Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Carol Masser, along with
Speaker 1: Kevin Serilli, of course, are Bloomberg News Washington Chief Washington
Speaker 1: correspondent to Bloomberg Radio and TV host of Bloomberg Sound
Speaker 1: on A nine and nine one in the nation's capital.
Speaker 1: June Rosso legal analyst and host of Bloomberg Law on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. Also with us. We've talked a lot about
Speaker 1: election integrity. It's been called into question throughout the campaign
Speaker 1: and really the voting process as well as the actual
Speaker 1: counting of the votes. Our next guest is well known
Speaker 1: to our Bloomberg audience. He's a member of the National
Speaker 1: Council on Election Integrity. It's a bipartisan group more than
Speaker 1: forty government, political and civic leaders who are devoted to
Speaker 1: defending the legitimacy of our elections. Were, of course talking
Speaker 1: about former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Churdoff, who served under
Speaker 1: President George W. Bush's the co founder and executive chairman
Speaker 1: of the Churdoff Group, and he joins us on the
Speaker 1: phone on this Friday. Michael, nice to have you here
Speaker 1: with Kevin and June and myself. You know, I asked
Speaker 1: us of our last guest um in Georgia, and I
Speaker 1: want to put it to you, what confidence do you
Speaker 1: have in this year's voting process and the counting of
Speaker 1: the votes? Ultimately? You know, I think actually it's been
Speaker 1: an extraordinary display on the part of voters and on
Speaker 1: the part of state and local elected officials of exactly
Speaker 1: how you want to conduct an election in the democratic country.
Speaker 1: We've had unprecedented turn out of a hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: million people. People who were had the opportunity to vote
Speaker 1: by mail did so in great numbers. Others stood online
Speaker 1: for extended courage of time to cast votes in person.
Speaker 1: There was some concern early on about interherence and intimidation
Speaker 1: of voters that did not materialize. By and large, the
Speaker 1: state and local officials have been efficient and careful in
Speaker 1: counting the ballots. Not surprisingly either or sums aways you
Speaker 1: never get to count the same day. But again, there
Speaker 1: hasn't been any indication of any kind of significance forward
Speaker 1: or misbehavior. So that's all good, and I think we
Speaker 1: should take a lot of confidence and the fact that
Speaker 1: our citizens and our state and local officials have done
Speaker 1: exactly what the Constitution wants well. And what's interesting too
Speaker 1: is and I think and as we look at these
Speaker 1: fifty different states and the different you know, processes in
Speaker 1: terms of how they collect the vote, count the vote,
Speaker 1: what's allowed, what's not, you know, do you believe that
Speaker 1: it is necessary that we have some kind of national system, um,
Speaker 1: an easier system, so that whether it's an app or
Speaker 1: so called you know, some other kind of system that
Speaker 1: makes it easier to collect the vote, to count the vote,
Speaker 1: to give access to everybody to vote, you know, in
Speaker 1: the process in an election. Or does that create new
Speaker 1: security concerns? Actually, I want to online voting awards, in
Speaker 1: the view of many people, create security risks that we
Speaker 1: don't have. Map allegations that since widely distributed voting, that
Speaker 1: it would be impossible for somebody to affect the vote
Speaker 1: count itself. I mean, they can have disinformation and lie
Speaker 1: about the vote count, but in churches of actually changing votes,
Speaker 1: you could not do that at scale. If you didn't
Speaker 1: all online, you would candidly be raising a risk which
Speaker 1: I think at this point we probably don't want to do.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this. It's there. Before the election,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of talk about possible hacking by
Speaker 1: foreign nations and which nation was going to try. Have
Speaker 1: you seen any evidence that that happened at all. I've
Speaker 1: not seen any significant evidence of hacking into the voting
Speaker 1: infrastructure itself. And here I want to give credit to
Speaker 1: my old agency, DHS, the cyber Cybersecurity agency there under
Speaker 1: Chris Klebs have been working for months with state and
Speaker 1: local officials to upgrade their secure ay and give them
Speaker 1: the tools they need to protect themselves. Now, we've seen
Speaker 1: disinformation both from overs and domestically, and we've seen some
Speaker 1: hacky or epoch to hacking campaigns, but not to voting
Speaker 1: infrastructure itself. Can I jump in here and thank you
Speaker 1: so much for making the time. Kevin's really here, Chief
Speaker 1: Washington correspondent for Bloomberg Television and from Bloomberg Radio. You know,
Speaker 1: I talked to so many people on both sides of
Speaker 1: the aisle who say, why were we only talking about
Speaker 1: these elections for the past six months to nine months.
