240 you want to be able to register to vote. And 0:02:34.280 --> 0:02:37.679 we know that before a federal district court imposed a 0:02:37.760 --> 0:02:42.000 pluminary junction against this requirement, about thirty thousand people had 0:02:42.000 --> 0:02:45.160 their voter registrations suspended. They were not able to register, 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:46.919 and they would not have been able to vote had 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:49.200 the court not acted. So that's a pretty significant effect 0:02:49.919 --> 0:02:52.519 at issue in Fish versus Kobec. It was a complicated 0:02:52.680 --> 0:02:54.799 legal case, but an issue when it went to trial 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:58.639 was the question whether non citizen voting, which is illegal, 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:01.760 was a major problem because the state of Kansas, if 0:03:01.800 --> 0:03:05.120 it wanted to impose this additional requirement in some tension 0:03:05.120 --> 0:03:06.960 with federal law, which says, you know, all you have 0:03:07.000 --> 0:03:08.800 to do is basically put your name on a postcard 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:10.640 and do a few other things and you can register 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:13.360 to vote. The question was is there a substantial problem? 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:16.520 And here was the chance for Chris Kobach, former Secretary 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:20.840 of State of Kansas, who decided he would actually litigate 0:03:20.880 --> 0:03:22.519 the case as one of the lawyers in the case. 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:25.400 Very unusual. It was his burden to show that nonsense 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:28.000 and voting was a serious problem, and he called the 0:03:28.160 --> 0:03:30.360 small amount of non citizen voting he could point to 0:03:30.480 --> 0:03:33.079 on a TRUO cases the tip of the iceberg. And 0:03:33.200 --> 0:03:36.240 I named Chapter one of Election Meltdown the icicle because 0:03:36.440 --> 0:03:39.520 Judge Julie Robinson, the chief judge of this Kansas Federal 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:42.040 District Court, said it was not an iceberg. It was 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:45.040 merely an icicle made up mostly of administrative error. And 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:47.360 lots of times when you probe beneath the surface, what 0:03:47.440 --> 0:03:51.080 you find is that claims of malfeasance actually turned out 0:03:51.080 --> 0:03:53.200 to be incompetence. That we see this across the board, 0:03:53.240 --> 0:03:56.880 Democrats Republicans, but it's often turned around and made into 0:03:56.880 --> 0:03:59.760 a claim of someone trying to cheat because we're so 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:02.360 polarized that people don't believe those things. And so Fish 0:04:02.440 --> 0:04:04.920 versus Cobach was so important because here was the chance 0:04:04.960 --> 0:04:07.400 in a federal court with the rules of evidence, make 0:04:07.480 --> 0:04:11.080 your case, and the judge found abysmally Coback failed to 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:13.480 make his case so bad that he was actually sanctioned 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:17.320 twice in that case. At one point he was required 0:04:17.360 --> 0:04:22.080 to get a continuing legal education course in trial fundamentals 0:04:22.279 --> 0:04:26.159 in order to satisfy the court's contempt finding. Despite all 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:29.359 the evidence to the contrary, why do we still see 0:04:29.440 --> 0:04:34.320 people arguing the need for strict voter id laws. So 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:37.680 I think the answer is a political answer. The Republican 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:43.039 Party in and started to see that the number of 0:04:43.680 --> 0:04:47.200 voters of color, younger voters, voters who make up kind 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:50.240 of the Democratic Party coalition, they're all voting for Democrats, 0:04:50.279 --> 0:04:53.640 and the Republican Party was increasingly becoming a white rural party. 