The Long Game

Kim Wyman is the Secretary of State in Washington state, which is one of five states that conducts its elections entirely by mail and has been doing so since 2011. I talked with Wyman about two main things: the robust controls that they have in Washington for verifying that ballots are legitimate and not fraudulent, and what she says about concerns that millions of ballots go missing every election. A bit of a spoiler on that latter point: Wyman said most ballots that are called "missing" are not actually missing, but rather simply ballots that are mailed out and then not voted by the person who received it. But we also get into why some people get ballots for dead relatives, or from people who moved away, and what safeguards are in place to prevent those from being voted anyway. Just as every other Republican expert on voting has said, Wyman agreed that President Trump's claims of a rigged election are preposterous. One note of correction. I mention at one point that Michael Adams, who was on this podcast in late August, has been an adviser to Vice President Mike Pence. Since we taped this, Adams, who is currently the Secretary of State in Kentucky, emailed me to say that he is not currently advising Pence. I have tried to get an answer from Adams on when that relationship ended, since public records from the Federal Election Commission show he was paid as recently as late June, but I have not received an answer on that. Outro song: "Gimme Some Truth" by John Lennon Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelonggame. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"I've been looking at polling places for 38 years as part of my duties and passion for [the] Republican party doing well in elections. We've been looking for fraud and I know what evidence is available, and there's not anything like enough evidence to make the bold assertion that our elections are rigged and fraudulent. And it is a perilous thing for a president of the United States to be saying that," Ben Ginsberg says. Ginsberg oversaw George W. Bush's recount effort in the 2000 presidential election , and he advised 4 of the last 6 presidential nominees on election law, including Trump. He was THE go to guy when it came to Republicans in Election Law for the last 20 years or more. Ginsberg retired from law practice earlier on August 31, and a week later the historically tight-lipped legal eagle began to speak out in warning the country about the almost daily disinformation about voting coming from President Trump. He published an op-ed in The Washington Post on September 8, and another just this week. He has appeared on numerous TV news shows. His main message is two-fold. One, election fraud is rare and there is no proof of anything close to what Trump constantly claims is reality. And second, the president's words are dangerous and harmful to the country. We talk here about Trump's recent rhetoric about poll watchers, and about the notion that a handful of isolated incidents mentioned recently by the president are evidence of a rigged election. Here's what he said about the examples Trump is harping on: "There are 10,500 jurisdictions in the country who have some responsibility over the casting and counting of ballots. That's the way our system is. But with that many moving parts, there will be an uneven quality of people and procedures in each of those jurisdictions and mistakes will happen. Mistakes happen every cycle, they should be rooted out, they should be corrected, but that should not be confused with widespread fraud that yields inaccurate elections … I'm afraid that people who say it's the tip of the iceberg, in fact, are looking at ice cubes that got dropped in the water and melt on contact," he said. "And they're confusing the tip of the iceberg for a melting ice cube." Outro music: "Pancho and Lefty" by Townes Van Zandt Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelonggame. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Judy Wu Dominick comes to the issue of race from a decidedly Christian perspective. As she explains in the first portion of our conversation, she came to this work of writing about race and faith and justice essentially as a second career. She studied medicine and worked in that field for many years. Her work is something she has built over time and it's highly sophisticated and full of wisdom. I first became aware of her writing in 2017 when she wrote a piece in Christianity Today on importance of pursuing nuance, and how Christians in particular have an imperative to do so. But I think the most powerful part of this conversation is when Judy talks about the way that those of us who have material wealthy are often spiritually poor if we are not in relationship with those who are in material poverty. Her story of her own efforts to live out her faith in this respect is, to me, incredibly moving. Here 2017 piece on nuance is here. The full link is here: https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2017/october-web-only/christian-mandate-nuance-subvert-tribalism.html Her recent piece, "Making Just Disciples in an Unjust World" is here. The full link is here: https://lifereconsidered.com/2020/08/23/becoming-just-disciples-in-an-unjust-world/ Her piece, "Why the Affluent Need the Poor" is here. The full link is here: https://lifereconsidered.com/2015/12/01/why-the-affluent-need-the-poor/ Outro music: "Shot in the Arm" by Wilco Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelonggame. