9 months ago
America’s chief election officials want to present a united front through the scrutiny of the 2024 elections.
The National Association of Secretaries of State met last week in Washington for their winter meeting. And despite the maelstrom surrounding election administration in the outside world — misinformation, physical threats, an industry brain drain and more — the conference was (mostly) calm and uncontroversial.
That was intentional.
Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, the Republican currently leading the organization, and Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, the Democrat who will assume the presidency this summer, said in a joint interview that one of their main goals through the 2024 election is holding the bipartisan elections organization together.
That’s not as easy as it sounds. Election administration has increasingly become politically polarized. So have once-apolitical state officer organizations more broadly, which are losing the bipartisan camaraderie in favor of single-party meetings. (At the National Governors Association summer meeting last year, for example, almost no Republicans bothered to show up.)
“When that happened with the governors’ association, I got a text from Steve that goes ‘this is what we don’t want,’” said Schwab.
NASS has had internal strife of its own. In recent years, there have been near-screaming matches between secretaries in public meetings. And one outgoing Republican secretary this year confronted federal officials in a committee meeting, comparing their efforts on misinformation to the My Lai Massacre.
But if someone was going to steer this organization through potentially choppy waters, Schwab and Simon are good candidates for it. Both men are well-respected, both within their parties and by secretaries across the aisle.
And they say they’re working to keep the focus on areas of agreement, not dragging NASS into unnecessary fights. There has been an effort to pass fewer resolutions, for example, because those policy statements can drag up disputes while having little real impact. “If the world might not care about what NASS has to say, do we have to say it?” Simon asked.
Score spoke with the two election officials on how they’re trying to keep NASS together, the biggest threats in 2024 and more.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
2024 is a big year, you might have heard. How are you thinking about the environment around NASS for the next year?
Schwab: We have more members than we've ever had. We have more attendees at this conference than we've ever had. There is more cordiality. I mean, people will vent. And then we go out, we get a glass of wine or cocktail together and are like, ‘Man, why do you say that?’ ... We're very good at focusing on the things we agree on, because the things we disagree on, it's not gonna change. So as we come in as a united front as an association, hopefully then it beefs up confidence from the American public and specifically in our own states. …
We’re moving back into a culture — and granted, there's always been loud shouters whether it's voter suppression or voter fraud — where we want to be actively boring. We don't want to be in the press unless we want to be in the press.
The atmosphere around election administration is more charged than ever. Why do you think the atmosphere here at NASS is different from what the public sees with election administration?
Simon: Well, I think it's an intentional effort to make this somewhat of an oasis. … I don’t want to say it's always 100 percent. People have strong feelings, and sometimes those come out in different ways. But I don't think it's an accident.
Schwab: We try to have our fights in the back yard and not on the front porch. If we have to hash something out, let's hash it out where — no offense to you — but if it doesn’t have to be in the press, let’s not get it in the press. …
The other portion of that is the rhetoric you're hearing from the outside coming in? It isn't in. It's a fading argument. It's a waning complaint. The smaller the group that is concerned about ‘election fraud,’ the louder they get. So it seems like it's the same size. But if you have 10 people whispering and you have 10 people shouting, the 10 people shouting sound like there's more, but it's still just 10 people. …
Let's be honest, the trajectory changed with the Fox News settlement. And that's probably the low bar financially. So it's going to be interesting going forward. Does a Republican nominee for state office, local office or national office reignite that fire? And does it really catch? You can have the match, but if you don't have the fuel it's not going to go very far. And I really believe the American people are kind of getting tired.
What do you think the biggest challenge for election officials will be in 2024?
Simon: From my vantage point, it's disinformation and related to that is the possibility of declining confidence in the election. Disinformation is just one factor that can lead to that, but it's a pretty big one. And if it's infused with AI or deep fakes, then all the more reason to be wary.
Schwab: You’re asking that question on Feb. 9. Four years ago, on February 9, we didn't know a pandemic was coming. The great philosopher Yogi Berra once said ‘the problem with trying to predict the future is it keeps changing.’ I would say the unknown is probably the biggest concern. … Two and a half years ago, AI was just something that Hollywood talked about. And now it's like, ‘oh, this is a thing.’ … I would say AI is going to be a bigger concern in 2026 and ‘28, than it is in 2024 because it is an infant. When we got the iPhone it came out with 150 applications. They didn’t know what you could use it for. We don't know what we can and shouldn't be using AI for.
What about physical security for election workers? One of your colleagues was recently swatted. Has that environment changed since 2020?
Schwab holds up a photo of an envelope that looked inflated, with his home address hand-written on it.
Schwab: [This letter] was in my mailbox. That just looks threatening. In 2019, I would have just opened it. I called my staff, they called the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, they came out. It was a guy that didn't want my Christmas card anymore! He folded it … and the cardstock opened up. And he addressed it with my address with no name and the return address was my address with no name. He's just trying to send a statement that “I don’t want to be on your Christmas list anymore.” But my neighbors are really pissed off at me because the subdivision was shut down for two hours.
But that's kind of the environment now. Fentanyl is being weaponized. Swatting is a concern. … And we have to take it for real. The best outcome, it’s a folded up Christmas card.
Simon: I'm not as concerned about poll workers on Election Day because we have precautions and procedures in the polling place and a perimeter around. But in terms of the people who do the job the other 364 days of the year, the election administrators in counties and cities, we have had some concerns.
We've had some incidents — thankfully, isolated — but some have had incidents, threats, harassment, intimidation. So we went to the legislature last year, we got a law passed that provides a lot more tools to make that kind of stuff unlawful — If it's interference. If you have a strong opinion, you want to use salty language, that's fine. That's the First Amendment. But if you're going to interfere, right?
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