Could you describe what – because I have to say it seems so preposterous to me as a sort of former lawyer – what he is suggesting in Alaska and what your sense is of the likelihood of success there?

Well, I think I was quoted in the New York Times as saying it was the – worst election law complaint I've ever read.

And I've said that, you know, it would get a failing grade.

So just to explain what's going on in Alaska, there's an incumbent senator.

His name is Dan Sullivan.

He's listed on the ballot as Dan S. Sullivan incumbent and listed as a Republican Party preferred voter, a preferred candidate, I should say.

And then there's another Dan Sullivan running.

Using the Fulton County, Georgia seizure as an example, can you explain to our audience what is in this guideline and specifically what it is intended to help judges avoid when they're hearing requests for these search warrants?

Is there a mechanism that would make sense for this? Just give me the

sense of it.

Yeah.

So the federal government maintains a database called the SAVE database.

And it's not so accurate, but it does contain some lists of who's counted as a citizen and a non-citizen.

And some states have been using this.

They've been voluntarily comparing their own lists to get information.

Is the basic idea of a national database of voters a good thing? I mean, I'm just trying to get a sense of like, were this done the right way, would it be something you would support?

What did he do? How did that turn out?

So President Trump has issued two executive orders on elections So in the first executive order, he tried to get a federal agency called the United States Election Assistance Commission to change the form that the federal government has for people to register to vote, to require people to provide documentary proof of citizenship, like a birth certificate or a naturalization certificate, before they can register to vote.

That effort was stopped by courts, which said that the president has no role to play in the conduct of elections.

That didn't deter the president.

He issued a second executive order in March of this year, and among other things, it created a whole system for the United States Postal Service to become the arbiters of which mail-in ballots they would accept from states.

And it was this very convoluted process.

First, it required the states to provide certain ballot envelope designs, and those had to be approved by the United States Postal Service.

Uh, now I don't-- This has never happened in a, as far as I know, in an ongoing vote, right?

Maybe you might not win, but do we have evidence in American history of, you know, sort of candidates in the gray zone being able to win elections with promises that are probably illegal under current law?

Well, so the first thing I should say is that even though a promise of something would be a thing of value that could violate a vote-buying law, there is a First Amendment limitation on prosecuting or otherwise penalizing a candidate for making public promises of benefits to voters.

This came up recently with Donald Trump at the Republican Midterm Convention, that if you elect Republicans to control the House and the Senate, every American over the age of 18 is going to get $5,000.

And I feel that a lot of Questions from reporters, you know, that certainly does seem like a thing of value.

So I don't think there's a question that that could be a benefit.

And yet, I think if there were any attempted prosecution by some state, since I don't expect Trump's own Justice Department to go after Trump, and certainly no one can go after Trump because of various immunities that the Supreme Court has bestowed on the president.

But, you know, if they did, I think there would be a strong First Amendment defense.

What's your response to that?

Should we be worried about voter fraud at all?

The Department of Homeland Security issued a press release about a month ago, and they said there are about a quarter of a million non-citizens on the voting rolls in four states.

One of those states was Nevada, and Nevada officials asked for the list, and eventually they got it.

The list had 16,000 people on it for the state of Nevada.

That number got whittled down to 185, and when those 185 were investigated, the total number of non-citizens on the rolls was zero.

Most of the time that we see non-citizens registering to vote or voting, it's because of an administrative mistake.

And it's worth pointing out, these are real problems and we need to fix them.

Listeners have probably heard that in California, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco impounded nearly 650,000 ballots after the November 2024 elections on the grounds of suspected fraud.

So tell us about Friday's Supreme Court decision, what it does and what it doesn't do.

Just to put it in perspective, I would say on a 1 to 10 scale, my concern about that Supreme Court ruling is a 2, where my concern about the earlier ruling about the US Postal Service was a 9 plus.

So just not everything the court does, even if it's bad, is consequential.

And this seems a little bit less consequential.

But I have to get into the weeds a little bit to explain why.

We have this decentralized system.

States are the ones that keep their voting rolls.

Is there actually any evidence for that?

So tell us about Friday's Supreme Court decision, what it does and what it doesn't do.

Just to put it in perspective, I would say on a 1 to 10 scale, my concern about that Supreme Court ruling is a 2, where my concern about the earlier ruling about the US Postal Service was a 9 plus.

So just not everything the court does, even if it's bad, is consequential.

And this seems a little bit less consequential.

But I have to get into the weeds a little bit to explain why.

We have this decentralized system.

States are the ones that keep their voting rolls.

Is there actually any evidence for that?

tell us about Friday's Supreme Court decision, what it does and what it doesn't do.

Just to put it in perspective, I would say on a 1 to 10 scale, my concern about that Supreme Court ruling is a 2, where my concern about the earlier ruling about the US Postal Service was a 9 plus.

So just not everything the court does, even if it's bad, is consequential.

And this seems a little bit less consequential.

But I have to get into the weeds a little bit to explain why.

We have this decentralized system.

States are the ones that keep their voting rolls.

Is there actually any evidence for that?

These are the things that I am worrying about right now.

So the first thing to say is that we shouldn't catastrophize everything.

