New election integrity documents

Election integrity is back in the spotlight as the White House released a trove of election data last night. Here to break it all down for us is our political contributor, Boyce Olson. Hi, Boyce. Thanks for joining me. Great to be here, Courtney. Okay, so the White House was promising a bombshell with this release. Is that what we got? I don't think it was a bombshell. I think there was new information. And I think it cuts two ways. One is, it feeds this conspiracy theory. It feeds this distrust of our election system, which is really important to Trump's base. One of the things in midterms is that Trump's base doesn't show up. They haven't shown up before. In fact, you'll find billboards in greater Minnesota that say, if you voted for Donald Trump in 2024, we need you to vote in the midterms from conservative groups. And so they want to keep his base energized. Second, it contradicts some of the behavior of the federal government. I did an interview with Secretary of State Steve Simon last week, and he says they're not getting the intelligence briefings here. He's not seeing the precautions taking about foreign interference in this election that the federal government and homeland security have done before. So I think the White House and the Trump political team know what they're trying to do. But I think the voters and independents want to make sure, no matter what side of the aisle you're on, that we can trust these elections. So was there any evidence in there that could support Republicans' claims that the 2020 election was stolen? I didn't see anything new in that election or in the data that would say that. I think we have to just go back to 2000, the Gore-Bush recount. There's been questions in multiple elections in a row now for 26 years. And the reality is the questions are always raised by who wins or who loses. But I think that's where the 2020 election in particular and Trump's insistence on it loses a little bit of its shine because so many of his own people said that they couldn't find anything at the time. And now as we look forward, setting up the narrative for the upcoming election, I think, is an even more concerning strategy that I think people will push back on. And even people within his own party with the SAVE Act not moving in Congress, things like that, I think, create this idea that there's going to be questions about the election, even whether or not there should be upcoming. So what I hear you saying is this primetime address, this dump of data, it was all political. I think for the large part it was. China was new. Okay. Let's face it. That was new. But so much of it was redacted. I don't know that we learned anything new. I think in the interest of democracy, people are going to begin to demand some sort of independent bipartisan blue panel, blue ribbon panel that really looks at what's real and what's not. I think if there was evidence about China in 2020, then would it matter? And that's the other thing. Would it matter? Because we're in 2026. We have a midterm and then we have a presidential election in two years. And Donald Trump ultimately got to serve his two years, his two terms as president. And I think most Americans are going to be fine with just two terms. I do want to talk about China because that was arguably the most concerning part of the address and what we're expecting to see in the data last night, because Trump claimed that there is evidence that China is accessing voter information and interfering in the election. Like I said, by face value, that sounds really concerning. What evidence did you see of that in the actual data that was released after his address? Look, I think they confirmed that China is trying to do this, but this is no different than Russia in 2016 or Iran this year. There's no doubt we've heard for years that wars were going to move online and cyber related. And I think that our enemies would want to interfere with our elections. So I'm not saying they wouldn't want to. I'm saying that it's up to the federal government to protect us from it. And by the way, if they interfered in the 2020 election, that was Trump's intelligence department, that was Trump's CIA, that was Trump's administration. And so what did they do not to prevent it? Ultimately, what we have to do is we have to have a system that everybody trusts. We also have to remind people that states and local jurisdictions run elections. The federal government doesn't, but the federal government can step in to make sure that all of our local governments and our local jurisdictions have the tools they need to keep our elections secure. But was there evidence in the data that China has been accessing our voting systems? Nothing that I saw as much as what was redacted and what might come out in an intelligence briefing. And these are sensitive issues. We do not want to let them know everything we know if we're going to protect ourselves. As somebody who's dealt with cyber situations for companies, you don't always say everything you know, because it's going to let the hackers know you know a lot and then maybe what you don't. And I'm guessing our federal government feels the same way. OK, let's talk about the security of voting machines, because that seemed to be a big topic as well in this data dump. What did the evidence show? Look, there are some vulnerabilities, but there's never been a methodical way in which voting machines have been tampered or hacked. That has been proven that people have tried to bring that evidence to court. Republican judges, Democratic judges have thrown that out. I think the voting machines all do have a paper record in Minnesota, and I think that's what voters need to know. But I really do think that the timing of this and the narrative here is and the way you would do it in a primetime address is something that suggests that this was more than just about getting it out there. It was about trying to capture the nation's attention in July of an election year. And what did the data say about noncitizen voting? There is clearly noncitizens who are registered to vote, and it's across multiple states. The difference is they don't seem to be voting at any sort of level that is a suspect to influencing an election. And this is where the Republicans and around the SAVE Act have some kind of credence. They have credibility. In Minnesota in 2012, we rejected voter ID, a photo proof to vote. But I think there's enough people and there's been enough questions raised that people think, look, I have to show ID to buy liquor. I have to show ID to do a lot of things. Why not just add that to the list of things for voting? And the numbers and the hyperbole that comes out of both sides on that, I think, kind of clouds what common sense and what independents would want is just make sure that it's credible, that they're not voting, and that they can't get registered to vote in order to eliminate that stuff. And I think that seems like a reasonable thing to most people. So overall, did this data change anything about our understanding of elections? No, I don't think it did. I don't spend hours and days studying the way in which the systems work until kind of closer to Election Day. But, you know, I did interview the secretary of state last week. He said that the systems are all systems go here, that there were no new threats that he had been made aware of. But I'm guessing that all secretaries of state and local election officials are going to make sure that they're doubling down on security this election. And was Minnesota one of the states that shared voter, all this information with D.C., or were they one of the states that said no thanks? Minnesota has not shared its entire voter record with D.C. Steve Simon has refused to do that. He said that he would share information if it was, you know, if there was evidence. But I think that's another place where, you know, whose data is it? If the state runs the election, then it's state data. And, Courtney, you know, our viewers know, ultimately, this is all about political posturing and not giving an inch, even if it were to, you know, settle up some sort of dispute. But I think that's what we can't have that undermines trust in democracy right now. And so Minnesotans trust their elections. And until somebody waves a huge red flag about something major that could have flipped a race, I think it's tough for the Trump team and Republicans to, you know, undermine that credibility. And Steve Simon has said that he's not getting the same communication from the Trump administration that he used to, right? Yeah, I did a full 35 minute interview with him last week. You can find it at Sunday Take. But yeah, no, there's there. He's not getting the information. They're not getting the briefings. But the state has stepped up to spend the money to at least make sure that we're secure when it comes to the systems and the way in which you might breach our voter data in Minnesota. Right. Bloy Solson, I so appreciate you joining us. Thanks, Courtney. See you soon. All right. That was our political contributor, Bloy Solson on the dump of election data that the White House released last night.