Inside the GOP and Democratic Ground Game in Pennsylvania and Other Swing States, with Scott Presler and David Callahan ｜ Ep. 906
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Summary
With just over a month to go before Election Day, the latest stats show nearly 1 million votes have already been cast in the states that allow early voting. How are both parties getting ready to get voters out to the polls and to vote for Team Red or Team Blue? In this episode, we're talking to two people who are totally keyed in to this issue: One supports the Trump/Vance ticket, the other supports the Harris/Wales ticket. And we begin the show with Scott Pressler, founder and executive director of Early Vote Action.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.
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Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
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With just over one month to go before Election Day, the latest stats show nearly one million votes have already been cast.
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We've been talking a lot on the show about the battleground states that will likely determine the next president
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and ground game. Who's got a better ground game in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
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Perhaps no state is more important, as you know, in this election than Pennsylvania with its 19 electoral votes.
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And the latest polling there shows the race is tied.
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So we really want to drill down on the get out the vote effort on both sides.
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How are both parties getting ready to get voters out to the polls and to vote for Team Red or Team Blue?
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In this episode, we're talking to two people who are totally keyed in to this issue on the ground game in America.
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And we begin the show with Scott Pressler, founder and executive director of Early Vote Action.
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His group is currently zeroing in on, yes, Pennsylvania.
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All right, so all you hear is that the Democrats are the ones with the amazing ground game,
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And that Trump hasn't been pushing early voting enough, so the Republicans are too dependent on day of voting,
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whereas the Democrats will have banked millions of votes prior to then.
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We are looking at the number of early votes already cast in the states that allow early voting.
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NBC News reports today that, as of right now, it's just short of 1,887,207 mail-in and early in-person votes have been cast nationally.
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So far, 52% of those are from registered Dems, 31% from registered Republicans, 17% other.
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So what are you seeing, thinking, and feeling about the Republicans' ground game?
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Well, again, my organization is Early Vote Action, and all of our time, talent, and energy is going just to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
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We have 50, 5-0 paid field staff on the ground all across Pennsylvania's 67 counties.
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And I want to dispel any myths right here and now that there is no ground game.
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I'm a data guy, so let's go over the numbers for a second, Megan.
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In 2016, the Democrats had an advantage of nearly 1 million more D's than R's.
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Fast forward to 2020, that D-to-R advantage was narrowed down to 650,000.
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And Pennsylvania was ultimately decided by a very narrow 80,000 votes with the mail-in ballots and everything else that was going on.
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Now, where are we today, and how is 2024 different?
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That advantage of D over R has been narrowed down to 333,000.
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We have cut in half the Democrat advantage in just four years' time.
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And if you take out inactive voters, Megan, people that haven't voted in, say, four years or eight years, that number is just 160,000.
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And if I were the Democrats, I would be very worried that their voter registration numbers continue to decrease even after the so-called Taylor Swift endorsement.
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Now, let's also talk about briefly the mail-in ballot situation.
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I'm here to tell you, and this is based on Cliff Maloney, his group is great, P.A. Chase, they're the ones that are going to be knocking on doors and chasing all of those votes.
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The Democrats are down 416,000 mail-in ballot requests from where they were four years ago at the same time.
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And they're down 416,000 mail-in ballot requests.
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So, Republicans, in my humble, objective opinion, are in the best place possible to actually win Pennsylvania and, therefore, the presidency this November.
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Is it just about canvassing, knocking on people's doors and saying, hey, are you registered to vote?
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That 80,000 number, I want everybody to write that on a chalkboard in your brain.
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Let's talk about conservative groups that support our values but may not vote in elections.
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There are 80,000 truckers in Pennsylvania alone.
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Truckers, they are busy serving us, the American people.
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And, in fact, I spoke with a wife whose husband, a Pennsylvania truck driver, did not vote in 2020 because he was working.
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And so, especially for our beautiful truckers, we are pushing them to get a mail-in ballot.
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We are pushing them to vote early in the election to make sure that they lock in those votes if they're not going to be home on November 5th.
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Now, eligible voters is probably more around 40,000.
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But I know in the 2020 election, only 2,000 Amish voted.
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We are making a concerted effort, not only going to these service plazas to reach the truckers in Pennsylvania, setting up a voter registration table.
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But I'll tell you, every Tuesday, you will see us at Roots Country Market in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the major hub of the Amish.
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Every Friday, Ryan Sexton, a member of my team, is at the Green Dragon Farmers Market with a voter registration table, meeting voters where they are, courting the vote, talking about the fact that Democrat Governor Josh Shapiro is waging a war on school choice and religious freedom and small businesses and raw milk and dairy and farmers.
