You voted. So what happens to your ballot next? This episode covers EVERYTHING that happens to ensure your vote is verified, all the way up to the official counting of electoral votes in Congress.
Our guests are journalist Jessica Huseman and Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller.
Here are some resources for following along with the process in your state:
Vote.org helps you navigate to your state’s election laws and website.
Vote.gov is the federal government landing page for election.
The NCSL (National Conference of State Legislatures) breaks down election laws in each state.
Transcript
Note: this transcript is AI-generated and may contain errors
Hannah McCarthy: This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: I'm Nick Capodice.
Christina Phillips: And I'm Christina Phillips. How are you feeling?
Nick Capodice: Hi. I'm feeling great. How actually. How are you?
Christina Phillips: I am good, I I'm very busy busy, busy busy.
Nick Capodice: Yeah, yeah, a very. Did you ever see Gladiator? Do you ever see Gladiator?
Christina Phillips: Did I ever see Gladiator?
Busy little bee.
Christina Phillips: But we should set the scene. Hannah. When is it? Where are we? What is happening?
Hannah McCarthy: Certainly. We are recording this ahead of the 2024 election, but this episode comes out on that fateful first Tuesday in November. Which means that you, listener, are quite possibly listening to this on your way to vote. Or maybe you have voted already. If so, we salute you. Very well done. Maybe you're watching the returns come in. Or you know, maybe you already know who has been declared the president elect of the United States. But even though you are in the future and know stuff that we do not, I bet we got some lessons up our sleeves, right, Christina?
Christina Phillips: We sure do, Hannah. Because this year more than ever, everything that happens after you cast your ballot is getting a lot of attention already. From the local certification to electors to the role of the vice president and Congress. So today, we're going to walk through everything that happens between Election Day and January 6th, which is when there is the official counting of the Electoral College votes in Congress. Great. I want to be transparent here. I went into this episode with some fear and uncertainty myself around the election, in part because I think I didn't really think about all these steps in the process. After I voted, I would, you know, watch the results come in and then kind of assume, okay, well, I knew that we would have the electors cast their ballots. I knew there would be the counting, but I didn't really think about everything in detail. And then, of course, the last couple of years, this has been all people have been talking about as far as elections. And after talking to the people, we're going to hear from today, the experts that I talked to. I ended up feeling a lot better about this process, in part because I understand it more. I feel like I tend to feel better when I actually know what's happening. You and me both. Yeah. So I'm hoping that over the next couple of months, you'll. You'll see a day on the calendar and think, oh, yeah, that's the day that this is supposed to happen. And if you want, you can check in and, you know, turn on the news or look it up and even call your secretary of state's office and be like, hey, that thing is happening today, right? I don't know if they'll answer, but we can all follow that together.
Nick Capodice: Great.
Christina Phillips: Are we ready?
Hannah McCarthy: Yes.
Nick Capodice: Absolutely. Ready.
Christina Phillips: Here we go. I want to start at the end of Election day, when polls start to close.
Hannah McCarthy: And if you're in line, they will not close or they should not close so long as you are in line. Even if the polls close at 5 p.m., they should still let you vote. I just want to remind everyone of that.
Christina Phillips: See, this is why I'm so glad you're here. Because you both are full of all these facts about these things. So yes, you may be in line. Maybe you've already voted, you're finishing up your workday. You're maybe cooking dinner. For me, I'm opening my probably second family size box of Cheez-Its and refreshing Twitter and looking at the AP results and maybe going out in the field with a reporter to help cover the election. Do you either of you have a ritual or a practice when you're watching election night results roll in?
Hannah McCarthy: Well, every now and then it's either my birthday or the day after my birthday or the day before. I was born on on election Tuesday in 1990. Uh, so it kind of it varies for me.
Christina Phillips: Nick, what about you?
Nick Capodice: Ever since the Bush v gore madness that happened. I don't go to sleep until I'm forced to by the sun coming up. Like I stay up, I stay up and I just watch and I watch and I watch and I hit F5 all night. So that's my tradition, is that I don't stop until I get as much information as possible.
Christina Phillips: And so how does it feel? I think 2020, when it took a I think it was like a week before there was an official declaration. These are the results. I feel like I remember it being like a Saturday or a Sunday. How how do you feel when you are just watching and watching and watching and you're not seeing any sort of final results come in?
Nick Capodice: It's painful and it didn't used to be that way. So, you know, I was a kid, I'd go to bed and I'd wake up and it would say, you know, so-and-so is president without with almost without exception. And it wasn't until Bush v Gore that that changed.
Hannah McCarthy: I can remember waking up or being woken up by my mother the day after the bush-gore election, and she was all excited. She was like, and the president is we don't know. And I was like, what? And she's like, this has never happened before.
Nick Capodice: My favorite thing about the 2000 election is that was the creation of red and blue, representing the two parties. Before that, no one had ever, you know, always equated Democrat with blue and Republican with red. That was just staring at that map for weeks. It's the only it's the reason we came up with red state, blue state, all that stuff.
Christina Phillips: I didn't realize that. I'm really glad that we're talking about the the idea that it used to be that you would know the results, you know, by the time you woke up. I will say 2000 is not the first time. We didn't know for a long time. Ooh, there is a pretty famous time, which is in 1876, which led to the creation of the Electoral Count Act, which we're going to talk about later. But I think it is pretty clear going forward that it's likely we will not know results from several states the night of the election, or even the next morning because of the environment that we are living in right now and because of how close we know the race is already, we may not know for several days, maybe longer, how some states, especially those swing states, especially the very close swing states, what the results are, and that is completely normal. And we'll talk about what's happening during those days when you're sitting there and you're like, why don't we know? Why don't we know? How come some states called within two hours?
Hannah McCarthy: I appreciate this because I think a lot of people, often encouraged by politicians, feel like something nefarious is going on. Right. And it's it's not, it's not it's not some sort of, like, secret, evil doer, behind the scenes kind of thing. It's just like bureaucratic, bureaucratic, bureaucratic, red tape kind of stuff.
Christina Phillips: Yeah. And if in those extremely, extremely, extremely rare circumstances that somebody is deliberately trying to delay the results of an election, they're not certifying, there are mechanisms to make that happen.
Hannah McCarthy: As I like to say, it's always less exciting than you think it is. Everything having to do with government is way less exciting. Mhm.
Christina Phillips: So I do want to break this down. There are five steps we're going to talk about. Canvassing is the first step.