And because elections are not run by Donald Trump, but they're run by state and local election administrators, election administrators who are, for the most part, professionalized and trying to do things in a neutral way, that should give us some comfort.

That's the good news.

And I think part of what's going on here—so when you had Kash Patel earlier in the week— not rejecting out of hand the idea that FBI agents could be at the polls, or you have DHS Secretary Mullen not rejecting the idea that you could have ICE agents at the polls, and similarly from the press office at the White House.

Some of this, the point is just to try to mess with people's confidence in the elections.

It's a demobilizing strategy.

Like, take me on to the side of the line that is information not catastrophizing and what it is that people out there who are worried can and should be doing right now.

These are the things that I am worrying about right now.

So the first thing to say is that we shouldn't catastrophize everything.

And because elections are not run by Donald Trump, but they're run by state and local election administrators, election administrators who are, for the most part, professionalized and trying to do things in a neutral way, that should give us some comfort.

That's the good news.

And I think part of what's going on here—so when you had Kash Patel earlier in the week— not rejecting out of hand the idea that FBI agents could be at the polls, or you have DHS Secretary Mullen not rejecting the idea that you could have ICE agents at the polls, and similarly from the press office at the White House.

Some of this, the point is just to try to mess with people's confidence in the elections.

It's a demobilizing strategy.

What Are you telling ordinary listeners who are careening back and forth with the news cycles and really deeply afraid in ways that only serve, as you say, the information to cast doubt on whether elections can be conducted fairly? Like, take me on to the side of the line that is information not catastrophizing and what it is that people out there who are worried can and should be doing right now.

These are the things that I am worrying about right now.

So the first thing to say is that we shouldn't catastrophize everything.

And because elections are not run by Donald Trump, but they're run by state and local election administrators, election administrators who are, for the most part, professionalized and trying to do things in a neutral way, that should give us some comfort.

That's the good news.

And I think part of what's going on here—so when you had Kash Patel earlier in the week— not rejecting out of hand the idea that FBI agents could be at the polls, or you have DHS Secretary Mullen not rejecting the idea that you could have ICE agents at the polls, and similarly from the press office at the White House.

Some of this, the point is just to try to mess with people's confidence in the elections.

It's a demobilizing strategy.

Like, take me on to the side of the line that is information not catastrophizing and what it is that people out there who are worried can and should be doing right now.

Does this report from this whistleblower strengthen the state's case?

Sure.

It strengthens the state's case.

And in fact, today, the lawyers representing the 23 states in the District of Columbia brought the whistleblower's report to the attention of the judge by filing supplemental authority.

In the meantime, the U.S. government is doing what it can to try to get the judge's temporary restraining order overturned.

Right now, there's a motion for a stay before the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

I think it's unlikely that the government's going to prevail there, which means this could be back in the laps of the Supreme Court by the end of the week.

Is that correct? Yeah.

Right.

So if you look at the Constitution, it doesn't say that much about voting, at least its original, the original Constitution before we had some amendments.

But what it says in Article 1, Section 4, is that state legislatures get to set the rules for the time, place and manner of conducting congressional elections.

And it says that Congress can pass laws that alter those rules.

And Congress has done that.

So, for example, in 1993, Congress passed something called the National Voter Registration Act, more commonly known as the Motor Voter Law.

Talk to me about what's going on here.

Is that correct? Yeah.

Right.

So if you look at the Constitution, it doesn't say that much about voting, at least the original Constitution before we had some amendments.

But what it says in Article I, Section 4, is that state legislatures get to set the rules for the time, place, and manner of conducting congressional elections.

And it says that Congress can pass laws that alter those rules.

And Congress has done that.

So, for example, in 1993— Congress passed something called the National Voter Registration Act, more commonly known as the Motor Voter Law.

Talk to me about what's going on here.

Is that correct? Yeah.

Right.

So if you look at the Constitution, it doesn't say that much about voting, at least its original, the original Constitution before we had some amendments.

But what it says in Article 1, Section 4, is that state legislatures get to set the rules for the time, place and manner of conducting congressional elections.

And it says that Congress can pass laws that alter those rules.

And Congress has done that.

So, for example, in 1993, Congress passed something called the National Voter Registration Act, more commonly known as the Motor Voter Law.

Talk to me about what's going on here.

I think the main national headlines everyone who's not an election obsessive would have seen over the past week was about the win the Trump administration had at the Supreme Court when they cleared a district judge's injunction against the pending rules, the then pending rules from the Postal Service.

Yeah, well, this is exceptionally complicated procedurally.

So I'll simplify a bit.

But there are five different lawsuits, I think, challenging these rules.

Two of them are before a federal district court judge in Massachusetts, Judge Talwani.

And another one is before Judge Nichols in the DC Circuit.

Now, what went up to the Supreme Court on July 27 was a request by the Department of Justice to stay, that is to put on hold Judge Talwani's order.

How would that come into play with this last minute skirmishing over injunctions?

What has changed across the last decade or so?

That's a big question.

You know, all around the world we see political polarization, we see rise of populism, see all kinds of unrest and problems, but we don't see in other advanced democracies fighting over election rules, constantly fighting over election rules.