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And let me tell you, after Tim Walz admitted to lying on national television about his stolen valor the other night during the vice presidential debate, veterans do not take kindly to stolen valor.
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And veterans, furthermore, do not take kindly to the Biden-Kamala Harris debacle of pulling out of Afghanistan, which caused 13 Gold Star families.
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And then Kamala had the nerve to attack those Gold Star families when President Trump celebrated those families and the lives of the fallen soldiers at the Arlington Cemetery.
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So, we are going, Megan, to the VFW halls, meeting the veterans where they are.
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And last, and probably what I think is the most consequential group that we are making an effort to reach are our beautiful hunters and Second Amendment enthusiasts.
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30% of Pennsylvania hunters are not registered to vote.
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That means that there are 300,000 hunters in Pennsylvania that are not registered.
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So, we have been going to GunShowTrader.com the last year, visiting every single gun show, going to every single gun store, archery range.
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And we are even advertising in a newspaper article to 16,000 federal firearms licensed organizations and companies.
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So, our motto at EarlyVoteAction.com is to meet the voter, to get them registered to vote, to follow up with them, and actualize them.
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So, let's say you get them, you get the Amish, you get the truckers, you get the hunters, they're registered in a way they hadn't been.
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So, now you have to make sure they vote, right?
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You either have to get them a mail-in ballot if they're a trucker and they can't make it, or you have to make sure on election day they get off the sofa or they get out of their job and they spend the time standing.
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Because that seems like something the Democrats are good at.
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I remember the stories about getting John Fetterman elected and how many people brought buses to Pennsylvania to get people on board, drive them to the polling station, and it was all Democrats.
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President Obama had the model in 2008 when he first ran.
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So, whenever we register someone to vote, Megan, we get their first name, last name, email address, phone number, home address.
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And so, a crucial component when I'm talking to my team and volunteers is you are not done registering a voter until that voter has voted.
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And so, our team, when we're registering someone to vote, we ask every single person, are you going to be in town on Tuesday, November 5th?
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Do you have a job that takes you outside of the state?
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And if they do, then we have them sign up for a mail-in ballot.
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And I'm very proud to say that two counties in particular that we've been working on, Pike and Wayne counties in Northeast Pennsylvania,
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they are the top two most producing Republican counties per registered Republican that have requested more mail-in ballots than the Democrats.
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And these are red, rural areas where normally Republicans are vehemently opposed to mail-in voting.
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But our education, our meeting the voter, our courting the voter is producing real, tangible results.
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And one last part of that that I think is very important is, in talking to our beautiful Amish, there's kind of a stigma that they shouldn't be voting.
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We're using the Democrat strategy of mail-in with the Amish.
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And when I tell the Amish that they can vote a private, secret ballot that is mailed to their house,
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and they don't have to have their buggy scene going to a polling location, they love the mail-in ballot.
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And I can tell you tangibly that we are out registering the Democrats in terms of mail-in ballots in Mifflin County,
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an Amish county in the center of the state, and Juniata County, an Amish county in the center of the state.
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And last, I want to make it clear, if President Trump does a rally during a weekday,
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we are going to be busing people from whatever county he's doing a rally in to a board of elections to vote early.
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So we are basically doing a lot of the Democrat activities just to elect Republicans.
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My gosh, the Amish, are they even allowed to use a voting machine?
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I don't know, like, aren't they, don't they eschew all electronics?
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So isn't really only mail-in balloting for them or bust?
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Well, Governor Shapiro, thank you, because a mail-in ballot is a paper ballot,
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and they don't even have to use an electronic machine in order to cast their vote.
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So again, we are using mail-in ballots, knowing that the Amish get married on Tuesdays in November,
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which happens to coincide with Election Day, to lock in those votes.
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Oh, Scott, I could just see you, like, bombing in, you're like a wedding crash,
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or a new version of wedding crash at all the Amish wedding book.
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Could you just sign this card for the bride and groom, and also this voting form?
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But now, talk to me about what's happening in the other states, because he, you know,
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they say it all comes down to Pennsylvania, but realistically, it doesn't.
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He's going to have to get 270 to win, or she is.
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They're tight, tight, tight in North Carolina, Nevada.
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Trump lost Nevada in 16 and 20, though it's still in play.
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She matched his no taxes on tips thing, which that helped her.
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Well, what is the, what is a pathway to victory?
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And Georgia, with Governor Kemp, I know he's not the most conservative in terms of the President
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Trump fan base, but we have made strides in election integrity in the state of Georgia.