Hannah McCarthy: Mhm.
Christina Phillips: The local certification. The state certification. The meeting of electors and the Electoral College vote count in Congress. Do you know what the canvass is. The post-election canvass.
Nick Capodice: Are these like exit polls or. This is like how we find out after people have voted? Like, how did we do? Or like, who did you vote for? And we sort of take all that data and amass a projection from that. Is that canvassing?
Christina Phillips: No. Oh, dear. No. So.
Hannah McCarthy: Well because canvassing is a term that is is used to describe the job of like going door to door and encouraging someone to vote for somebody or asking them who they're going to vote for. So that's. Go on. Please.
Christina Phillips: Yeah. So the post-election canvass is something that is different, but it's specifically about checking the work of the election process itself. And so I actually want to bring in someone else here, somebody that you both know. Well, because we love having her on Civics 101. And this is Jessica Huseman. Hi. Yeah. And so Jessica has been reporting on local elections for years. She's currently the editorial director of Vote Beat, which is a nonprofit newsroom covering voting rights, election administration and redistricting.
Jessica Huseman: The canvass is usually done by this Board of elections, right, whatever that means in the state in which you live. And so sometimes that is a group of people who are all like appointed to those boards. Sometimes it is like a mix of the chair of the Republican Party and the chair of the Democratic Party, and a couple of other people that are like sort of set into county code. But those people are responsible for the canvas. And what that means is they basically like, take all of the results from all of the precincts, make sure that those results are correct.
Nick Capodice: Well, Christina, earlier you said that this is about all the layers and all the steps. This is the first spot where I can see a potential nefarious thing happening. Someone who is a bad actor, who's in charge of this to, you know, to say that things went really badly. There was there was some sneaky stuff going on. Uh, isn't this a place where somebody can sort of trip up the rest of the process?
Christina Phillips: Theoretically, yes. But I think it's important to remember that the canvassing process is written down in law and if not in state law than in local election rules. So these people and they are all supposed to sort of check each other and work together. And there are a list of things that you do. And so actually, Jessica describes in a little bit more detail what the canvass looks like, what sort of things they need to do as part of the canvas. And before I get to that, I actually I think now is the time to introduce a caveat for most of this episode, which is that it depends on your state. There may be different words for the same processes in your state, but most states are doing this in a very similar fashion, so just keep that in mind. Caveat as always, it depends on your local election laws. But this canvass process is happening across states, across the country.
Jessica Huseman: There's the tabulation of the results, which in different states happens in different ways. Some places tabulate all the results at a central tabulation facility. And so poll workers bring the ballots to some place and they scan them all and count them all there. There is also reconciliation of those results. Right. They go back and they're checking a certain number of them, usually like a randomly selected group of ballots, to make sure that they were all counted appropriately.
Hannah McCarthy: They take a random selection to ensure that it was counted properly.
Christina Phillips: Yeah. So they're running the votes through these voting machines or whatever you've got in your state, and then they may just do a test where they're like, okay, so let's pull some of these ballots and let's run them through the voting machine again. We're actually looking them at them in front of us, and then we are running them through the machine to make sure that those match. So there's actually depending on your state and depending on what kind of counting mechanisms you're using, you're actually testing those mechanisms.
Jessica Huseman: The process from like start to finish at the county level is incredibly transparent. And so if you want to watch every step of it, you totally can. So the first thing that's going to happen, um, is the logic and accuracy testing of machines like that sounds so nerdy, but really it's just like, let's set up all these machines and make sure that they're counting ballots as intended. That process is open to the public. Like you can go and watch them do that and a lot of counties, because this process has been like because all of this has become so controversial, live stream this stuff. So even if you can't make it down to your county office to watch them like beep boop, all of the machines, you can watch them do it online. You can also watch them tally the ballots. You can watch them count the ballots. You can get readout at the at the end of the day of like how many ballots are counted and how many ballots are still left. And a lot of counties again, are like proactively putting this information online and.
Christina Phillips: The canvass also, another thing that happens is that it will verify provisional ballots. Do you want to define what a provisional ballot is?
Hannah McCarthy: A provisional ballot is the ballot that you can request if, for example, your voter registration is challenged or someone says, you know, oh, you don't have the proper ID, you're not going to be permitted to vote. You can still say, I request a provisional ballot, as is required by law. And this is a ballot that is basically it's like counted after the fact. Basically, they they verify your ability to vote after you've already left the polling place and the ballots are being counted, and a provisional ballot can be thrown out if someone determines actually, no, you were not permitted to vote. It's not guaranteed to be counted. But people will basically verify like, okay, yes, this person was a registered voter or was not.
Nick Capodice: I would like to say that I wish I had known this one time when I was living in New York, I showed up to vote and I was told I was removed from the voter rolls. And this happened to a lot of people where I lived in Brooklyn, and they were shocked, and I didn't know that I could do that. So I just didn't vote in that election. And it breaks my heart.
Jessica Huseman: Everybody is able to cast a provisional ballot in the United States. It's federal law. So if you get to the polls and your name is not on the register, but you know that you registered to vote, They can give you a provisional ballot and you can vote that provisional ballot. And then after Election Day, the county has to reconcile those provisional ballots. And so they will make sure that you are registered and you were in the right place. And if you were, then your ballot counts.
Christina Phillips: So that's part of the canvassing process. And then there is one other thing that I wanted to talk about. That's part of the canvassing process that's super important. And that is curing ballots. Do you know what that means?
Hannah McCarthy: Curing.
Christina Phillips: Yeah. So this is really important for mail-in ballots, absentee ballots. This is the process of if a ballot for some reason cannot be verified because there's a missing signature or a signature doesn't match. They'll go back and they will try to verify that ballot.
Jessica Huseman: You know, there's there's lots of ballots that, for whatever reason, usually mailed ballots that like we need to verify additionally. And so we have to call you and say, like, is this your ballot? And probably the answer is yes. I've heard lots of reasons why people's signatures are different, right? Like, I got older, I changed my signature, didn't think about it. Right. Or I signed it on one of those weird electronic pen things that the DMV and that signature was crap. And this is my actual signature. Or, you know, I was voting and I signed it on the dashboard of my car while I drove. And so my signature was bad, but it's mine, right? So there's this process that by phone or by sometimes by like ballot tracking app, which lots of states have now they can flag the voter and be like, your ballot is being rejected because of a signature mismatch, or you needed to put your last four digits of your driver's license or Social Security number on this ballot and you didn't, or whatever, right? Like, there are lots of reasons why a ballot might not be counted. And so there is a cure process that allows the county to reach out to these folks and, and make sure that like that problem can get resolved.