And so why is that? It's because we have a very old constitution that didn't protect voting rights very well.

I mean, think of who was allowed to vote in the 1790s.

And so we also have diffusion of election authority.

Some rules are federal, some rules are state or local.

Can you talk a little bit about what you're expecting in 2026?

What scenario are these critics worried about?

Well, I mean, there are a few things here.

One is, um, th- there's a different part of the executive order that requires the Department of Homeland Security to come up with a rule and cr- create a list of citizens that it would then share with the states.

That would get submitted to the USPS, as would the state's list.

And there's another part of the executive order that says the DOJ, the Department of Justice, will, uh, prosecute those election officials who don't, um, do enough to keep non-citizens off the roll.

So there is this implicit threat.

It's not explicit, but there's an implicit threat if you don't match your list with the DHS list, uh, you could be facing criminal liability.

So how does that fit into all of what's going on here?

Let's talk about this date, Rick, because one of the things that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her dissent was that this is gonna inject chaos into the election, qu- adding, quote, "It also lets another shoe drop in the Kafkaesque nightmare that our precedents have been steadily creating for certain plaintiffs who seek to bring election-related challenges." So just describe just how much confusion a ruling like this might cause ahead of November.

So, you know, this was a weird ruling, as you mentioned at the top.

The, uh, United States Postal Service issued a rule late Friday night, and the Supreme Court just didn't mention that in its order.

It probably had this thing written, but didn't adjust it.

And the whole point of the government's claim before the court was, uh, that this was premature because there was no final rule.

Well, now we have a final rule, so we're gonna go through this all over again.

In the meantime, the clock is ticking.

Why would they put out this opinion if the issue wasn't even resolved within the Postal Service?

All right

...

there, there are, it is that confusing.

And you know, I normally deal with really confusing things like explaining s- the Voting Rights Act or racial gerrymandering.

This is just procedurally very complicated.

So there are a bunch of lawsuits challenging Trump's second executive order on voting, which came out in March of this year.

The key things that it does that, that are up in the cases we're gonna talk about tonight are, one, um, it requires the Postal Service not to deliver ballots unless states jump through certain hoops, like using certain kinds of envelopes with intelligent coding and submitting a list of, uh, their voting age citizens who would be getting ballots.

Yeah.

What else has he done? What is he threatening to do as regards polling places and elections? And what might he do that could interfere with elections in November?

Yeah, so Donald Trump has a long history of claiming fraud in elections.

He has claimed that there was fraud in every election that he's lost, going back to Ted Cruz in the Iowa caucuses in 2016.

He's even claimed fraud in elections he's won.

So that is not new.

But he's tried to engage in a series of different actions that put his power over the elections.

So we've already talked about the executive orders.

Trace that history for our listeners.

What are those other motives? Can you walk us through that?

Yeah, sure.

So one thing that I think he's trying to do is to please his MAGA base.

They've been pushing for a long time to have Trump declare this national emergency.

In fact, there was some group that sent him a draft executive order that was gonna do just that and totally take over elections.

That document was leaked to The Washington Post.

Trump never did anything about it.

And just to go back to your earlier point about sowing doubts in the elections and sowing doubts in the legitimacy of elections, that has the ability to function later as a pretext for him doing those things that he could do, such as seize ballot boxes, right?

What are those other motives? Can you walk us through that?

Yeah, sure.

So one thing that I think he's trying to do is to please his MAGA base.

They've been pushing for a long time to have Trump declare this national emergency.

In fact, there was some group that sent him a draft executive order that was gonna do just that and totally take over elections.

That document was leaked to The Washington Post.

Trump never did anything about it.

And just to go back to your earlier point about sowing doubts in the elections and sowing doubts in the legitimacy of elections, that has the ability to function later as a pretext for him doing those things that he could do, such as seize ballot boxes, right?

Before we get into the details of the application that's pending before the Supreme Court, can you just remind us what this executive order purports to do?

So this is Trump's second executive order.

There was an earlier one on voting in 2025.

Parts of that were put on hold or, or killed by, uh, courts finding that the president didn't have authority to do certain things.

The key parts of the second executive order relate to, uh, in one bucket non-citizen voting and another bucket rules for mail-in ballots.

So let me talk about the non-citizen voting piece first.

Uh, so federal law says that non-citizens can't vote.

... has a bigger picture, yeah.

Why don't we want to save America?

Well, first of all, if we actually wanted to improve election administration and we wanted to protect American elections, we wouldn't take the actions Donald Trump has taken.

So Donald Trump fired all the commissioners on the United States Election Assistance Commission, which helps to certify voting machine standards to say which machines are least susceptible to manipulation.

He wouldn't have fired over a third of the people who worked for our cybersecurity agency that helped in the past to provide assistance to state and local officials, trying to stop foreign malicious actors from trying to break into voter registration databases.

and do other things.

So if you look at his actions rather than his words, I believe he's being disingenuous when he says he wants to protect elections.

The other point is that the Save America Act doesn't address the things that he's talking about.

How concerned are you that some foreign power will be able to eventually succeed in doing exactly what Trump is now implying they're doing.