Speaker 1: I mean, we should be thinking about election security twenty
Speaker 1: years from now. We should be thinking about the threats
Speaker 1: twenty years from now. How do we get back to
Speaker 1: a country where our election security and I agree. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, Republicans Democrats also noting there was not a
Speaker 1: major rachel and whatnot. But how do we get back
Speaker 1: to a country where we're thinking twenty years down the
Speaker 1: line about the prospect of threat and not twenty minutes
Speaker 1: up the clock. Well, I think this is part of
Speaker 1: what we expect our government to be doing, which it's
Speaker 1: done rather unevenly in the last couple of years, which
Speaker 1: is to be strategic about threats, to recognize that we
Speaker 1: need to anticipate what might be threats in the future.
Speaker 1: And frankly, right now it looks as a disinformation and
Speaker 1: manipulation of the media is a bigger threat than actual
Speaker 1: attacks on infrastructure. So I think we need to have
Speaker 1: a discussion about our general political processes, about the roles
Speaker 1: who responsibility of the media, because that is likely to
Speaker 1: be at least in the medium term where we see
Speaker 1: some of the most disruptive activities. Well, and it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's such a good point. I mean, because it also
Speaker 1: comes down to you know, you look at what they're
Speaker 1: doing in France and what Immanuel Macrons having to do
Speaker 1: with Austria as the result of the horrific terrorists attacks
Speaker 1: over there, and not to go geopolitical for a second.
Speaker 1: They're having to now they're facing the same concerns about
Speaker 1: how terrorists are are are using the First Amendment and
Speaker 1: freedom of speech against the very democracies that that that
Speaker 1: helped create them. So how do we balance that, sir,
Speaker 1: the protection of freedom of speech with the very real
Speaker 1: threat that you just outlined for us about media institutions
Speaker 1: that are getting taken advantage of by hostile foreign actors,
Speaker 1: and I have to be honest, domestic actors as well.
Speaker 1: We've got, of course, domestic extremism, and we've got a
Speaker 1: conspiracy theorists who have been running wild on social media.
Speaker 1: But I have to be honest, the mainstream media has
Speaker 1: also been jilty of being sloppy in vetting things, of
Speaker 1: rushing to put things out in alarming in an alarming voice.
Speaker 1: When it turns out at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: it's really a more nuanced issue. Some of this is
Speaker 1: a matter of professionalism. Some of it is we need
Speaker 1: to take a look at the algorithms the social media
Speaker 1: used in order to get people more as because they
Speaker 1: can be easily manipulated, and we may need to do
Speaker 1: some rethinking about for example, the role of money in politics,
Speaker 1: which has become absolutely overwhelming. And although you know, uh,
Speaker 1: forty years ago the suspreine Chords thought money is speech,
Speaker 1: what it's doing now is drowning up steech and I
Speaker 1: think that requires a serious look at our at artist well,
Speaker 1: who has the political ban I could go so many
Speaker 1: different places here, Michael, who has the political will? I
Speaker 1: agree with you that money has really kind of squeezed
Speaker 1: out the average American and having a voice in the
Speaker 1: political process. How do we change that? Who has the
Speaker 1: political will to be quite honest, to change that? Well?
Speaker 1: I think you know. One of these we've learned in
Speaker 1: this uh last for your election cycle is that the
Speaker 1: center of the country, in terms of the political left
Speaker 1: center and right center, has been more or less quiet,
Speaker 1: and the ladst voice have been at the extremes. This
Speaker 1: may be a bit of a wake up call, uh
Speaker 1: to both parties, as people who are kind of mainstream
Speaker 1: in both parties that they can't be be spectators anymore.