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And the fact that we performed well in the midterms, reelecting Governor Kemp, I think
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Georgia is probably one of the most easy sunbelt states for us to win.
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And by sunbelt, I mean North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada.
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Now, I was feeling really good about North Carolina because not only, similar to Pennsylvania,
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have we cut the Democrat advantage in voter registration in half, but the Democrats, they
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are underperforming in terms of mail-in ballots.
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They are underperforming in terms of early voting in North Carolina.
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Now, however, I'm very concerned, and God bless every family that is suffering at the
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tragedy of the hurricane and water damage and losing a home.
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And I have to say, the area that has been affected the most is Western North Carolina.
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I want to hear, A, what are we doing to help all of these people that are suffering this
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tragedy? But B, most importantly, if we are going to rebuild their lives and have an economy
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that works for a working class America, we must reelect President Trump.
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I want to hear from everybody in North Carolina.
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How are we going to help these families and make sure that Western North Carolina has the
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Because if Western North Carolina, the Asheville area, does not come out, we may not win the
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North Carolina presidency for the Electoral College for President Trump.
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We may lose the gubernatorial election as well.
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And so it's critical that we have a plan this next month getting those WNC people out to vote.
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The gubernatorial election does not look good in the wake of that Mark Robinson scandal.
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He's polling some, I don't know, more than double digits, well, double digits behind his
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There could be many, and the Republicans are banking on there being many ticket splitters
00:17:03.680
who might not vote for Robinson, but who will nonetheless show up for Trump.
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As a guy in your position, I assume you have to argue the positions with people, reluctant
00:17:15.140
voters who are like, I'm not voting for a guy who said he wanted to bring back slavery,
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even though he's a black man, I'm not doing it.
00:17:22.680
Do you say, well, but there's still Trump at the top, like, get there anyway?
00:17:27.620
Listen, President Trump needs a Republican House, he needs a Republican Senate, and he
00:17:35.180
In the wake of COVID, when governors had the power of whether or not they were going to be
00:17:41.320
dictatorial and tyrannical or open their states like Governor Kemp did in Georgia, I think the
00:17:46.560
American people understand the importance of winning the governor's mansion, and especially
00:17:51.740
with a state like Virginia, the Commonwealth of Virginia, where I formerly lived, but I'm
00:17:56.060
now living in Pennsylvania to vote for Donald Trump, that the governor has the power to get
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illegal aliens off the voter rolls to fight for election integrity.
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The only thing that matters is ballots into boxes.
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The only thing that matters is on Tuesday, November 5th.
00:18:14.040
And if any of you watching the Megyn Kelly show right now are feeling nervous about this
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Let me ask you, because I've had so many people, friends of mine here in Connecticut say,
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Donald Trump is not going to win Connecticut, but we're so close to Pennsylvania.
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And so how can people help who are not from Pennsylvania?
00:18:45.640
Well, I do have a wonderful man in Connecticut.
00:18:51.420
And he's on his way to Pennsylvania right now to Pike County, to Milford, an area that
00:18:58.480
we have an opportunity to flip a congressional seat from blue to red.
00:19:01.740
And he's going to be outside of a post office with us registering voters and helping to court
00:19:06.660
voters where they are for the next until the deadline on October 21st.
00:19:10.920
And so we've got people coming from New York, coming from West Virginia, coming from Maryland.
00:19:15.980
And a lot of these blue states, with all due respect to them, the things that matter are
00:19:21.600
Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, the swing states.
00:19:25.100
So if you are feeling hopeless or helpless in a blue state, I want you to reach out to
00:19:31.380
Go to my X account, which is at Scott Pressler, S-C-O-T-T-P-R-E-S-1-S-L-E-R.
00:19:37.000
Slide into my DMs in the most wholesome manner.
00:19:39.380
And I will connect you with a member of my team all across the Commonwealth.
00:19:42.560
And if you are unable to travel, which I understand, then you can download my app.
00:19:54.260
You, from the comfort of your home, can send text messages.
00:20:01.460
I want to give a shout out to a woman named Marcella.
00:20:03.600
She's a grandmother in California, deep blue Cali.
00:20:07.040
She has written, Megan, 2,000 postcards handwritten from Cali into Pennsylvania, helping us to
00:20:18.940
And so whether you're in a deep red state like Alabama and you want to do more, download
00:20:24.280
Whether you're in a blue state like Connecticut or Rhode Island, download the Early Vote Action
00:20:36.040
Because she, boy, oh boy, she's taken in a lot of dough.
00:20:39.860
The latest number that I see here is 690 million.
00:21:01.180
From the outside groups, she's outraised him too.