0:04:53.880 --> 0:04:56.279 And so there were two approaches that the Republican Party had. 0:04:56.560 --> 0:04:58.719 One was to try to expand the appeal of the 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:01.520 Republican Party. This was George W. Bush's approach. This is 0:05:01.520 --> 0:05:03.920 what the so called autopsy that the Republican Party did 0:05:03.960 --> 0:05:08.120 after the elections suggested. The other is shrink the electorate, 0:05:08.200 --> 0:05:10.000 make it harder for people to register and vote. And 0:05:10.000 --> 0:05:12.760 so it's no coincidence that in those places where these 0:05:12.760 --> 0:05:15.360 strict voter ide laws are passed, and these other strict 0:05:15.440 --> 0:05:19.640 voting laws are passed, they're almost exclusively in Republican dominated 0:05:19.800 --> 0:05:23.039 legislatures creating these rules. Not every Republican legislature is doing this, 0:05:23.120 --> 0:05:25.520 and there have been a lot of states with Republican 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:29.360 election ministrariores and legislatures that have improved things. Ohio, for example, 0:05:29.520 --> 0:05:33.440 moved to online voter registration. Right, look at Florida where, 0:05:33.640 --> 0:05:36.200 thanks to an amendment getting around the legislature, they're now 0:05:36.480 --> 0:05:39.680 re enfranchising felons, although this litigation about that. But in 0:05:39.720 --> 0:05:42.400 those places where they're passed, they seem to be aimed 0:05:42.440 --> 0:05:45.120 at trying to make it harder for people who are 0:05:45.160 --> 0:05:47.400 likely to vote for Democrats to register and vote. They 0:05:47.440 --> 0:05:49.160 don't always have that effect, but that seems to be 0:05:49.200 --> 0:05:51.520 their intent. So let's turn to the Supreme Court for 0:05:51.520 --> 0:05:56.000 a moment. How has the Roberts Court responded to voting 0:05:56.080 --> 0:05:59.960 rights cases in general? Yeah, so the Supreme Court decided 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:03.919 the case out of Ohio. This was in the Hoosted 0:06:03.960 --> 0:06:08.680 case where the Court allowed Ohio to remove voters from 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:11.000 the voter registration roles if they hadn't voted in two 0:06:11.160 --> 0:06:14.880 consecutive national elections and hadn't responded to an attempt to 0:06:14.920 --> 0:06:17.440 contact them. It was a very technical case. It was 0:06:17.480 --> 0:06:21.040 about the National Voter Registration Act, which is laws called 0:06:21.040 --> 0:06:23.800 the votor voter law that requires states to offer certain 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:26.880 opportunities to register and certain rules about pershing. But you know, 0:06:26.960 --> 0:06:30.880 generally speaking of the Court has been not very receptive 0:06:30.920 --> 0:06:33.479 to voting rights claims against laws that make it harder 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:35.480 to register vote. We can go back to two thousand eight, 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:38.799 the Crawford versus Marion County case, where the Supreme Court 0:06:39.200 --> 0:06:44.080 upheld indiana strict voter ide law. The court allowed Texas 0:06:44.160 --> 0:06:45.840 voter ide law to go into fact. I mean, there 0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:48.440 are all kinds of cases that have come up on 0:06:48.440 --> 0:06:50.960 an emergency basis. The Supreme Court, I would say, the 0:06:51.000 --> 0:06:53.800 Court has more conservatives than liberals. The conservves tend to 0:06:53.839 --> 0:06:56.560 believe these measures are necessary in order to prevent the 0:06:56.600 --> 0:06:59.720 possibility of fraud or to promote voter confidence, and so 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:01.880 I don't expect going forward we're going to see the 0:07:01.920 --> 0:07:04.919 Supreme Court playing much of a backstop role except for 0:07:05.000 --> 0:07:08.679 laws that might be really egregiously affecting the right to vote. 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:13.120 The Supreme Court put an end to preclearance in and 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:19.280 Shelby County, the holder how much has that affected voting rights? Well, so, 0:07:19.760 --> 0:07:22.280 one of the things that this law did was it said, 0:07:22.400 --> 0:07:24.280 if you were a jurisdiction with the history of racial 0:07:24.320 --> 0:07:27.040 discrimination voting, and you wanted to do something as simple 0:07:27.120 --> 0:07:29.680 as move a polling place across the street, or go 0:07:29.760 --> 0:07:32.760 from nine polling places to eight polling places jurisdiction, you 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:34.640 had to go to the federal government and you had 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:37.320 to prove to the federal government, either to a three 0:07:37.400 --> 0:07:39.320 judge court or to the Department of Justice, that the 0:07:39.400 --> 0:07:41.720 change would not make protected and already voters works off. 