Christina Phillips: And so if you cast a mail in ballot or an absentee ballot and you're like me, you're like a millennial who does not answer their phone for an unknown caller. This is the time those next couple of days after the election, answer your phone. Open your mail. Somebody may be sending you a letter saying, hey, your ballot didn't count. We really want to count it. So that is all part of this canvassing process. Again, why it may take longer for the results to come in. All of these things slow the process down, but they don't necessarily mean that there's anything wrong with these ballots.
Jessica Huseman: And so not until that entire process is done are the results final, because you can't just count thousands of ballots instantaneously, right? If you could, lots of people would be disenfranchized like if if all of the results of those scanned ballots were just the results on election night. Lots and lots of people would be disenfranchized for like tiny little things. And even people who vote in person run up against this, right? So if somebody has voted on paper in person and they erased something and wrote it again such that it's not that clear what their intent was, those ballots during this canvassing process are pushed to a bipartisan group that has to determine what the voter intent was, redo their ballot on a separate ballot that can be counted and then cast it. And so if we had results on election night, everybody who left their signature off a mailed ballot, everybody who's like, erased something or like put an X in the bubble instead of filling in the bubble fully. All of these people's votes just wouldn't count. Um, and and that's really unfortunate. And and I think that people should really think about that when they insist that election night results need to be official.
Christina Phillips: I want to talk now about the role of the courts. You often see lawsuits. You see courts making decisions during this canvassing process. Do either of, you know, sort of what the role of the courts are, how a court might step in during the election or the tabulating of the election?
Hannah McCarthy: I'm fairly sure a court can basically grant a recount, and I'm fairly sure a court can say, enough. We're done. We're not doing this anymore, which is what happened in Bush v Gore. The Supreme Court was like, no, we're done no more.
Nick Capodice: I know that there are requisites to start a recount and there's nobody's choice for that. Like if a vote is within a certain margin, they a recount is triggered. It's not somebody making that choice. It's just automatically happens when it's really close. I believe, if I'm not mistaken, there are a ton of lawsuits. Like, I think every state is involved, at least in some lawsuit or other, about this election. The courts are there to make sure that, you know, if people have complaints, they are going to address their complaints, they're going to say what arguments are valid, which ones are not. They're there to sort of help the whole thing keep moving. Is that right?
Jessica Huseman: You know, the courts can intervene and there are ways that they intervene really productively every year. So for example, like let's say that you are going to vote and your precinct has a water main break. And so voting is delayed by three hours at the start of the day. A judge can rule that that polling location has to stay open for an additional three hours to make up for that lost time, and that happens every year for some reason, right? Like a poll worker that like the only poll worker for that precinct got in a car accident on the way there and like, you know, they were late or the machines weren't working or they forgot the plugs to plug the machines in. And so voting is slightly delayed. And that's going to happen somewhere in the country almost certainly. And so the courts can choose to keep those polling locations open. Or for example, now that we have these majorly hurricane affected areas and across the state of Florida and in western North Carolina, there are lawsuits that may, you know, decide to shift what is allowed and what is not allowed in terms of where polling can be held, because the polling location that this county has used for years and years and years washed away, or the road to get to it isn't there anymore, you know? Um, so the courts have a real role to play in terms of ensuring voter access.
Hannah McCarthy: So just real quick, because I might do early voting, which I actually have never done before. Where will my ballot sit with an early ballot? Does it go to the same place that like mail in ballots go?
Christina Phillips: So it depends on your state? Yeah. Uh, that is actually a really good question that has to do with something that's called chain of custody. And this is here's who has control of X equipment X ballots where they're stored, how they're stored, how they're transported. This is all built into the law. So if you were to cast an early ballot in New Hampshire, there is a rule for where that ballot must be stored. Who is allowed to access it if they can start counting it right away, or when they can start processing that ballot.
Hannah McCarthy: Wait a minute. They could count it prior to Election day.
Christina Phillips: I think that depends on your state. Some states they can start processing early ballots ahead of Election Day. Same with mail in ballots. It really depends on your state. If you are casting an early ballot or a mail in ballot, it arrives beforehand. There is a chain of custody that must be followed.
Jessica Huseman: There are chain of custody procedures for voting equipment, for ballots, for e-poll, books, for all sorts of things. And the way that they must be secured and kept are generally, if not by law, written into the county code. There are best practices for this that most counties at this point are following. It's become much more common, especially since 2016 and 2020 when these like when voting machines really got called into question, and the security of those voting machines was really called into question. And so you'll find that counties are taking this a lot more seriously than they used to. And it's not that they didn't take it seriously before they did, but because there's so much public scrutiny of it, they have felt the need to sort of really define what they mean when they say chain of custody, so that when somebody comes to them and they say, hey, I think that members of the public could just stick a USB stick in one of the voting machines and take over the whole day. They can say, no, they can't. And here's how we know this, because this is how we secure the voting machines. This is who has access to them, and this is when they have access to them. And these are the security procedures to ensure that those steps are being followed.
Christina Phillips: I do have an example of a time that that didn't work out where somebody violated that chain of custody deliberately. Oftentimes it might happen by accident. So are you familiar with Tina Peters? She was a former clerk in Mesa County, Colorado. She was accused of knowingly tampering with her county's voting machines in search of election fraud. Uh, basically, during the annual upgrade of the voting machine system, she created security credentials for someone who wasn't allowed to access them. Then she turned off the cameras that were supposed to be monitoring the voting machines and the upgrade, and that person was able to take sensitive information. So she was charged with crimes. So she's now going to prison for it.
Jessica Huseman: That was something that she took upon herself to do, because she was sort of in this camp. She was getting a lot of money from Mike Lindell, the MyPillow man, to, like, fly around the country and talk about how screwed up our elections are. And so she just kind of went for it. And she was like, yeah, I'll give you all the proof that you need that our elections are flawed. She obviously didn't find it, but that led the state of Colorado to decertify all of the equipment in Mesa County, and they had to get new equipment and and so like ultimately no votes were affected and the security of the elections weren't affected, but taxpayers spent thousands of dollars sort of making up for this failure to abide by chain of custody procedures. So when chain of custody is followed, it's great, right. Like but when election officials and this is the extreme minority right. Choose not to follow chain of custody procedures, things can really go awry. And states can take really punitive actions to like invalidate machines or to force counties to do recounts because they've messed up their security here or there.