00:21:09.000
Though of the top 10 super PACs, I guess Trump is edging her there.
00:21:14.120
In any event, I'm trying to, it looks like she's got a considerable financial advantage
00:21:20.940
Well, it reminds me of 2016 when we were facing a similar fundraising juggernaut.
00:21:28.900
And I believe Kamala is a less likable, less accomplished Hillary Clinton 2.0.
00:21:45.580
The fact that we are, let me give you the data for the last seven days in Pennsylvania
00:21:51.760
Despite all this dough you're talking about, despite endorsements from Taylor Swift, despite
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everything, the entire machine the Democrats have for them, the Democrats in the last week
00:22:01.100
in Pennsylvania only registered 7,600 new voters for their party.
00:22:07.720
Republicans, on the other hand, on the contrary, registered 12,500.
00:22:13.980
We are nearly doubling them in terms of voter registration.
00:22:19.960
I'm looking at things like action, like data, like science.
00:22:23.440
And I think everything is pointing in the right direction that this election, I think, is Trump's
00:22:31.460
So when you see the polls super tight, like I said, the real clear politics average,
00:22:37.280
of polls in Pennsylvania, literally the same right now, totally even, what does that just
00:22:45.160
not comport with the reality you're seeing on the ground?
00:22:47.980
Or you are still in the position of, no, it's tied, which is why you need every single individual
00:22:54.020
to make sure they leave their Amish wedding and cast a ballot, stop their trucks and cast
00:23:01.420
Look, in 2016, Hillary was, what, 10 points ahead in Pennsylvania.
00:23:08.160
In 2020, I think Joe Biden was like four points, five points ahead.
00:23:12.280
I think the fact that they are tied with real, clear politics shows you exactly what I'm saying,
00:23:18.820
that the fact that it is tied, there are going to be a lot of conservatives that aren't answering
00:23:24.660
And again, guys, the point of a poll is to depress and to discourage or it's to contrive
00:23:34.000
I believe, quite frankly, that the polls were made really high for President Trump with Joe
00:23:41.380
Biden in order to force the Democrats and give more credibility to pushing him out and
00:23:47.740
The polls are only a tool used to either discourage, depress, divide, or encourage one group to
00:23:56.400
The only thing that matters, guys, is ballots into boxes.
00:24:00.120
The last day to register voters is on October 21st in Pennsylvania.
00:24:03.820
You use every single gosh darn day to court voters and lock in those votes on Tuesday, November
00:24:21.820
What are the Dems doing and how are they feeling?
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00:26:01.900
Now, the other side of the coin, the Democrats.
00:26:04.840
We know that the Harris-Wallace ticket has a clear fundraising advantage.
00:26:08.640
However, some are warning that Team Blue is not spending its money entirely wisely,
00:26:13.120
saying more needs to be done to engage, in particular, Black, Latino, and young voters.
00:26:23.960
His organization is helping engage those very voters and recently issued a memo to the vice
00:26:28.980
president about its concerns when it comes to those voting blocs.
00:26:35.780
Okay, so I was just talking to my previous guest who's trying to get Republicans registered.
00:26:41.940
And what I said to him is what I say to you, which is people talk about, I hear it everywhere,
00:26:50.040
Thanks to Barack Obama, this juggernaut was put in place and that they're just better at
00:26:56.360
Now, Scott Pressler, my first guest, who's like hauled up in Pennsylvania only, says he's
00:27:03.680
Just give me like the 30,000-foot perspective on that notion as we start.
00:27:09.460
Well, so the way to understand it is that, yes, the Democrats have a very powerful ground
00:27:16.900
On the one hand, you have the Harris-Walls campaign with all of their offices and battleground
00:27:24.340
There's more than 250 offices that the campaign has opened up.
00:27:33.200
And then there's the second track, which is progressive grassroots groups.
00:27:37.100
A lot of these groups have really scaled up since 2016.
00:27:41.120
After that election, people felt like, wow, we clearly need to invest a lot more in mobilizing
00:27:47.780
our voters since that election was lost by such a razor-thin margin in 2016.
00:27:53.820
And that progressive ground game has a lot going for it, hundreds of different groups,
00:28:02.900
So that money that she gets, I mean, that she's taken in, the stats are her campaign had
00:28:08.620
raised 690 million, but she also has PAC money of hundreds of millions from the PAC.
00:28:16.020
So does that not go to any of those progressive ground game groups?
00:28:25.040
So if you think about what the money that's raised by the Democratic establishment groups
00:28:30.820
is spent on, that would be the Harris-Walls campaign, the different candidates who are
00:28:35.820
running in the states like Senate candidates, and also those super PACs like Future Forward,
00:28:54.220
I mean, hundreds of billions of dollars that's going to that air war.
