Chertoff on Count Every Vote Campaign

election integrity. It's been called into question throughout the campaign and really the voting process as well as the actual counting of the votes. Our next guest is well known to our Bloomberg audience. He's a member of the National Council on Election Integrity. It's a bipartisan group more than forty government, political and civic leaders who are devoted to

defending the legitimacy of our elections. Were, of course talking about former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Churdoff, who served under President George W. Bush's the co founder and executive chairman of the Churdoff Group, and he joins us on the phone on this Friday. Michael, nice to have you here with Kevin and June and myself. You know, I asked us of our last guest um in Georgia, and I want to put it to you, what confidence do you have in this year's voting process and the counting of

the votes? Ultimately? You know, I think actually it's been an extraordinary display on the part of voters and on the part of state and local elected officials of exactly how you want to conduct an election in the democratic country. We've had unprecedented turn out of a hundred and sixty million people. People who were had the opportunity to vote by mail did so in great numbers. Others stood online for extended courage of time to cast votes in person.

There was some concern early on about interherence and intimidation of voters that did not materialize. By and large, the state and local officials have been efficient and careful in counting the ballots. Not surprisingly either or sums aways you never get to count the same day. But again, there hasn't been any indication of any kind of significance forward

or misbehavior. So that's all good, and I think we should take a lot of confidence and the fact that our citizens and our state and local officials have done

exactly what the Constitution wants well. And what's interesting too is and I think and as we look at these fifty different states and the different you know, processes in terms of how they collect the vote, count the vote, what's allowed, what's not, you know, do you believe that it is necessary that we have some kind of national system, um, an easier system, so that whether it's an app or so called you know, some other kind of system that makes it easier to collect the vote, to count the vote,

to give access to everybody to vote, you know, in the process in an election. Or does that create new security concerns? Actually, I want to online voting awards, in the view of many people, create security risks that we don't have. Map allegations that since widely distributed voting, that it would be impossible for somebody to affect the vote count itself. I mean, they can have disinformation and lie about the vote count, but in churches of actually changing votes,

you could not do that at scale. If you didn't all online, you would candidly be raising a risk which I think at this point we probably don't want to do. Let me ask you this. It's there. Before the election, there was a lot of talk about possible hacking by foreign nations and which nation was going to try. Have you seen any evidence that that happened at all. I've not seen any significant evidence of hacking into the voting

infrastructure itself. And here I want to give credit to my old agency, DHS, the cyber Cybersecurity agency there under Chris Klebs have been working for months with state and local officials to upgrade their secure ay and give them the tools they need to protect themselves. Now, we've seen disinformation both from overs and domestically, and we've seen some hacky or epoch to hacking campaigns, but not to voting infrastructure itself. Can I jump in here and thank you

so much for making the time. Kevin's really here, Chief Washington correspondent for Bloomberg Television and from Bloomberg Radio. You know, I talked to so many people on both sides of the aisle who say, why were we only talking about these elections for the past six months to nine months. I mean, we should be thinking about election security twenty years from now. We should be thinking about the threats twenty years from now. How do we get back to

a country where our election security and I agree. I mean, you know, Republicans Democrats also noting there was not a major rachel and whatnot. But how do we get back to a country where we're thinking twenty years down the line about the prospect of threat and not twenty minutes

up the clock. Well, I think this is part of what we expect our government to be doing, which it's done rather unevenly in the last couple of years, which is to be strategic about threats, to recognize that we need to anticipate what might be threats in the future. And frankly, right now it looks as a disinformation and manipulation of the media is a bigger threat than actual

attacks on infrastructure. So I think we need to have a discussion about our general political processes, about the roles who responsibility of the media, because that is likely to be at least in the medium term where we see some of the most disruptive activities. Well, and it's I mean,

it's such a good point. I mean, because it also comes down to you know, you look at what they're doing in France and what Immanuel Macrons having to do with Austria as the result of the horrific terrorists attacks over there, and not to go geopolitical for a second. They're having to now they're facing the same concerns about how terrorists are are are using the First Amendment and freedom of speech against the very democracies that that that

helped create them. So how do we balance that, sir, the protection of freedom of speech with the very real threat that you just outlined for us about media institutions that are getting taken advantage of by hostile foreign actors, and I have to be honest, domestic actors as well. We've got, of course, domestic extremism, and we've got a conspiracy theorists who have been running wild on social media.