Christina Phillips: So those are sort of routine court interventions. And then there's the other kind of lawsuits, which I think we think about in terms of 2020. Those are the political lawsuits, which, if you remember, Trump and his political allies filed 62 lawsuits after the election in a number of different states contesting the results and in many cases alleging election fraud on a scale that has really never been seen before in history. And almost every one of those cases was dismissed because it lacked evidence. And that moved really quickly. So that happened in the first couple of weeks after the election. So there is a time crunch because we do need to get to January 6th. So those lawsuits are filed their process as quickly as possible.
Jessica Huseman: And I think that we should expect more lawsuits this year, because both the Republican and the Democratic parties have dedicated a much higher percentage of their overall money to Litigation. So they are ready for this, right? They are ready to sue. And again, I think that a lot of these lawsuits are likely to be dismissed very quickly, but they're still going to be filed. And so the courts are still going to have to wade through all of this before we really have confidence that the election is over and done and dusted.
Christina Phillips: So now we've reached the next step. The canvasing is complete. The canvasing board hands over the results of that canvass.
Jessica Huseman: And then they turn those results over to be certified, typically by a totally separate board. And so the reason that that is sort of the case is like this is our mark of approval, that not only do the elections people think this is correct, but like in Texas, for example, the county commissioners court, which is like the city council at the county level, also thinks that it's correct.
Hannah McCarthy: So what happens if the local election officials, local election board does not certify?
Christina Phillips: Yeah. So I want to bring in someone else here. This is Derek Muller. He's a law professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School, where he teaches election law, federal courts and civil procedure. And I asked Derek that question. I said, what happens if local election officials refuse to certify an election? Because we've been hearing news about local election officials who were deniers of the results in 2020. They're now going to be part of the certification process, which states must do by December 11th. And we'll talk about that date in a minute. And so here's what he said.
Derek Muller: So when we have these deadlines, it's worth noting that these deadlines are kind of the last deadlines for each jurisdiction. So if you have three weeks, a lot of times you might certify within 2 or 2 and a half weeks. And if you fail to do so or indicate that you're going to fail to do so, you actually have a little time to resolve things. But even missing that first deadline, you know, usually there's some ample time built in as a buffer for later stages in the process to allow quick resolution. And again, courts have stepped in within 24 hours to be able to order certification. So that is usually not a lengthy process, because usually the answer is it's pretty obvious you're supposed to certify the results. You have all the ballot tabulation sheets. Let's get this moving. So in a state like Michigan, you know, if a county fails to certify, it goes to the state to certify, you know, if there's a tie or there's an inability to resolve it in other places. We saw this recently in New Mexico when the county refused to certify. The secretary of state sued the county officials in the New Mexico Supreme Court and said, I am requesting an order to have them certify and within 24 hours an order was issued. So there are alternative mechanisms, sometimes appealing to somebody else. But sometimes going to a court is the maybe more common avenue, and the judiciary can step in and order certification.
Hannah McCarthy: I think we should talk about why an election official might refuse to certify. So, like in New Mexico, the claim was that Dominion voting machines are faulty. So I will not certify these votes because I do not trust these votes.
Nick Capodice: And that was an inaccurate claim, correct?
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, that was inaccurate.
Christina Phillips: So if the machines are not working, you still have the ballots. And if you're following chain of custody, they have not been tampered with. There are alternative ways for you to count those ballots and then certify them. So the point is that there are mechanisms built in that you never are supposed to be able to just say, all these votes don't count, at least on a scale that would change the results of the election. There shouldn't be that many ballots where there's a problem. And so whether you certify or not is not really supposed to be at question here. And every state will have mechanisms to make sure that that certification does happen, even if it requires going back and taking some of these other steps to count the ballots to check the ballots.
Jessica Huseman: A lot of these people who think that the 2020 election was stolen will get elected to county clerk or something. Again, this is like a really small number of people who have done this, but then they get in office and they learn about all of this stuff that they have to do and all of the requirements that they have to fulfill. And they're like, oh, it's actually fine, right? And they realize that they have a job that they must do under law, or they're going to be held accountable for it. And there are steps in the law that they must follow. Like this is not the Wild West. You know what I mean? Like, there are there are specific rules that dictate how each step of this process is done. And so if a person goes rogue and decides not to follow those steps, you can file a lawsuit against them. And I think that states are ready to do this. I think that's like a really important thing for your listeners to know, is that for every person that doesn't want to certify the election, there is like a lawyer sitting in the Secretary of state's office that has pre-written a lawsuit against that county and will file it as soon as they hear a problem, because the state, like delaying certification, really messes up the state's process, which is why, you see, in 2020, when we first started seeing counties try this stuff, they Universally failed to do it right.
Jessica Huseman: They, you know, Nye County, Nevada. Cochise County, Arizona. A couple of, like, tiny little counties in Texas all attempted to not certify the election. Then they were sued and realized they could go to jail. And they were like, just kidding. It's certified now. Right. And that was it. And that was it was in an environment in which we didn't necessarily expect those things to happen. Like we very much do now. Like the Secretary of state's are ready. Every Secretary of state's office that I have spoken with is, like, prepared for this. They have pre-written lawsuits. They have found plaintiffs in every county that will put their name on these lawsuits. And so it's not going there's. There's not going to be a lot of uncertainty for very long. They have come up with a game plan for those scenarios.
Hannah McCarthy: I really appreciate this idea that like people who feel that the system is not secure, who then like get elected to office specifically to like, you know, protect it. And then they're like, oh, like, I thought it was messed up and it's not. I just think that's like really interesting. It just like, goes to show that so often it's just a lack of understanding that results in crying wolf, basically.
Nick Capodice: My favorite part of it is that it's bureaucracy, red tape and boredom that stops people from understanding. They're like, why don't I know what happens behind that closed door? Well, because you would be bored to tears if you knew all the steps. And then they find out like, this is so boring. Why did I do this?
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah. I don't want this job.
Nick Capodice: I gotta tell, I gotta tell my family. I've been wrong all these years.
Hannah McCarthy: President is hard.