00:28:57.480
But some also goes quite a bit this year to that ground game that Harris-Walls campaign
00:29:05.560
However, the campaign does not share its money with these progressive grassroots groups.
00:29:13.680
It's not like, hey, here's $50 million and go turn out Latino voters in Arizona or Black
00:29:21.940
That's not really the way things work, in part because there's legal restrictions for such
00:29:28.040
A big part of the problem is the choices that donors make.
00:29:31.080
Most Democratic donors don't know much about these progressive grassroots groups that are
00:29:38.960
And so they just give money to the Harris-Walls campaign and to the future PACs that they're
00:29:45.400
How do you know how your numbers stack up against the Republicans?
00:29:49.920
I didn't ask Scott that in terms of offices and staffers.
00:29:53.580
Yeah, well, that has been a subject of a lot of investigation and confusion.
00:30:01.120
I think that the extent of the Republican ground game is unknown.
00:30:08.200
There's a number of different ground game groups on the Republican side that are working
00:30:15.520
The Trump campaign itself doesn't have a strong ground game.
00:30:19.080
It's largely outsourced that work to groups like America PAC, which is an Elon Musk-backed
00:30:26.220
Turning Point Action, which is the sort of C4 arm of Turning Point USA.
00:30:33.620
You know, the Koch network, Americans for Prosperity, they have a ground game, but it's largely focused
00:30:43.640
But we don't get a lot of hard and fast numbers.
00:30:48.060
Politico just published a major article on this recently where they went out and talked
00:30:52.160
to a lot of Republican operatives in different battleground states.
00:30:56.220
And those people said, hey, you know, we're not seeing a lot of evidence of this Republican
00:31:00.880
We're very concerned, particularly about how that might affect down-ballot candidates who
00:31:14.060
I mean, would it typically have been the RNC and the DNC, like in years past?
00:31:21.820
Well, normally you have the RNC and the presidential nominee working in close concert to field a strong
00:31:30.560
That's certainly what you have on the Democratic side.
00:31:33.160
The, you know, the ground game that Harris-Walls has put together is controlled by the Harris-Walls
00:31:43.680
And in turn, there's coordination between the Harris-Walls campaign and the DNC and state
00:31:48.800
Democratic parties, which play an important role here too.
00:31:52.440
Like in Wisconsin, for example, the Democratic State Party of Wisconsin has raised over $30 million
00:31:58.940
for its operations, including a lot of field work.
00:32:04.000
So in the best case scenario, you have, you know, these national Democratic campaigns and
00:32:09.220
parties working very close in coordination with state parties and down-ballot candidates,
00:32:17.900
There's Senate, you know, races in almost all the battleground states.
00:32:21.800
And we're not seeing that on the Republican side this year, that we can make out.
00:32:34.860
What efforts do they have in place to get out the ground game?
00:32:37.700
And you could be overwhelmed on election day with, wow, it was amazing.
00:32:43.900
Or you could be underwhelmed and thinking, well, it's just as disorganized and in disarray
00:32:52.860
Well, there's going to be a lot of surprises, I'm sure, as there have been in past elections,
00:33:00.340
And keep in mind that Trump's own theory of turnout, as best we can tell, is that he is
00:33:09.100
He is the person who inspires a lot of low propensity voters on the Republican side to
00:33:17.280
I mean, remember, a lot of what an effective ground game does is it goes after those people
00:33:22.480
who may or may not vote or who need persuasion to vote for your party, right?
00:33:28.400
So you want to put your effort into those kinds of people.
00:33:32.340
And Trump's theory has been that, hey, people are so eager for a different kind of
00:33:39.020
candidate, somebody like me, that they'll come out and vote for the first time in years.
00:33:49.320
And in 2020, he increased his vote share, his number of votes by 13 million over his 2016
00:33:59.940
But the concern of many Republicans is, you know, with these razor thin margins,
00:34:07.080
every single vote counts and you can't leave any votes on the table.
00:34:11.880
I mean, remember, if you had switched around 42,000 votes in the last election, Trump would
00:34:18.480
I mean, Biden won that election in the Electoral College very narrowly, 10,000 votes or so in
00:34:27.720
I mean, this is this is where your ground game really kicks in if those are the kinds
00:34:35.900
What you guys do is positively vital to what's going to happen in this election.
