JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
President Trump has sowed doubt about the integrity of U.S. elections for months. Here he is during a prime-time address in July.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: For many years, Americans were blatantly lied to about the security of our election infrastructure, including electronic voting machines and ballot-counting systems - dishonest, almost all. They're vulnerable and they're easily compromised, and people within our government knew that.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Despite the lack of new evidence of widespread fraud, the Trump administration has continued to try to control the voting process, including efforts to restrict mail-in voting.
SUMMERS: Now, two weeks before Election Day, with early voting already underway in a number of states, some state officials are preparing for a possibility that would have once seemed extraordinary - interference in their elections by the federal government.
DETROW: According to new reporting from The Washington Post, a group of current and former national security officials are quietly advising states on how to prepare for that possibility.
SUMMERS: For more on what this could mean for the security of the vote, I spoke with Noah Robertson. He covers national security for The Washington Post and broke this story. And I started by asking him about this group of current and former officials with Defense Department experience.
NOAH ROBERTSON: We spoke on the condition that they would be able to remain anonymous in the story because they feared retaliation from the Trump administration for their efforts. This is a group of people who describe themselves not as politically motivated but highly concerned about the state of American democracy, with some of the Trump administration's efforts to get involved in the vote. That would include his efforts from the Department of Justice to get involved in seeking out state voter rolls in an effort, they say, to root out fraud but also public promises, things like urging states to gerrymander their districts in an effort to give Republicans a leg up.
And I should just say that though some of them do currently work within the government, their concerns are not motivated by access to sensitive intelligence or information that they glean from their jobs, but rather an analysis that they privately have of the administration's behavior.
SUMMERS: When you were talking to these officials, Noah, do you have a sense of what scenarios are most worrying or concerning to them?
ROBERTSON: The scenarios that they laid out to me are similar to some of the scenarios that have been laid out by lawmakers and state officials from both parties, really. It's the threat, on the high end, that the administration could get aggressive and deploy the military, National Guard or immigration agents to polling stations, mostly on the threat, they think, of voter fraud or unauthorized immigrants voting in elections. Or it's the threat, on the lower end, of continuing some of the administration's public actions, which this group, at least, sees as unlawfully or ungainfully tainting the vote - things like making the promise of the $5,000 payouts or continuing to assert that there is widespread democratic cheating in elections, which this group thinks is not true.
SUMMERS: In your reporting, you spoke to someone named Tammy Patrick from the National Association of Election Officials who mentioned that state and local officials have been rehearsing how they might respond if a federal agent were to appear at a polling place. Give us some details. How might they respond if that scenario were to happen?
ROBERTSON: I think the most important thing to the state officials, at least Patrick was telling me, is an effort to understand exactly what the law requires. There's a careful process when these election officials are handling the vote of making sure that they have a very clean chain of custody with any election materials or ballots that they will then need to total up in order to determine the vote. They want to make sure that if anyone shows up to their door, they want to follow the law, but they also don't want to taint that chain of custody. So their rehearsals to this point have mainly focused on knowing who to call, what to do, how to verify a badge if it's presented or to make sure that a warrant is signed by a judge and not necessarily a federal agency. These are all things that they're considering as they prepare for November 3.
SUMMERS: I know that you reached out to the White House about this group's concerns in your reporting. What did you hear back?
ROBERTSON: The White House was adamant that they think the real threat toward election security going into November 3 is Democrats' unwillingness to pass a bill known as the SAVE America Act. This would be a bill that tightens up election protocols and gives the federal government more control over what they see as an effort to root out unauthorized immigrants from voting in American elections, which I should note that a wide range of election officials have said is not a problem, or at least not a major problem. Still, it's something that the White House thinks that there should be more control over. And they dismissed, largely, the concerns of the group that I spoke with.
SUMMERS: Yeah. I have to say, I can imagine a voter out there listening to you and I talking might come away concerned about potential election interference. Can you just tell us briefly what types of safeguards are already in place as people are out there casting their ballots and looking ahead to November 3?
ROBERTSON: Well, like I said, there are very careful chain-of-custody protocols already in place to make sure that when a ballot is cast, it is not lost sight of by independent election officials in order to make sure that elections remain free and fair. In addition, the Department of Justice uses poll monitors that they have across the country. This is a long-standing protocol and looks to be the case throughout the year. And then election officials say that they've spent years, sometimes decades, working in this business, not because they're politically motivated, but because they care about making sure that America's form of democracy is able to continue on without any fraud or large issues. Those people say that they are working as hard as ever in order to make sure that the midterms are the same way.
SUMMERS: Noah Robertson covers national security for The Washington Post. Noah, thanks.
ROBERTSON: Great to be here. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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