Christina Phillips: Yeah, and if you are like me, somebody who loves reading the minutia of rules and laws and everything. Most states have some sort of transparent documentation of what's supposed to happen. Like if you contacted somebody who worked at your polling location, were like, can you explain to me how you're counting the ballots? They could probably, you know, maybe don't do this on Election day because they're probably busy, but like, they could bring out their their binder. That's like, okay, so then we do this, then we do this. And this is what happens if this happens. They have all that written down and they probably would love to talk about it with you.
Hannah McCarthy: Or volunteer at your polling place. Become a part of the process.
Christina Phillips: I do want to hit on one other thing here. When we're talking about bad faith actors, people who may mistrust the process or attempt to undermine the process, maybe mistrust the process to the point where they attempt to undermine it. There are actual real stakes here. So I think it's sometimes easy to forget, like if somebody is going to question the certification and accuse someone of voter fraud or say they don't think these votes can be counted because of voter fraud, and there aren't actually real, measurable instances of that, and they still refuse to certify things happen to them. Like there, there's accountability there. So I asked Derek, I'm like, what is the accountability to make sure that these people are doing their jobs? And here's what he said.
Derek Muller: Yeah. So depending on the state again in some states you can lose your job. You know, you can be ejected from office for malfeasance for failure to perform your responsibilities. You could face criminal penalties for failing again to to perform the acts that are required of you by law as an election official, the court can hold you in contempt. So again, there could be fines or they could incarcerate you until you comply. So there are these penalties that induce election officials to behave. But then, you know, if you have a really recalcitrant official who refuses to do so, courts have mechanisms to order someone else to perform the act as if you were the one who performed the act. So the point is, there's not just a secret way of escaping it by saying, I'm not going to do it. The court can say, if you're not going to do it, I have the power to order someone else to do it as if it were you. And this is this is the kind of remedy that might be if you were supposed to hand over somebody a title or deed to property and you refuse to sign the deed, well, you can't just secretly hold the property. The court can order somebody else to do it on your behalf. It would be the same thing as if you were refusing to certify election results. We can find someone else to do it.
Christina Phillips: So now we're moving on to the next step, which is state certification.
Nick Capodice: This is step three. Yes okay. Great state certification.
Christina Phillips: State certification I mentioned before, there's this deadline of December 11th, 2024 that states have to certify this is actually from the federal law, the Electoral Count Act. Now, the Electoral Count Reform Act that determines that states have to certify six days before the meeting of electors in that state, which this year is December 17th. And what that means is that they receive all the official results from local election boards that have approved them and certified them. And according to federal law, every state has to appoint a chief election official. In most states, this is the Secretary of State. You might also hear the chief election officer, the executive director, the administrator of elections. In most states, this person is elected. In some states, they're chosen by the legislature or they're appointed by the governor or something like that. And I think one thing that's super duper important here is that this state certification is supposed to be what Derek calls a ministerial process.
Derek Muller: So that's a word we use in the law to suggest that there's not discretion. That is, you are pretty much taking those certified results from the municipalities, the counties, whatever subdivision you have, and you are adding them up and making sure that on the face of the returns that they look complete, there's not a zero in some precinct for the total of the results, or you've got 27 counties that you have all 27 sets of results. So you were engaged in that sort of functional analysis just to make sure we've got everything set. All the i's are dotted and t's are crossed. We add up the results and we certify the outcome. So it's a formal process just to make sure we've closed the loop of taking all those things across the state and have one final resolution.
Nick Capodice: I love this because we live in a representational democracy, right? We pick our representatives, and because we trust their judgment, we think they're going to do X, Y, z, or they're going to make decisions. They're going to make the hard calls. I like that within the system, there are also jobs where there is no decision, right. You don't get to make a choice here. You are just you're a cop. You're like a cog who looks at a number and agrees with that number. This is not a time for somebody to have feelings and emotions and thoughts and want to do something.
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, I like the phrase passionless. It's not at your discretion. Like you have no discretion.
Christina Phillips: Yeah, that's really your role at that point. And we will talk more about this discretionary thing when we get to the vice president and Congress. So that's a little bit of a preview there. So we are coming up to the electors. Okay.
Nick Capodice: So all right I know this part. Yeah.
Christina Phillips: We're going to talk about that after a quick break.
Nick Capodice: But before that break, if you like minutia and are interested in the films of Fatty Arbuckle, if you like any of that stuff, you should read our newsletter. It's called Extra Credit. It comes out every two weeks. It's fun and it's free. And you can get it on our website, civics101podcast.org.
Hannah McCarthy: We're back. You're listening to Civics 101 from New Hampshire Public Radio, and we are talking about what happens after Election Day in a presidential election. And before our break, we talked about canvasing, certifying the local results and the role of the courts. And, Cristina Phillips, you were about to walk us through the next step, which I am told is electors.
Christina Phillips: Yes. Nick, would you please do me the honor and explain who electors are and what they do?
Nick Capodice: Oh of course, absolutely. But before I do, what's the law about when the electors convene?
Christina Phillips: It is the first Tuesday after the second Wednesday in December. December 17th, 2024 this year.
Nick Capodice: What's funny about all the dates? Like, do you know the reason we do the first Tuesday in November for like, why is it a Tuesday? Why is it not a Monday?
Hannah McCarthy: I always assumed it was because of my birthday.
Nick Capodice: It's all because of. It's like the same reason that kids have school off in the summertime. It's about weather. So the reason it can't be on a Monday is because the day before Sunday, people might be going to church, right? So they won't have time between Sunday and Monday to walk from their farmhouse to the town where the election is happening. Like you want it to have a day grace period so people could travel to their polling place. Right? And then this time period between the actual day that we vote and then the electors vote, that's also dependent on whether everybody has to travel. All the electors have to travel to the state capital to vote. What was your question?
Christina Phillips: So tell me who these electors are. Okay.
Nick Capodice: So electors and we call it a slate of electors. Right now, every presidential candidate in every state has a slate of electors, which are sort of so-called loyal people to that candidate who are pledging that when they go to vote in December, they will pick the candidate who won that state. Right. So, you know, I live in New Hampshire. If hypothetically, if Kamala Harris wins New Hampshire, the number of electoral votes your state has is the total number of people your state sends to Congress. So every state gets two for its senators. You add the number of members of Congress to that. So New Hampshire has two members of Congress and two senators, four electoral votes total. There are four people who are going to meet at the state House who have been picked by the DNC, you know, or the New Hampshire Democratic Party to cast their four ballots for Kamala Harris. And we should.