00:34:43.700
So when you look at it, talk to me a little bit, if you if you would, about the polling,
00:34:48.440
because what the experts have told me in the past is that national popular vote, generally
00:34:54.200
speaking, needs to be, let's say, five points in favor of the Democrats in order for Democrats
00:35:00.280
to be feeling good on the Electoral College, that just the way voting works and given the
00:35:06.400
Democratic advantage in the cities and the urban centers, generally you want to see a
00:35:10.280
lead by the Dem of about five or six points going in.
00:35:13.100
And that will probably suggest a lead in the critical swing states that will lead to Electoral
00:35:18.600
Right now, what we're seeing is that she does have a lead in the Electoral College, not that
00:35:24.740
But these swing state polls, I mean, ask on a different day, you'll get a different answer,
00:35:34.540
I don't remember an election which they're just so uniformly tight, maybe little tiny moves
00:35:42.680
It tells us that we have a highly polarized electorate and there's not a lot of people
00:35:50.300
And, you know, in August, for a couple of weeks, there was this tantalizing sense among
00:35:56.900
Democrats that Harris could really break out and open up a commanding lead.
00:36:01.720
And we'd see something similar to what happened in 2008 with Obama, who got a big lead and then
00:36:11.860
She certainly reversed a lot of Biden's weaknesses, but the election has basically been deadlocked
00:36:19.340
And the crazy thing about the polls and the reason this is so nerve wracking, I think,
00:36:23.700
for people on both sides, is that they were wrong in 2020, that, you know, they underestimated
00:36:31.320
Trump's strength in 2020, just as they did in 2016.
00:36:39.300
So they underestimated the extent of Democratic strength.
00:36:44.260
Everybody was talking about that red wave that never materialized and Democrats did a
00:36:49.940
So, you know, if you look at analysis of polls, there's there you can find the New York Times
00:36:55.200
has this of if the polls were as wrong as they were in 2020, this is what the outcome would
00:37:01.700
be, or if they were as wrong as they were in 20, 2022, this is what the outcome would be.
00:37:09.020
Can I one other one other point here, though, which is that the polls tell us what likely voters
00:37:15.040
say that their that they their choice would be.
00:37:18.400
What those polls don't tell us is who's going to actually show up.
00:37:22.420
So turnout is the big variable that polling cannot capture.
00:37:27.020
Well, on that front, can you talk to me about the mail in balloting?
00:37:31.940
Because traditionally, I mean, since we've been pushing more mail in balloting 2020, obviously
00:37:37.780
with COVID, but we've had a couple of elections thereafter.
00:37:39.920
The Democrats have been much better about that, in part because Trump doesn't like it.
00:37:46.820
And while he's kind of said a couple of times, yeah, do it.
00:37:56.140
Whereas every Republican operative on the ground is saying, for the love of God, please do mail
00:38:07.160
Do you think the Democrats still have a big advantage on the mail in balloting where their
00:38:15.460
Although there's likely to be less mail in balloting this time around than there was in
00:38:19.440
2020 because we don't have a pandemic going on, which is one of the big changes from the
00:38:29.160
But I think I'm sorry to interrupt you, but have rules been changed to tamp that down?
00:38:36.180
People are just more willing to vote in person because there's there's no pandemic
00:38:41.480
And so the imperative to vote by mail is not what it was that many people felt in 2020.
00:38:49.000
The big advantages that mail in voting gives, as well as early voting, which is another
00:38:56.220
major factor here, early voting is already underway in multiple states.
00:39:00.520
And this really helps whoever has the strong ground game, because what these ground game
00:39:05.940
groups do is every day they get a list of who has voted.
00:39:10.780
They don't it doesn't say, you know, who who those voters voted for, but it does say who
00:39:16.220
And then they cross those people off the list and don't focus their get out the vote effort
00:39:24.000
Instead, they go after those people who haven't yet voted early or who have not yet turned
00:39:31.260
And so, you know, the Democrats are in a strong position to effectively win this election in
00:39:38.140
October by really bearing down on those in those early voting states and through the mail
00:39:45.720
and balloting to try to bank as many votes as possible before Election Day.
00:39:54.460
Do you think we will know who won on election night?
00:39:59.620
Thanks to Pennsylvania not allowing all the ballots to be opened and counted until Election
00:40:07.680
Day, probably not, assuming it all comes down to Pennsylvania, which could well be the case.
00:40:12.820
And so in Pennsylvania, there's been legislative attempts to allow the election authorities to
00:40:22.200
start opening and counting ballots before Election Day.
00:40:27.860
And so what we saw last year in Pennsylvania was this frantic effort to count huge numbers
00:40:35.200
of mail-in ballots that went on for a few days.
00:40:44.100
And it could really leave people on pins and needles for a while.