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:46.080 And so we know that since Shelby County, there have 0:07:46.160 --> 0:07:48.280 been lots of voting changes that have been put in 0:07:48.320 --> 0:07:51.720 place in these jurisdictions that used to be covered under 0:07:51.760 --> 0:07:53.480 this part of the Voting Rights Act, and some of 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:55.960 them have been the subject of lawsuits under other provisions 0:07:55.960 --> 0:07:58.320 of the Voting Rights Act or other kinds of lawsuits 0:07:58.560 --> 0:08:01.720 claiming that these laws are discriminate. Tory with the old 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:06.080 Section five preclarance rules, it was the burden on the 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:09.080 states that were under this these rules to show that 0:08:09.200 --> 0:08:11.960 things would not get worse. Now the burden is on 0:08:12.000 --> 0:08:14.240 the plaintiff to show that things are much worse in 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:16.040 order to get a law blocked, and so it's a 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:19.000 lot harder. And so I would say what we've seen 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:22.120 is that plaintiffs have had mixed success in trying to 0:08:22.160 --> 0:08:24.760 stop rules that otherwise likely would have been stopped by 0:08:24.880 --> 0:08:29.880 the preclarance rules. When you talk about election administrator incompetence, 0:08:30.600 --> 0:08:35.040 Florida comes to mind the twenty eighteen elections. Everyone was saying, 0:08:35.320 --> 0:08:39.560 why is this happening again in this same county. Our 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:43.199 local officials not doing what they should be doing to 0:08:43.240 --> 0:08:47.720 make sure that people are adept at their jobs. So 0:08:47.760 --> 0:08:49.960 I think that, you know, the first thing to recognize 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:52.360 is that we don't conduct a single election for president 0:08:52.679 --> 0:08:55.360 or single election for Congress. We have something like nine 0:08:55.400 --> 0:09:00.240 thousand election jurisdictions, each run by local county or sub 0:09:00.240 --> 0:09:03.559 county election administrators, most of a pretty good job with 0:09:03.600 --> 0:09:06.000 what they have to work with with tight budgets. There's 0:09:06.000 --> 0:09:09.320 a great push towards professionalism, but there are these weak links, 0:09:09.640 --> 0:09:12.800 you know. We saw it in Iowa in the way 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:15.319 the Democratic Party was trying to run its caucus. We 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:19.280 saw it in in Florida with Broward County, where they 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:22.280 missed a recount deadline in a very close U. S. 0:09:22.280 --> 0:09:25.840 Senate race by two minutes because the employees did not 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:29.199 know how to properly upload their results to a state website. 0:09:29.720 --> 0:09:32.080 We can look across the country, UH, and this is 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:36.280 a bipartisan problem. Democratic and Republican election ministrators. These pockets 0:09:36.280 --> 0:09:38.960 have incompetence. We tend to focus more on the big 0:09:38.960 --> 0:09:41.360 cities which are controlled by Democrats because that's where there 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:44.800 are many more votes. And then that's where you start 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:47.440 seeing claims that no, it's not a competence as actually 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:50.079 attempt to try to cheat in the elections. So there's 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:52.880 a lot of that loose rhetoric in your book. This 0:09:52.960 --> 0:09:56.120 was a very scary thing to read. There's good reason 0:09:56.160 --> 0:09:59.280 to believe that Russians have the hacking ability to bring 0:09:59.320 --> 0:10:02.320 down the elector go grid on election day in a 0:10:02.360 --> 0:10:06.880 swing state democratic city like Milwaukee or Detroit. Is there 0:10:06.920 --> 0:10:10.720 any reason to think they won't do that. It seems 0:10:10.760 --> 0:10:15.480 like it's the next step after the election interference. So 0:10:15.600 --> 0:10:18.200 this would be I think an act of war, UH 0:10:18.320 --> 0:10:21.320 to interfere with an election in such a serious way. 0:10:21.400 --> 0:10:24.800 And we know that in the president Obama actually picked 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:26.360 up the Red phone. I don't know there actually was 0:10:26.400 --> 0:10:27.920 a red phone, but picked up the red phone to 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:31.359 Moscow and said cut it out with some of the interference. 0:10:31.520 --> 0:10:33.360 And at that point we only knew a little bit 0:10:33.400 --> 0:10:36.800 of what the Russians were doing. Unfortunately, now we have 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:41.640 a president who not only has not aggressively taken steps 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:45.520 to prevent foreign interference, he's now invited foreign interference from 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:49.560 at least three countries, Russia, Ukraine, and China. And so 0:10:49.880 --> 0:10:52.960 it's very concerning. There's one point in the book where 0:10:52.960 --> 0:10:55.800 I refer to a New York Times report where McK mulvaney, 0:10:55.880 --> 0:10:59.640 the acting chief of staff for President Trump, is talking 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:02.280 to Kristen Nielsen, who was then the Department of Homeland 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:05.439 Security secretary, and basically says, don't talk to Trump about 0:11:05.440 --> 0:11:07.920 election security. Keep it below his level, with the idea 0:11:07.920 --> 0:11:09.640 that you know, this is something we need to work 0:11:09.640 --> 0:11:11.560 on as a country, but keep it from the president. 