Hannah McCarthy: Also clarify that, like right now, there are electors both for Harris and for Trump in every state. Yes, but it's only the electors for the candidate who won in that state who get to go and say, I am voting.
Nick Capodice: Except for a couple of states which do it differently, which is Maine and End. Nebraska. Dc's a little funny. Dc just has three electoral votes.
Christina Phillips: So the state, once they've got their verified results, they prepare what's called a certificate of ascertainment, which is essentially a piece of paper that says, here are the list of electors who will be representing the state, will be casting ballots on behalf of the state, representing the will of the people, which is the popular vote. And so that certificate of ascertainment, one copy is sent to the National Archives to be kept as a record, and then six of them are brought to the meeting of electors, where those electors will meet on December 17th. And you can watch this in many states, you know, stream it online and see these electors cast their ballots. And so all of that will get bundled together with one of those certificates of ascertainment. And then they get sent six different places. Now. Do you know where those places are?
Nick Capodice: No. And I even I even used all that audio of all those meetings from my episode on the Electoral College so long ago.
Christina Phillips: Yeah. So basically, this is just a way to make sure that there's six official versions of the correct certified, stamped, secure electoral votes. So there's no chance that we don't have them in Congress. On the day of the official counting of the votes on January 6th. So one will go directly to the president of the Senate, two, go to the state's chief election officer, and then one will go to the judge of the district where the electors had their meeting. So essentially, we're making sure that you're a court system in your state, has a copy to go to the national archivist. And then there is a process where, let's say one does not arrive in Congress. The president of the Senate is like, I don't have anything from New Hampshire.
Hannah McCarthy: Lost in the mail.
Christina Phillips: Yeah. The national archivist will then have a process of approaching in an order like first I'm going to go here and I'm going to get it from these people, and then I'm going to go here. And I don't actually have that off the top of my head, but they have a process to make sure, no matter what one of those copies that's been certified reaches Congress. Now, really quickly, I just want to go through what happened with the fake electors, the fake elector scheme of 2020. So in several states, and this was slightly different depending on the state, some of those Republican nominated electors for the Republican Party in states where the Democratic electors were officially certified to cast their votes and prepared their official ballots, because Biden won those states and he was given those electoral votes. Some of these Republican electors also prepared their own version of their ballots, and these were in some cases set aside. And it was said in case the courts overturn the results in this state, we want to have these ready. And then in some cases, they were instructed sometimes by Trump's legal team to give those to Vice President Mike pence so that he could choose during the official count. No, I'm actually taking these votes. Okay.
Hannah McCarthy: I feel like we should probably just mention faithless electors. I was just going.
Nick Capodice: To say that too.
Christina Phillips: Okay.
Hannah McCarthy: So a faithless elector is somebody who, regardless of the state's vote, like, let's say the that the state voted for a certain person. So, for example, like a state goes for Trump and the Republican Party electors then show up. A faithless elector is someone who will say like, no, it's Harris or some other Republican candidate or something like that.
Nick Capodice: Almost every election there's like 1 or 2 faithless electors. Faithless electors have never changed the outcome of a presidential race. Many states have laws on the books which say you are not allowed to vote for somebody other than the person who won your state. Right. And that's interesting because the Electoral College was created to have faithless electors. Electors were supposed to vote their conscience and vote their mind. They weren't supposed to just vote for whoever won in the state. And I think it even went to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court ruled that states are allowed to pass laws banning faithless electors.
Christina Phillips: We mentioned it before, but this is all laid out in a federal law, this this process of the electors of sending the certification, the certificate of ascertainment, all of these documents showing up in Congress, it's laid out in a federal law that was known as the Electoral Count Act of 1877, which was actually amended in 2022. But the act was created as a result of a contested presidential election in 1876. Do either of you know what happened then?
Nick Capodice: I sure do, Hannah. I think you know about this, too. No. You want me to talk about it? Yeah. Yeah. The 1876 election is As perhaps one of the most contentious elections in US history. It's deserving of many episodes of Civics 101. I'm not going to go all the way into it, but basically Rutherford B Hayes versus Samuel Tilden, 1876. This is the election that Hayes won and got him the nickname Rutherfraud. Rutherfraud be Hayes. But basically, wasn't it? Congress had to agree who to give the election to. And this was the this was the dark bargain that ended reconstruction. This was this was bad, right? Isn't that what happened in 1876?
Hannah McCarthy: Well, if you've participated in the three episodes on reconstruction, I did, and it didn't end reconstruction, but troops were removed from enforcing certain things. But this provision of Congress choosing the president that's in the Constitution, like Congress, is like they pick from the top three candidates and they're like, it's yours. Now, if there isn't a clear winner.
Christina Phillips: And in that case, there wasn't a clear winner because several states could not agree on who would get the electoral votes. And there were accusations and actually proven election fraud. Election tampering, like over 100 black Republicans were killed in South Carolina. And so it was super contested. And they basically were looking at several states where they couldn't all agree on what the electoral votes like, where they should go. Right. And so they put it to a commission. They were like, okay, we know that as Congress, we can choose, but we don't really know how to do that. So they put it to a 15 person commission. That commission ultimately rewarded all these contested votes to Hayes, and then Congress had to vote to approve that or not. And basically, Hayes went to Congress was like, hey, I will sort of end reconstruction if you give me that support. And they were like, okay. But everyone pretty much agreed that, like, this is not how it should go, especially because the participation in that election was extremely high. It was over 80%. Wow. So all these voters voted, and ultimately it ended up being decided in Congress through negotiation, essentially.
Derek Muller: So the Electoral Count Act was enacted in 1887 and designed to resolve some of the problems from that crisis. Election of 1876 make it a little tougher for Congress to throw out votes, streamline the process for counting votes, give some deference to states, and so on. It has largely worked, but there's no question it's come under strain.
Christina Phillips: So here is how it's supposed to work once these votes get to Congress. The vice president, in a joint session of Congress, counts the electoral votes for each state, and members of Congress are allowed to object to the state results, but only for two reasons.