00:40:53.860
You know, I've seen photographs of these huge warehouses where they count the ballots and,
00:41:00.640
you know, counting hundreds of thousands of ballots by hand and tabulating them through
00:41:07.600
So but yeah, you would hope that they would just expand their capacity to do that.
00:41:14.100
Can you imagine the number of media trucks and cameras that are going to be outside of that
00:41:19.220
center if it all does come down to Pennsylvania this year?
00:41:22.940
Yeah, not to mention potentially violent protesters.
00:41:33.680
And there is a whole legal side of the election that doesn't get much attention.
00:41:39.820
But both sides have really lawyered up and have a large cadre of lawyers ready to go to
00:41:51.300
I mean, obviously, there's been a lot of controversy about that in Georgia with changes to the
00:41:58.340
So there's certainly things that can go wrong in a big way in this election.
00:42:04.660
And there was the Arizona misprinting the ballots a couple of years ago.
00:42:09.320
Things do tend to go wrong here or there, though, overall, it's, you know, comparatively smooth.
00:42:18.000
But yeah, there's the lawyers are always I remember when I was at Fox, Ben Ginsberg used
00:42:22.840
to be walking through the hallways before this, you know, big election lawyer.
00:42:26.700
And they always anticipated problems, especially after Bush v.
00:42:34.400
And there's a lot of threats against election workers.
00:42:36.920
I mean, this is a new phenomenon in our democracy that we've seen arise, you know, since 2020 and
00:42:43.180
even before with these almost all of them coming from the Republican side of these kind of MAGA
00:42:50.040
accolites who've been fed a lot of misinformation and have threatened the lives of election workers.
00:42:56.000
It's not such a great job to be an election worker these days.
00:43:02.600
And that kind of getting the manpower to do this large work of administrating these elections
00:43:13.900
The MAGA folks that should volunteer for the job and get the training and make sure that
00:43:17.340
they're in there and they can count just as well as anybody else, you know, instead of
00:43:21.340
complaining about it, go and go do something productive about it.
00:43:24.980
Scott Pressler was talking about Pennsylvania and everything may come down to Pennsylvania.
00:43:29.260
And he was saying one glimmer of hope for his side is that the number of registry registered
00:43:35.920
voters for the Democrats, the advantage, which was one million, he said, in
00:43:41.140
I think it was 16, a one million registered voter advantage has now been shrunk down to about
00:43:48.100
300,000 because they've had so many more Republicans register or the Democrats have moved out, what
00:43:58.800
You know, I've heard about that Republican registration advantage, not just in Pennsylvania,
00:44:04.800
but in other states, it was kind of hard to verify the claims and counterclaims.
00:44:11.140
I think one thing we do know is that many new voters are registering as independents, and that is by far the fastest growing segment of the registered electorate, and many of those are young people.
00:44:25.080
And so that is a kind of creates another wild card of you can't predict as easily.
00:44:35.560
And there's also, of course, quite a few Republicans who have crossed lines in recent years.
00:44:41.040
I mean, there's that, you know, Haley, 20 percent Haley vote.
00:44:44.860
And the big question is whether they're going to listen to Liz Cheney or listen to Haley, who has endorsed Trump.
00:44:52.300
Well, if you tell me a bunch of people have registered as independents in California and are voting in record numbers, I will say those are Republicans.
00:45:00.340
But if you're registering as an independent, just as a young person, the odds are you're probably a Democrat who's like maybe disaffected a little bit with Democrat policies, but young people tend to go blue.
00:45:12.600
And the only people who like in California, you're a Democrat, unless you call yourself an independent, in which case you're a closeted Republican.
00:45:20.800
OK, so you're the registration advantage you're seeing in a couple of states.
00:45:24.520
Before I let you go, can you just explain ballot harvesting to me?
00:45:27.580
This term gets thrown around and Republicans always complain that the Democrats do it.
00:45:33.220
But now I've seen more and more Republican groups saying we just also need to do it.
00:45:37.600
I don't fully understand what it is or whether it's legal and how it works.
00:45:46.220
It's often, you know, bandied about with allegations of fraud.
00:45:51.520
You know, the idea like you go to a nursing home and, you know, you get everybody who has ballots there.
00:45:59.700
I mean, there's a lot of allegations of fraud that Republicans have continually made.
00:46:05.820
Trump, of course, repeating that lie again and again and again.
00:46:10.120
And that just empirical evidence doesn't bear out that this is a significant problem.
00:46:16.440
And just to be clear, you're so you're not allowed to go.
00:46:19.520
So you could go to the nursing home, a guy like you in your position and say, would you
00:46:25.360
Like, but you can't actually take their ballots.