But I have to be honest, the mainstream media has also been jilty of being sloppy in vetting things, of rushing to put things out in alarming in an alarming voice. When it turns out at the end of the day, it's really a more nuanced issue. Some of this is

a matter of professionalism. Some of it is we need to take a look at the algorithms the social media used in order to get people more as because they can be easily manipulated, and we may need to do some rethinking about for example, the role of money in politics,

which has become absolutely overwhelming. And although you know, uh, forty years ago the suspreine Chords thought money is speech, what it's doing now is drowning up steech and I think that requires a serious look at our at artist well, who has the political ban I could go so many different places here, Michael, who has the political will? I agree with you that money has really kind of squeezed out the average American and having a voice in the

political process. How do we change that? Who has the political will to be quite honest, to change that? Well? I think you know. One of these we've learned in this uh last for your election cycle is that the center of the country, in terms of the political left center and right center, has been more or less quiet,

and the ladst voice have been at the extremes. This may be a bit of a wake up call, uh to both parties, as people who are kind of mainstream in both parties that they can't be be spectators anymore. We're going to have to take seriously the corrected the integrity of our institutions as we would take seriously bombs

and and and physical attacks. So I'm hoping when the dust settles here, Um, serious people on both sides of the aisle, as is too with a group and I'm with so you know what America first, in the sense of American interests first, over the parties and interests or the parochial interests of some actors. Would there be a problem because of the Citizens United case, which sort of opened up this whole area, and also during these times of such high partisanship, it seems like it might be

a really an uphill battle to get over that. Well, first, I want to say everybody blamed Citizens United, but actually the problem goes back about thirty years before that, to a case called Buckley v. V. Layout, which upheld restrictions on contributions but not on expenditures, the idea being expenditures work speech, and what we saw and all citizens did

was kind of amplify. It was that people were able to overwhelm the airwaves and other media and the and the the kind of public forum we very carefully targeted and crafted messages, and this was made worse by the use of new data analytic tools to micro target messages in a way that this leads people because you're not speaking to everybody, and you have to calibrate your message so that everybody hears it, but you can basically spin it to a very few people on on one side

or the other side. So I think, you know, if we, if we value our democracy and our freedom, people of goodwill are going to have to view the last few years as a real wake up call. And I think we need to seriously look at not as just say, not just social media, but the role of general media, the role of money speech, the role of gerrymanderin, because these are all aspects of what has begun to take away majority ruling democracy and put it in the hands

of well funded, a small groups. You know, Michael, I have to say it was really fascinating this week to even watch um mainstream media kind of bail on President Trump's press conference because and they would come out and say, well,

he's telling lies essentially, is what they said. And I do wonder that this gets to a bigger issue that we've talked about on air about you know, facts, facts don't seem to matter, and we know facts on social media, they don't necessarily drive the algorithms which drive you know, the ad spending and the ad dollars. And I don't want to pick on social media, but I do think that there's in the media. I think that there has

been almost a fear with this administration to correct things. Um, we certainly haven't felt that way at Bloomberg, but I'm just going to say that I think there has been a fear, whether to be squeezed out of the press room or so on. And I wonder, how do we get a world back to a country, back to where fact really is important and it matters well. And I think that that means all the actors in the information ecosystem, you need to first of all consider what are their

professional obligations. Why are they in the business If it's just about making money with ads? Uh, that's pretty sad. But I think most journalists and most editors, not everybody, do want to do something you think is socially valuable. And maybe there's a been reluctance to look at this because we get nervous anytime we talked about getting user first amendment. But you know what, my my biggest optimistic course for optimism is the stakeholders, the customers, the clients,

the views they're getting. Exercise to bactors we're beginning to see now, for example, some platforms who had to take down certain kinds of messages because basically they get boycotted by the advertisers. And that's again in response to what the public wants and how the public reacts. So again it's mobilizing all the institutions, not just the government, but of civil society to put together a reasonable, balanced consensus approach that preserves true freedom of speech but doesn't allow

manipulation and overwhelming the public form. Michael just got about forty seconds. If you could change one things to ensure election integrity next time around, just quickly, what would it be. It would be to stop candidates from announcing in advance that an election is rigged or that it's forging, because that undermines our democracy, and we order hold candidates accountable for not sending poisonous messages. I'm going to leave it

on that note. Hey, Michael, thank you so much. I can't tell you how much we all appreciate your time on this Friday. Michael Churdoff he is co founder, executive chairman of the Churdoff Group, member of the National Council on Election Integrity. It's a bipartisan Group, former Homeland Security Secretary, of course, who served under President George D. George W. Bush