Derek Muller: So there are two specific objections that members of Congress can make. The first is that the votes were not regularly given, and that's a phrase that there's something the electors did wrong. The electors when they voted on December 17th, they didn't vote by ballot or they voted on the wrong day like December 18th or they were bribed. So there's a way of this is a phrase that, again, harkens back to the 19th century, but is designed to deal with the behavior of the electors themselves. And again, that's pretty late in the process. It's not a place for courts to really get involved, to place for Congress. The other is that the votes were not lawfully certified. And that's a phrase that means, you know, it doesn't come with a certificate of election from the governor or secretary of state with a security feature attached to that certificate. If you don't have anything, Congress shouldn't count it. But again, Congress is also supposed to deem as conclusive the certificate that comes from a state signed by the executive, ratified by a court. So there's very narrow grounds to object that the result was not lawfully certified, because we have all these additional processes to certify the results. And the objection is regularly given, deals with a very narrow universe of unusual exceptions that we haven't seen, you know, in some time in the United States, not since 1872, really, with objecting to the behavior of the electors themselves. So there's two grounds for objection. It's not to say members of Congress might not try to abuse those objections.
Christina Phillips: Furthermore, the vice president is essentially there in this ministerial role. They're supposed to keep order and make sure the count is completed. Now, this was all pretty routine until 2021. And do you remember some ways that then-President Trump tried to inject his own interpretation of this process?
Hannah McCarthy: I believe the assertion was that pence could simply give Donald Trump the presidency again. Correct. Yeah.
Christina Phillips: Trump was asserting that pence could choose where electoral votes went if they were in question, and then also that members of Congress could object. It was sort of a loose interpretation of the two reasons that Congress may object to the certification of the vote.
Nick Capodice: Yeah, but neither of those happened. So how did they how did they justify objecting to these votes?
Christina Phillips: Actually, I asked Derek. I was like, can you walk me through what objections look like in Congress in 2021? And he lays out what happened in the case of Arizona.
Derek Muller: Several members of the Senate and a number of members of the House filed a written objection, saying that the votes were not regularly given out of the state of Arizona. Now, again, that was the wrong objection. Regularly given deals with the behavior of electors. In reality, what they want to challenge in Arizona was they felt like there was potential risks of noncitizens who had voted. They felt like there were problems with the voting machines tabulating the ballots. In Maricopa County, there were problems with the printers and the administration of the ballots. It's kind of a kitchen sink of complaints about the administration of the election in Arizona. So Vice President Mike pence receives that objection, again signed by then one member of the House and one member of the Senate. Although there were many others that objected, that meant that the chambers had to separate, and so they separated to debate. They were each supposed to debate for two hours, and that debate was interrupted because there was a riot at the Capitol, right. That that stopped the proceedings for several hours. But then they they gathered back together, finished the two hours of debate. They voted on the objections. Each House rejected the objection. So you would need a majority of both houses to sustain you. They had they didn't even have one to vote to sustain the objection. So then they gathered back together into the chamber. Uh, Vice President Pence recognized that the objection had failed. Um, and then they went on to continue counting going on down through the States.
Hannah McCarthy: But I think, once again, this is an example of, you know, people can say that things can go a certain way, but at the end of the day, there are regulations, there are procedures. There are like, you can't just force it, right? You can try, but then the boring stuff gets in the way.
Nick Capodice: What's interesting to me about this one is the kitchen sink notion, right? Everything was wrong with it. And well, what specifically? Oh, I don't know, everything. It's like when somebody throws their hands up and says everybody's corrupt, nothing matters. But then they're like, okay, tell me specifically what is corrupt? Well, this thing and this is a great example of somebody just being very patient. I was like, give me specific examples of show me what is wrong and what what happened unfairly. And the person is unable to provide a single piece of evidence.
Christina Phillips: And then also the threshold is pretty high. The majority of people need to agree with them, which when you think about Congress now, it's pretty Partizan.
Nick Capodice: Arizona is very early alphabetically. So you know, we got a lot more states to get through. I think it's telling. This happened kind of at the beginning of the day, sort of get ready. Did it happen again or was it just that one time?
Christina Phillips: It was also Pennsylvania. Okay.
Nick Capodice: Pennsylvania. In the middle of the alphabet. Same thing at that time. Same thing happened.
Christina Phillips: Yeah, yeah. Similar thing. There was a challenge and that challenge was discussed and it was not found to have merit. So that was in 2021. This is before the reform to the Electoral Count Act in.
Derek Muller: 2022, when Congress enacted the Electoral Count Reform Act. It was designed to strengthen kind of all of those existing procedures. So it said states, you really need to resolve your disputes by December 11th this year, and you really shouldn't be dragging litigation past that deadline. And we want to have firm results by that date. And we as Congress are going to give deference to judicial orders that happen by that date. So those are not things that we didn't have a firm deadline and we didn't have that that guarantee of congressional deference to judicial results. You know, in the old act.
Christina Phillips: There's this line that he says about that Congress will give deference to the courts. If the courts have already agreed that these certified results are in fact certified. Congress, then, is supposed to defer to those decisions. It's not supposed to say, well, actually, no, no, we have a question about this. We want to bring that challenge again, because it's already been litigated.
Derek Muller: When it comes to Congress. It was quite clear, I think, that the vice president had no role to throw out votes or to make decisions. But, you know, out of an abundance of caution, the Electoral Count Reform Act adds some express language, saying the vice president's role is ministerial and non-discretionary in nature. You are just to preside over the hearing, to to hear the objections, to keep time, to move things along. You don't have any substantive role. And when it comes to Congress, it used to be that if one member of the House objected, one member of the Senate objected, you could separate for two hours of debate. And this happened in 2005, when Democrats objected to Ohio. This happened in 2021, when Republicans objected to Arizona and Pennsylvania. And a lot of other times people have tried to object. And now this says it now requires 20% of each chamber to object, not just one member of each. So it's going to clamp down on Congress's ability to sow doubt and sow confusion into those results.
Hannah McCarthy: Oh, wow. That's a huge difference. I just think it's very funny because it's like it's not that part, but the vice president part because it's like just to clarify, per usual, the vice president doesn't do anything like it is the most notoriously do nothing. Your job is to wait just in case, you know.
Nick Capodice: Like you break ties in the Senate.
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, but it's just kind of funny to me.
Nick Capodice: I do like when people campaign on, like, I've done the most broken ties in the Senate. It's like, oh, good job, you know? Yeah, but who was it who said the vice presidency isn't worth a bucket of warm spit?
Hannah McCarthy: The quotes over the course of American history of vice presidents being like, this job is nothing. I don't want this like there are so many hilarious quotes from historical figures.