00:46:33.880
I don't know what the what the fine print says on this.
00:46:40.180
So some states will let a third party take somebody else's vote.
00:46:44.020
I thought it was only potentially in some states if it was an immediate family member.
00:46:51.020
I mean, in most states for a ballot to be accounted, it needs to be properly filled out.
00:46:58.360
It needs to be sealed in terms of a mail in ballot and how that ballot actually made its
00:47:03.680
way into the ballot box or to a polling station.
00:47:08.040
And I think there's a lot more wiggle room and flexibility around that.
00:47:18.360
I know you're saying you don't have the details, but this is what worries Republicans.
00:47:21.500
This is why they think many think that the Democrats cheat, that they're going to somehow
00:47:27.760
The mailbox is full of ballots that, you know, they filled out themselves.
00:47:33.200
Or presumably if they're fake ballots, like not real people or people who are ineligible
00:47:39.160
to vote, that's supposed to get caught on the receiving end.
00:47:44.060
But, you know, here in Connecticut, in Bridgeport, we had some mayor who was running for office
00:47:47.720
and his staff, like he was, it was this whole scandal.
00:47:55.220
And, you know, Republicans think this is how the Democrats win elections these days.
00:48:01.500
So what comfort, if any, can you provide that that's that doesn't work?
00:48:06.360
You know, there's just been hundreds of millions of ballots cast in the last eight years.
00:48:11.560
And when people, investigators go and try to find the incidence of voter fraud, it's negligible
00:48:21.480
I would point to the Ron DeSantis election, you know, security task force that he set up.
00:48:27.780
I mean, if there's ever going to be ballot harvesting and bad behavior, you would think
00:48:31.240
it would be in a place like Florida with all these nursing homes.
00:48:35.220
And that task force basically came up pretty empty handed.
00:48:40.300
And as there's been very few prosecutions that have been bought at the state level for
00:48:45.740
voter fraud and this kind of ballot harvesting that people are talking about.
00:48:49.860
So, you know, if you look around all these different states with, you know, hundreds of
00:48:54.220
millions of ballots cast in, you know, the last decade, and you look at how many voter
00:49:00.240
fraud prosecutions have been brought, it's just it's so negligible that I don't know why
00:49:05.420
this would remain a significant issue that continues to get a lot of attention.
00:49:12.820
I think we both know why it's getting a lot of attention because Trump believes it, right?
00:49:18.640
Now, if Trump wins this election, I think he'll say that problem has been miraculously
00:49:22.900
solved or at least overcome on the Republican side.
00:49:30.960
I guess you're feeling better today than you were when it was Joe Biden at the top of the
00:49:36.060
Have you seen have you felt the increase in enthusiasm of the people you're trying to get
00:49:44.160
There's a tremendous increase in enthusiasm and there's a tremendous increase in fundraising,
00:49:52.900
And there's been a big turnaround in the polling among key demographic groups that the Democrats
00:50:01.420
But, you know, Biden, Biden was really struggling with a lot of young voters, a lot of black
00:50:07.560
And Harris has turned much of that around, but she has not turned it all around.
00:50:11.980
So she's still polling way before way below where where Biden was in 2020 with Latino voters.
00:50:19.360
Black voters are not as locked down as as one might hope for.
00:50:23.900
If you're a Democrat, young voters, the lead there is not as significant as it was in 2020.
00:50:31.560
And these ground game organizations that I've been talking about that are in communities
00:50:35.940
and have built the trust to reach some of these kinds of voters are in the best position
00:50:41.720
to go out and really try to bring them around to voting for Harris.
00:50:47.080
You're saying that it's that second group of progressive ground game groups that are not
00:50:53.040
getting well funded, who are the ones who know the community can get people out.
00:51:01.280
David, thank you so much for your expertise and for walking us through it.
00:51:09.660
It's kind of crazy that we're so close, isn't it?
00:51:12.200
I mean, I feel like this campaign has been going on for three years.
00:51:15.220
How long ago was it that Trump went up at Mar-a-Lago with a long, long announcement?
00:51:32.020
We've had a presidential campaign going on for two years.
00:51:34.620
It used to always just be from the summer to November, like a few months.
00:51:39.980
And now we have almost a few years of presidential campaigning.
00:51:45.040
And by the way, if Trump wins, it's going to be even worse because he will be a one-term
00:51:52.940
And so the campaigning for, you know, whoever's going to take over after him will start early
00:52:03.180
I feel somewhat illuminated, somewhat comforted, and somewhat disturbed.
00:52:08.940
And on that note, thanks to all of you for joining us.
00:52:52.940
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