The RealClearPolitics Trustworthy Elections Project held three webinars to cover election issues that matter, but that the media has not substantively covered. For over two years, many in the media have talked about mail-in voting, but the discussion has just amounted to scare tactics and empty rhetoric. Few people understand how much power Secretaries of State have in elections, and that Secretaries of State can influence who is in the White House. The media has covered redistricting a lot over the last year, but now that all of the maps are in, the media will likely forget about intricacies of the redistricting process for a decade.
Mail-in Voting Webinar
This webinar took place on Monday, May 23rd at 3 pm EST. Todd Carney, an attorney who has written dozens of election pieces for Trustworthy Elections, moderated the panel. Panelists are:
Bradley Smith: Smith is a tenured law professor at Capital University’s law school. He has been in the academic sphere for about 30 years. Smith has written dozens of academic pieces on all aspects of election law. Smith also served as Chairman of the Federal Election Commission, and ruled in a manner that he viewed as academically consistent, rather than how the media wanted him to rule on election matters.
Michael Cohen: Cohen has a PhD in Political Science and Mass Communication, and has used his academic training to zero in on data science in elections. Cohen was one of the pioneers of utilizing data in elections. He has worked for the Republican Party of Florida, Gallup, the polling firm of prominent political pollster Tony Fabrizio. Cohen has also helped many corporate clients achieve their political goals. Cohen has appeared on numerous political shows and recently released a book that covered the latest innovations in elections.
Derek T. Muller: Muller is a Professor at the University of Iowa’s law school. Muller has been teaching for a little over a decade and has already become one of the leading experts on election law. Muller has taught at four different law schools. Muller has written over 50 pieces on election law and has participated in about 100 panels on the same matter. Muller has also submitted Amicus Briefs in some of the leading election law cases.
The media often treats voting by mail as some divine right, while dismissing all concerns about the process of mail-in voting as fringe or racist. The panel agreed that if the main goal in election administration is to make voting as streamlined and accessible as possible, simply focusing on increasing mail-in voting is not the best way to accomplish this goal. Mail frequently gets lost and further decentralizes counting of ballots. These shortcomings make it difficult to ensure everyone gets their ballots and that the ballots are counted in an accurate and timely manner. Despite the concerns over mail-in voting, the panel generally believed that some of the partisanship over mail-in voting will decrease in time. For some valid and invalid reasons, Conservatives grew to distrust mail-in voting in 2020. As a result, in the primaries, conservative voters are often waiting until election day to vote. But some Republican candidates have won by utilizing all of the forms of early voting. Future Republican candidates will likely increase their reliance on early voting, so long as the option is available to voters.