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Eddie Glaude is the chair of Princeton University's African American Studies program and is a regular fixture on the set of "Morning Joe." Eddie has written several books over the years, such as "Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul," and "In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America." Eddie's latest book is "Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and its Urgent Lessons for Our Own." Glaude wrote this book before George Floyd was killed on Memorial Day this year. But the book — a passionate, grief-stricken account of a Black historian's attempt to make sense of our times and to find a way forward — could not be more timely. "Part of the reason why I wrote the book is that I was grappling with my own despair and disillusionment" after the election of Donald Trump, said Glaude. "How I came out of the other side of that despair was a kind of insistence on bearing witness, on telling the truth about who we are, laying bare the consequences of our monstrous actions over time and over our history." To begin again, he writes, is to "reexamine the fundamental values and commitments that shape our self-understanding, and ... look back to those beginnings not to reaffirm our greatness or to double down on myths that secure our innocence, but to see where we went wrong and how we might imagine or recreate ourselves in light of who we initially set out to be." "Baldwin called the nation, in his after times, to confront the lie of its own self-understanding and to get about the work of building a country truly based on democratic principles," Glaude writes. You might not agree with everything Eddie says, but I think if you read this book, it's almost impossible not to be enriched and challenged in a very productive way. Outro music: "Bloody Waters" from the Black Panther Soundtrack Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelonggame. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Stacey Abrams is president of Fair Fight Action and was House Minority Leader in the Georgia legislature from 2011 to 2017. In 2018, she ran for governor of Georgia, losing a closely contested race to Republican Brian Kemp and alleging afterward that Kemp, who oversaw the election from his post as Georgia's top elections official, had suppressed the vote to win. Abrams has worked on voting rights issues for many years now, and was considered as a potential running mate by Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. "All In: The Fight for Democracy" is a documentary about the history of voting in America and about Abrams 2018 candidacy for governor. The film was co-produced and co-directed by Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortes. Cortes comes from the world of music and film production, and Garbus has directed such well-known films as Ghosts of Abu Ghraib; Bobby Fischer Against the World; What Happened, Miss Simone?; and recently she made her debut in directing a feature film, with Lost Girls. The movie premieres in select theaters on September 9, and will stream on Amazon Prime starting September 18. You can watch this conversation by clicking here. Outro music: "Do I Move You" by Nina Simone Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelonggame. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Michael Steele is the former lieutenant governor of Maryland who went on to become chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2009 to 2011. He's a regular mainstay on MSNBC these days, and is a possible candidate for governor in the future in Maryland. I met Mike in 2006 when I covered the Maryland legislature, and we've stayed in touch since. We were ostensibly going to talk about the Republican convention, but we ended up spending most of our time talking about Joe Biden's response to President Trump's attacks on him, and to the protests and unrest in Kenosha Wisconsin in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Our conversation took place on Thursday, and shortly after we finished speaking, Biden put out a lengthy statement responding to attacks on him by Vice President Pence during a speech on Wednesday night. Pence and Trump and the Republicans are using support of Democrats for racial justice to accuse them of condoning violence. And even though Biden has condemned violence repeatedly and did so again Thursday, there has been a hesitation among Democrats in general to call out violence. "Democratic leaders, from the nearly invisible mayor of Kenosha up to those on the presidential ticket, are reluctant to tarnish a just cause, amplify Republican attacks, or draw the wrath of their own progressive base," George Packer wrote in a piece for the Atlantic titled, "This is how Biden loses." Packer said that Biden needs to go to Wisconsin in person and meet with the Blake family. "On the burned-out streets, without a script, from the heart, Biden should speak to the city and the country. He should speak for justice and for safety, for reform and against riots, for the crying need to bring the country together. If he says these things half as well as Julia Jackson did, we might not have to live with four more years of Trump," Packer wrote, referring to the eloquent please for justice and peace from Blake's mother. Outro music: "Company in My Back" by Wilco Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelonggame. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, said that in his state mail-in ballots will be among the first ballots counted on the night of the election. This is because Ohio law allows election clerks to process mail-in ballots as they arrive in the weeks and days before the election, so they're ready to be counted and tabulated the moment polls close. "We can start processing those right away, meaning cut the envelope, open, verify the information on it, put it through the scanner, but not hit tabulate. That can't happen until 7:30 on election night," LaRose said. But LaRose noted that other Rust Belt swing states don't have laws on the books that allow mail-in ballots to be processed in advance. "Now our friends up the road in Michigan, they can't start processing ballots until Election Day," he said. It's not just Michigan, however. Wisconsin and Pennsylvania also can't process the ballots in advance, meaning a delay in results is all but certain in these crucial battleground states. Although he decisively lost the popular vote in 2016, President Trump's narrow victories in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were enough for him to win in the Electoral College. In Michigan, for example, Trump won by roughly 10,000 votes, or about 0.2 percent of all votes cast. "If you think about a big county like Wayne County – where Detroit is – I mean, they're going to have pallets and pallets of ballots waiting to get