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:13.520 And that's just a very bad position to be in. 0:11:13.800 --> 0:11:16.559 But it would be an egregious violation of our sovereignty 0:11:16.600 --> 0:11:18.760 if someone tried to mess with our elections this way, 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:22.040 and it's the kind of potential meltdown scenario that I 0:11:22.080 --> 0:11:23.920 worry about that we don't have a lot of control 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:25.800 over all. Right, there's things we can do to make 0:11:25.840 --> 0:11:27.920 sure electionment is trying to do a better job. We 0:11:27.960 --> 0:11:30.160 can do a better job educating the media, for example, 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:33.240 about not calling races early while ballots are still being counted. 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:36.560 But it's really up to cybersecurity experts in government and 0:11:36.600 --> 0:11:39.040 in the private sector to make sure that our electrical 0:11:39.080 --> 0:11:44.800 grid is properly maintained. How many states have paper ballot 0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:49.680 requirements because it seems like every time something happens more 0:11:49.720 --> 0:11:52.000 and more the answer is, well, you need a paper 0:11:52.000 --> 0:11:54.320 ballot as well. So this is kind of a moving 0:11:54.360 --> 0:11:57.080 target because given that we have this decentralization of our 0:11:57.120 --> 0:12:01.320 election system, states and localities are have in different machinery 0:12:01.400 --> 0:12:04.280 and changing things. I think the good news is that 0:12:04.360 --> 0:12:07.520 these totally paperless ballots are on their way out. These 0:12:07.559 --> 0:12:10.280 are what referred to as d r E machines. These 0:12:10.320 --> 0:12:11.959 are the ones that were electronic only and if you 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:14.000 did a recount, it just meant you push the same 0:12:14.000 --> 0:12:17.040 button again. The new controversy is over the newest kind 0:12:17.080 --> 0:12:18.920 of voting machines, which we'll be hearing a lot more 0:12:18.920 --> 0:12:21.960 about these are ballot marking devices or b m d s. 0:12:22.120 --> 0:12:24.400 So you walk up, there's a touchscreen, you mark all 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:27.679 your choices, and then a ballot gets printed with your 0:12:27.760 --> 0:12:30.960 choices on it. Now here's where there's some controversy along 0:12:31.000 --> 0:12:33.439 with the names. So say you know you vote in 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:36.280 Grasso for president. Along with the names, it's going to 0:12:36.360 --> 0:12:40.600 have a barcode. And when the ballot counting devices count 0:12:40.600 --> 0:12:43.080 the ballots, they're not going to be looking for, like 0:12:43.120 --> 0:12:46.240 optically scan the name of the candidate. There instead going 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:48.439 to count the barcode. And of course if you look 0:12:48.440 --> 0:12:50.280 at the barcode, it's not human readable. You can't look 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:51.720 at that and say is that a vote for tunors 0:12:51.720 --> 0:12:53.920 that vote for someone else. And so one of the 0:12:54.000 --> 0:12:56.560 questions is when you have a recount, are you going 0:12:56.600 --> 0:12:59.000 to count the barcode or you're gonna count the name 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:02.520 that's printed on the paper. And Georgia, for example, looks 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:05.160 like they're moving towards counting the barcode, and the barcode 0:13:05.160 --> 0:13:07.679 controls and then how do we trust that the results 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:11.000 are actually accurate. It's paper, but it's not something that 0:13:11.000 --> 0:13:12.719 a human being can look at and say, yes, that's 0:13:12.720 --> 0:13:15.000 a vote for this candidate or another. While we're here, 0:13:15.080 --> 0:13:18.439 let's talk about the Iowa caucuses and what happened there. 