Speaker 1: We're going to have to take seriously the corrected the
Speaker 1: integrity of our institutions as we would take seriously bombs
Speaker 1: and and and physical attacks. So I'm hoping when the
Speaker 1: dust settles here, Um, serious people on both sides of
Speaker 1: the aisle, as is too with a group and I'm
Speaker 1: with so you know what America first, in the sense
Speaker 1: of American interests first, over the parties and interests or
Speaker 1: the parochial interests of some actors. Would there be a
Speaker 1: problem because of the Citizens United case, which sort of
Speaker 1: opened up this whole area, and also during these times
Speaker 1: of such high partisanship, it seems like it might be
Speaker 1: a really an uphill battle to get over that. Well, first,
Speaker 1: I want to say everybody blamed Citizens United, but actually
Speaker 1: the problem goes back about thirty years before that, to
Speaker 1: a case called Buckley v. V. Layout, which upheld restrictions
Speaker 1: on contributions but not on expenditures, the idea being expenditures
Speaker 1: work speech, and what we saw and all citizens did
Speaker 1: was kind of amplify. It was that people were able
Speaker 1: to overwhelm the airwaves and other media and the and
Speaker 1: the the kind of public forum we very carefully targeted
Speaker 1: and crafted messages, and this was made worse by the
Speaker 1: use of new data analytic tools to micro target messages
Speaker 1: in a way that this leads people because you're not
Speaker 1: speaking to everybody, and you have to calibrate your message
Speaker 1: so that everybody hears it, but you can basically spin
Speaker 1: it to a very few people on on one side
Speaker 1: or the other side. So I think, you know, if we,
Speaker 1: if we value our democracy and our freedom, people of
Speaker 1: goodwill are going to have to view the last few
Speaker 1: years as a real wake up call. And I think
Speaker 1: we need to seriously look at not as just say,
Speaker 1: not just social media, but the role of general media,
Speaker 1: the role of money speech, the role of gerrymanderin, because
Speaker 1: these are all aspects of what has begun to take
Speaker 1: away majority ruling democracy and put it in the hands
Speaker 1: of well funded, a small groups. You know, Michael, I
Speaker 1: have to say it was really fascinating this week to
Speaker 1: even watch um mainstream media kind of bail on President
Speaker 1: Trump's press conference because and they would come out and say, well,
Speaker 1: he's telling lies essentially, is what they said. And I
Speaker 1: do wonder that this gets to a bigger issue that
Speaker 1: we've talked about on air about you know, facts, facts
Speaker 1: don't seem to matter, and we know facts on social media,
Speaker 1: they don't necessarily drive the algorithms which drive you know,
Speaker 1: the ad spending and the ad dollars. And I don't
Speaker 1: want to pick on social media, but I do think
Speaker 1: that there's in the media. I think that there has
Speaker 1: been almost a fear with this administration to correct things. Um,
Speaker 1: we certainly haven't felt that way at Bloomberg, but I'm
Speaker 1: just going to say that I think there has been
Speaker 1: a fear, whether to be squeezed out of the press
Speaker 1: room or so on. And I wonder, how do we
Speaker 1: get a world back to a country, back to where
Speaker 1: fact really is important and it matters well. And I
Speaker 1: think that that means all the actors in the information ecosystem,
Speaker 1: you need to first of all consider what are their
Speaker 1: professional obligations. Why are they in the business If it's
Speaker 1: just about making money with ads? Uh, that's pretty sad.
Speaker 1: But I think most journalists and most editors, not everybody,
Speaker 1: do want to do something you think is socially valuable.
Speaker 1: And maybe there's a been reluctance to look at this
Speaker 1: because we get nervous anytime we talked about getting user
Speaker 1: first amendment. But you know what, my my biggest optimistic
Speaker 1: course for optimism is the stakeholders, the customers, the clients,
Speaker 1: the views they're getting. Exercise to bactors we're beginning to
Speaker 1: see now, for example, some platforms who had to take
Speaker 1: down certain kinds of messages because basically they get boycotted
Speaker 1: by the advertisers. And that's again in response to what
Speaker 1: the public wants and how the public reacts. So again
Speaker 1: it's mobilizing all the institutions, not just the government, but
Speaker 1: of civil society to put together a reasonable, balanced consensus
Speaker 1: approach that preserves true freedom of speech but doesn't allow
Speaker 1: manipulation and overwhelming the public form. Michael just got about
Speaker 1: forty seconds. If you could change one things to ensure
Speaker 1: election integrity next time around, just quickly, what would it be.
Speaker 1: It would be to stop candidates from announcing in advance
Speaker 1: that an election is rigged or that it's forging, because
Speaker 1: that undermines our democracy, and we order hold candidates accountable
Speaker 1: for not sending poisonous messages. I'm going to leave it
Speaker 1: on that note. Hey, Michael, thank you so much. I
Speaker 1: can't tell you how much we all appreciate your time
Speaker 1: on this Friday. Michael Churdoff he is co founder, executive
Speaker 1: chairman of the Churdoff Group, member of the National Council
Speaker 1: on Election Integrity. It's a bipartisan Group, former Homeland Security Secretary,
Speaker 1: of course, who served under President George D. George W.
Speaker 1: Bush