You're talking about something that's in the Constitution.

Yeah.

And, you know, we've certainly been very critical of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court has issued some very radical rulings.

I mean, most notably recently gutting the Voting Rights Act in devastating ways.

But the court has been has shown itself very resistant to any effort to sanction interfering in elections.

This is very strong, as you said, the constitutional structure and provisions are very strong and make it very clear that the president has no role.

However, if you suspect that there is some unlawful monitoring or appearance or disruption at your polling place, who should they contact? Who do you suggest they contact?

Why did this matter?

Well, in some respects, it doesn't matter very much.

The Elections Assistance Commission, it's a small commission.

It provides assistance to election officials.

It has some duties of providing some information, providing some funds, helping to certify voting machines, but it is very small duties.

And it has...

And it does not administer elections.

How do we responsibly navigate this moment? Or is this year a different year where people get what's going on and they're so angry about it? How do you all think about this? Let's start with you,

This is not a normal ID requirement.

No, I think you laid it out very well.

This goes well beyond asking people to show IDs at their polls.

It requires every eligible American to go in person to an elections office and bring their passport or birth certificate, not only when they register, but when they re-register to vote.

As you said, 21 million Americans do not have those documents, and it doesn't only do this.

It would end mail registration.

It would end online registration.

Only bad things will happen to you if you get caught.

What stands out to you about this compared to what we've already seen from the Trump administration when it comes to elections?

Well, this article comes after a couple of weeks of escalating rhetoric and action by the Trump administration to try to lay the foundation for interfering in the upcoming elections.

Trump has repeatedly called for nationalizing elections, for the Republicans to take over the voting.

He's taken some aggressive steps with a very unprecedented raid of a local election office in Fulton County, Georgia.

His Department of Justice has been escalating efforts to try to gather up sensitive voter data from across the country.

So there's been a very and the rhetoric of, you know, that the president should take charge of elections has been escalating significantly over the last two weeks.

It is not just the last two weeks, though.

There's no evidence of this, but what is this kind of talk? How does that impact the rhetoric that we've seen as far as our election systems are concerned?

Isn't it also protected by US privacy laws, that data?

It is protected by state privacy laws, and so most states have said, "No, you cannot, you, you cannot have that information.

You can have... " Th- there's certain amounts of voter file information that can be made publicly available or available for inspection.

The administration has actually sued now more than 20 states and DC to try to get that, and the courts have actually been backing up the states.

They have said the administration doesn't have access to the sensitive voter, um, data.

They have no legal authorization.

What is the accumulative effect of the administration's questioning of election security, particularly in this midterm year?

This is shaking voters' confidence in the system.

But I guess I would love for you to unpack what the dogefication of the voter rolls would do and why, in addition to everything else that is worrying about this, this is just a massive unleashing of data incursion on privacy and, like, it's just rife for abuse.

It is very alarming, the idea that Doge and Elon Musk can get access to voter roll data.

Voter rolls contain sensitive personal information.

They have your dates of birth, driver's license numbers, in many cases Social Security numbers, voting history, address history, a bunch of other sensitive information.

This information is, in many cases, typically protected by state privacy laws.

There are federal privacy laws for a reason.

They are decentralized.... maintained by the states, subject to other protections so that they don't get out.

They're gonna just chomp up what is left of these elections with pure money.