0:13:19.000 --> 0:13:24.160 The Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolfe said that 0:13:24.480 --> 0:13:28.160 the Department Cyber Division had offered to test the APP 0:13:28.440 --> 0:13:32.440 and the Iowan said no thanks. Well, let's be clear, 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:36.559 it wasn't the Iowans in terms of the Iowa election officials, 0:13:36.600 --> 0:13:39.120 it was the Democratic Party. So we've got this really 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:42.840 weird system where with these caucuses, these are privately run 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:45.200 by the political parties, they're not run by the government. 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:48.800 And I think it's terrible that the io Democratic Party 0:13:48.840 --> 0:13:51.960 turned down the ability to test the apps. I think 0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:55.320 it's terrible too when once every four years the eyes 0:13:55.360 --> 0:13:57.560 of the world on you to not have done more 0:13:57.960 --> 0:14:01.040 sufficient testing to make sure that the system could accurately work. 0:14:01.080 --> 0:14:03.200 And of course they were doing us at the same 0:14:03.240 --> 0:14:06.000 time that they changed the rules for how they were 0:14:06.000 --> 0:14:08.640 going to aggregate votes and decide, you know, who had 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:10.680 the right threshold, and how they were going to report 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:13.439 the winners and the losers, and so it was a 0:14:13.480 --> 0:14:16.840 big mess. Um, we need to have better election security, 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:19.240 but we also probably need to take away from the 0:14:19.240 --> 0:14:21.800 political party's the ability to run these very important elections, 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:23.600 and they should be in the hands of government officials. 0:14:24.040 --> 0:14:27.960 Nevada is reportedly planning to use this same app. When 0:14:28.040 --> 0:14:31.880 phones can be hacked so easily, why use a phone app. 0:14:32.120 --> 0:14:34.160 So let's be clear, the app is not being used 0:14:34.160 --> 0:14:37.000 to cast votes. It's being used to report to tallies 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:40.280 at caucus sites, and there is a piece of paper 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:42.920 that will be a backup, and you know, we can 0:14:43.000 --> 0:14:44.760 check and make sure. And this is one of the 0:14:44.760 --> 0:14:48.760 reasons I think that the Iowa Democrats didn't immediately announce 0:14:48.920 --> 0:14:50.840 the results because they don't want to be in a 0:14:50.880 --> 0:14:53.840 situation where they've relied on this app where there are problems. 0:14:54.040 --> 0:14:55.880 They get a vote total, they announced the winner and 0:14:55.920 --> 0:14:57.080 a loser, and then they have to go back a 0:14:57.080 --> 0:14:58.920 few weeks later and say, oops, you know that was 0:14:58.960 --> 0:15:01.400 the wrong total. Better to be taking more time and 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:03.760 getting it right. And so I think getting it right 0:15:03.800 --> 0:15:06.600 would include doing some kind of check to make sure 0:15:06.640 --> 0:15:09.160 that the numbers that were recorded in the app match 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:11.720 the numbers that are physically there. That that could be 0:15:11.800 --> 0:15:15.080 talking over the phone or sending a texted picture of 0:15:15.120 --> 0:15:16.880 the vote totals. I mean, there are different ways to 0:15:16.920 --> 0:15:19.160 try to do this. But ideally we shouldn't be doing 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:22.280 this at all. We should have hand marked paper ballots 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:25.600 that are counted in a way that's uniform across the jurisdiction. 0:15:26.240 --> 0:15:30.520 So politicians are latching onto this problem in Iowa and 0:15:30.640 --> 0:15:34.360 saying that Iowa shouldn't keep its status as the first 0:15:34.600 --> 0:15:38.320 in the country to select a presidential nominee. Do they 0:15:38.320 --> 0:15:40.520 have a good point? Well, I've been against the caucuses 0:15:40.600 --> 0:15:42.720 for other reasons for a long time, but this is 0:15:42.760 --> 0:15:44.800 I think the nail and the coffin. I think caucuses 0:15:44.840 --> 0:15:48.040 are exclusionary. I was a state that you know, there's 0:15:48.040 --> 0:15:51.480 a question about its diversity in terms of representing the 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:54.080 Democratic Party. There are all kinds of issues about Iowa, 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:56.000 but I think at the very top of the list 0:15:56.120 --> 0:15:58.680 is we should not have this political party being the 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:02.360 one running this. Instead, it should be run like a 0:16:02.400 --> 0:16:05.680 regular primary, as we do in most other states. Thanks 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:08.560 for being on Bloomberg Law. Rick Fath, Professor Rick Hassen 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:10.240 of the U C. Irvine Law School