processed, that they really can't touch until election day. And that's unfortunate," LaRose said. He added that it "could be days" before all mail ballots are counted. Election experts have warned for months of a nightmare scenario where — because of these restrictive mail ballot rules in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — Trump may have a lead in votes on Election Night if most Republican voters cast ballots in person while most Democratic voters cast ballots by mail. If that happens — and polling suggests it might — Trump could claim victory before mail ballots have been fully counted, and then accuse elections officials of stealing the election if mail ballots give Biden a lead. Trump has already claimed over and over this year, without evidence, that there will be cheating and fraud in the election, especially through mail-in voting. In response, some Democrats have also insinuated that the election results may not be trustworthy: During her speech to the Democratic National Convention last week, Hillary Clinton warned that Trump may try to "sneak or steal his way" to reelection. But even if neither candidate claims victory on the night of the election, a lengthy delay in reporting results could lead to all sorts of unforeseen problems in a country already on edge. Right- and left-wing activists have been battling in some cities for months amid high unemployment and a coronavirus outbreak that's left some 180,000 Americans dead so far. The irony is that while LaRose, a Republican, criticized the system in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the legislatures in all three states are totally controlled by his party. Republicans control the House and Senate in each of those states, as they do in Ohio as well. And the Secretaries of State in Michigan and Pennsylvania — both Democrats — are both trying to get their respective legislatures to give their clerks the ability to process ballots before Election Day, to avoid or at least minimize delays in reporting the full vote total. So far, the Republican... Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelonggame. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Michael G. Adams is Kentucky's Secretary of State, the top elections official in that state. He is a Harvard Law graduate who was a senior lawyer at the Justice Department in the George W. Bush administration. He built a private practice over the last 15 years advising major Republican clients on how to navigate the thicket of election laws, and working to help Republicans win elections across the country. He was hired by the Republican Governor's Association in 2007 as their general counsel, and over the next decade advised "candidates, PACs, issue groups, donors and political consultants, in connection with federal, state and local elections," according to his law firm website. In 2017 Pence's PAC, Great America Committee, hired him for legal and strategic advice on compliance with election law. The last payment to Adams' law firm, Chalmers & Adams, was on June 24. Fraud in elections, Adams said, "does happen, but it doesn't happen on a widespread basis when it does happen. It typically happens in a small town." "But you're not going to see widespread fraud in a presidential or a Senate or a governor's race. It's just not feasible. And it hasn't been [feasible] in seventy or eighty years," Adams told me. We talk in depth about why that's the case: how ballots are kept secure, and how mail ballots are tracked by elections officials. Republican voters are also very supportive of drop boxes, Adams said. We also talked about the need for younger Americans to start signing up as poll workers as an act of duty and patriotism. "We need to run an election in Kentucky and disproportionately, [elections officials are] in their seventies and eighties," he said. "And my generation, Gen X, hasn't stepped up to replace our aging or workers. That's not a problem just for today. That's a problem going forward for this decade." Outro music: "Drown" by Lecrae Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelonggame. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As Democrats get set to start the first virtual party convention in history, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean talks about what he thinks the party needs to accomplish this week. Dean was governor of Vermont from 1991 to 2003, and nearly won the Democratic nomination for president in 2004. He was DNC Chair from 2005 to 2009. Outro song: "Heaven Help Us All" - written by Ron Miller, performed by Joan Baez Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelonggame. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Bill Buford is an author, chef, and adventurer. I've read his two latest books in the last year. Dirt, released in 2006, was the first half of an epic narrative that's taken up the last two decades or so of Bill's life. It starts with him asking to be let into the kitchen of a high-end restaurant in New York, Mario Batali's Babbo, on the bottom rung, to learn the ropes. He goes to Italy to learn to cook pasta, and then back to Italy to learn to be a proper butcher. Dirt was a bestseller. Heat, released just this past May, picks up where Dirt left off. But to my mind, there are layers upon layers in this latest book that Bill's earlier book didn't touch. He stretches himself, in terms of reporting, in terms of pure daring to try things that many would be too scared to try in France, a country of intimidating culinary intensity, and in terms of writing. And we talk about the challenges he faced in structuring this book. It's really fascinating stuff. I also read, years ago, Bill's first book: "Among the Thugs," about football hooligans in Europe. That too was a thrill to read. Bill was fiction editor at The New Yorker starting in the mid-1990's, and before that he relaunched a literary magazine named Granta in 1979. We talk about the commitment to great writing, no matter the topic. It was a true joy to have the conversation. Outro music: "Couch" by NSTASIA and D*L*P Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelonggame. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.