Nick Capodice: What I find kind of heartening is if this was 2022, this was signed. This is a Congress that is quite notorious for not passing a lot of legislation. So I think it's interesting and maybe a bit heartening that this, again, ministerial nonpartizan sort of effort to just do things by the books was agreed upon by even a quite contentious Congress and then signed into law by the president. I just think that's interesting. Mhm. I have a question. One of the presidential candidates for the upcoming election is also the vice president later.
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah.
Christina Phillips: Nick, you're spoiling the rest of my...
Nick Capodice: I'll pretend I didn't ask it.
Christina Phillips: I was just over here scrolling. I'm like, let me get to that part that I wanted to get to. So yes, that is a very good point. And you're asking about what happens if the vice president is supposed to.
Nick Capodice: Has this ever happened before? Yeah.
Hannah McCarthy: I can't operate on this.
Nick Capodice: She gonna open it up and be like, well.
Hannah McCarthy: Wait, what's the joke? I can't operate on this patient. He's my son. He's my son.
Nick Capodice: How is that possible? Yes, yes. It was a lady doctor.
Christina Phillips: So I do want to make sure that for anyone listening to this, I'm like, what are they talking about? This is the idea that the vice president, the sitting vice president, might be overseeing the certification in which they lose or they or they win.
Nick Capodice: It's also kind of funny.
Christina Phillips: This has happened seven times before.
Nick Capodice: Seven times? Yes. So he didn't gore do it in Bush v Gore? Yes.
Christina Phillips: So so was...
Nick Capodice: He like Florida? Well.
Christina Phillips: So Vice President Kamala Harris will be, you know, doing this ceremonial overseeing of this count in Congress. And that will happen whether she wins or not. So, as Derek said, her role is ceremonial. She's not supposed to be objecting to any state results herself or ruling on any objections. And to quote the 2022 law the vice president has, quote, no power to solely determine, accept, reject or otherwise adjudicate or resolve disputes over the proper list of electors, the validity of electors, or the votes of electors. So, Nick, you asked if this has happened before where a vice presidential candidate maybe just having to hand off the election in which they lose. This has happened three times, including two Richard Nixon and to al Gore. The second one was, as we know, super controversial, right?
Nick Capodice: The election was controversial.
Christina Phillips: The election was controversial.
Nick Capodice: But I feel like the I feel like the electors part wasn't. I feel like I remember al Gore. People were like, is he going to do something? Yeah. And he didn't. He followed the rules.
Christina Phillips: No. So in both of those cases, and in 2020, when Vice President Mike pence was under pressure from his president and there was an insurrection, an attempted insurrection, the process got interrupted, the democratic process that is built into our law was upheld. That's what we should expect from Vice President Harris. That's what we should expect from Congress. This is.
Hannah McCarthy: Because that's the law
Christina Phillips: Yeah, this is the law. And also this is what they've run to protect and to uphold. This is their job, right? So that's what we should be expecting to happen this time.
Hannah McCarthy: I think as is I've been told so many times, like if you don't trust the process, volunteer. If you don't trust the process, call up your election official. Like the process is boring and like there are many, many fail safe fail safes.
Nick Capodice: Fail safes. That's really interesting. Fail safes.
Hannah McCarthy: Fail safes?
Nick Capodice: Yeah, I think it's fail safes. Oh, it's fails safe. Oh, it's like inspectors general. I'm kidding. No it's not. I was like, it's definitely not. I got your joke. You did? It's William Safire orders two Whoppers Junior.
Hannah McCarthy: Um, and it's also just so interesting that Congress passes this law that's like just to clarify and just and that it was passed at all. I feel like is a little bit of proof positive of like, let's all just agree here that like there is an established process, like it's it's not sexy at all, which should give all of us some peace of mind I think.
Christina Phillips: Yeah. And I think to that point, one thing that was made so clear to me in the process of pulling all this together is that if you've thought about it, someone else has definitely thought about it and probably put it in to the rules or the laws. So the idea that there could be people who vote in multiple locations, that let's say, somebody who is dead is able to cast a ballot for whatever reason. People have thought about that, and they've come up with ways to check. That is why there's such minuscule rates of actual deliberate voter fraud, minuscule minuscule rates of votes not being counted because of an error or an issue, because somebody has thought about the worst case scenario in all of these many, many different ways that things could go wrong and they've come up with a plan. Another thing that was really interesting to me about this is that it all kind of comes down to like following a book, like following a rule book. And when you have to sort of follow a rule book, it removes a lot of the opportunity to mess with things. Something isn't just going to fall through the cracks, like it's not just going to be forgotten. And if somebody deliberately tries to manipulate, you're going to find out about it. It just doesn't happen. I mean.
Hannah McCarthy: It makes me think about so I don't slack off at this job because I love it. But I've had jobs in the past that I hate where I can't slack off because it would be too apparent that I wasn't working right, because it was just like filling in a spreadsheet all day. And it was so just like purely procedural and administrative that I couldn't not do the job. And that's what makes this makes me think of like it would just be too glaringly obvious that someone is not doing the job.
Nick Capodice: I love what you said, that it's like if you've thought about it, you better believe there's a lot of people who have already thought about it, too. You're not going to come up with something new about like, some little loophole.
Christina Phillips: Yeah, if somebody thought of it and they've probably had a late night meeting where they they woke up at 2 a.m. and were like, what about this? And then they called their poor friend who also works in the office, and he's like, we have to figure out a problem, solve this thing.
Nick Capodice: Or they took care of that over in Maricopa. Yeah, we already had. We already thought of that. Steve's on it. He's down there taking care of it.
Christina Phillips: I'll share his Google doc with you.
Nick Capodice: Later. Yeah, yeah, He showed us the deck last week. We're gonna look at that. All right.
Hannah McCarthy: This was fun. This was.
Nick Capodice: So fun.
Christina Phillips: Good. I'm glad.
Nick Capodice: I hope it's not hard to edit.
Speaker6: It's gonna be great. We have so much time.
Nick Capodice: Stop it. And the saving is tricky in the multi-track.
Hannah McCarthy: Oh my God. Yeah! Hit!
Nick Capodice: Stop, stop.
Hannah McCarthy: This episode of Civics 101 was produced by Christina Phillips and edited by Rebecca Lavoie. Civics 101 is hosted by me, Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice. Music in this episode is by Epidemic Sound, blue Dot sessions, and Chris Zabriskie. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.