WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:04.720 JUDY WOODRUFF: The widely discredited election review in Arizona is over. 00:04.720 --> 00:09.720 But more than 10 months after the 2020 election, there is growing alarm about other efforts 00:10.960 --> 00:15.960 launched with no credible justification to sow doubt about elections past, present and future. 00:17.760 --> 00:19.040 William Brangham explains. 00:19.040 --> 00:20.880 WILLIAM BRANGHAM: That's right, Judy. 00:20.880 --> 00:23.680 It was Republicans in the Arizona state Senate who 00:23.680 --> 00:27.760 commissioned this review of ballots in Maricopa County, even though election 00:27.760 --> 00:32.760 officials in the state said there was no large-scale fraud in the 2020 election. 00:32.880 --> 00:37.880 But a partisan group called Cyber Ninjas undertook a controversial review of the vote, 00:38.480 --> 00:43.200 and they affirmed that Joe Biden in fact won Maricopa County and Arizona. 00:43.200 --> 00:46.880 And here with us to look at the larger context is Nate Persily, 00:46.880 --> 00:51.120 a scholar of election law at Stanford University Law School. 00:51.120 --> 00:53.040 Nate, great to see you back on the "NewsHour." 00:54.400 --> 00:59.400 I hesitate to call this an actual audit, what this organization did in Arizona. 01:00.960 --> 01:04.400 But they affirmed what we already knew, that Joe Biden won Maricopa County and 01:04.400 --> 01:08.000 he won Arizona. But what do you make of this when you look at this process? 01:08.000 --> 01:11.600 NATE PERSILY, Stanford Law School: Well, you're right to hesitate in calling it an audit. 01:11.600 --> 01:16.600 Audits are good things. We know how to do election audits. Every state should audit its elections. 01:16.800 --> 01:21.800 But that is not what this was. This really was part of a coordinated disinformation campaign to 01:22.160 --> 01:26.880 try to undermine the legitimacy of the election. And we should not put too fine a point on it, 01:27.600 --> 01:31.680 that the whole goal here after the fact, many months after the fact, 01:31.680 --> 01:36.680 now almost a year after the election, was to cast doubt on the basic machinery of this election. 01:37.920 --> 01:42.640 And, as we have seen, even in the sort of public reception of this draft report, 01:43.280 --> 01:48.280 the fact that Cyber Ninjas did not find that it affected the outcome hasn't sort of decreased 01:49.680 --> 01:53.840 speculation or this lack of confidence that the whole audit process has generated. 01:53.840 --> 01:56.240 WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And for people who haven't been following this 01:56.240 --> 01:59.760 rather circuitous process they took, I mean, this was a very bizarre process, 01:59.760 --> 02:03.360 the way they went about this. These people had no experience in election law. 02:03.360 --> 02:08.360 They spent a period of time searching for bamboo fibers, allegedly looking for counterfeit Chinese 02:08.880 --> 02:13.880 ballots. I mean, the whole process seems -- bizarre is the official term, I think, for this. 02:14.800 --> 02:19.800 NATE PERSILY: Well, one of the problems is that we don't really know what the basic 02:20.080 --> 02:24.880 allegation was as to why there might have been fraud, whether in Arizona or elsewhere. 02:25.440 --> 02:30.440 Throughout the last 10, 12 months, what we have seen are allegations, again, of Chinese ballots, 02:31.440 --> 02:36.440 as you were saying, in Arizona, of Italian satellites as having manipulated voting machines, 02:36.800 --> 02:41.760 or of Dominion voting machines not being secure, of dead people voting and the like. 02:41.760 --> 02:46.760 There's this very heterogeneous set of complaints. And so what Cyber Ninjas was doing was going on 02:48.480 --> 02:53.280 a fishing expedition to find out if there was anything that implicated the outcome. 02:53.280 --> 02:56.160 Now, they didn't find that the results would have been different. In fact, 02:56.160 --> 03:01.160 they had -- from their results, they suggest that Joe Biden actually increased his vote totals 03:01.200 --> 03:04.240 through their audit than what was found on Election Day. 03:04.240 --> 03:08.000 But the fact that it may have sort of confirmed the result should not 03:08.560 --> 03:13.560 be any solace to those of us who worry about the lack of confidence that this type 03:13.600 --> 03:15.920 of process has engendered among the mass public. 03:15.920 --> 03:20.560 WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And, as you say, if this were just Arizona, that might be one thing. 03:20.560 --> 03:24.640 We might be able to put this behind us, but this is going on in multiple other states now. 03:24.640 --> 03:25.840 NATE PERSILY: That's right. 03:25.840 --> 03:30.840 This is now a playbook for other states. If you are a sort of disgruntled politician or one trying 03:32.480 --> 03:37.480 to make a name for yourself, then, whether it's in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or some other states, 03:38.480 --> 03:43.360 Georgia, now that this is a pathway that they have chosen. 03:43.360 --> 03:46.960 Now, again, recounts and audits are part of our process. We want 03:46.960 --> 03:50.240 to encourage that in the month or so after an election, because we want to 03:50.240 --> 03:54.560 know that the election machinery is working as intended. But a year after an election, 03:54.560 --> 03:58.400 right, all this is trying to do is to undermine confidence in the result. 03:58.400 --> 04:02.720 WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And it sounds like, on some level, that perpetual argument that is made is 04:02.720 --> 04:06.800 having an effect, there was a Monmouth University poll out a month or two ago 04:07.360 --> 04:11.680 that showed that a third of Americans believe that President Biden was elected 04:11.680 --> 04:15.920 only because of fraud and that Donald Trump should have properly won the election. 04:15.920 --> 04:18.880 I mean, from an election administrator standpoint, 04:18.880 --> 04:23.120 if a third of the country thinks that you're engaged in a widespread fraud, 04:23.120 --> 04:27.826 what does that do to their ability to run elections safely and soundly? 04:27.826 --> 04:29.040 NATE PERSILY: Well, this is a very 04:29.040 --> 04:32.880 dangerous period, I think, for our democracy, that we have not seen this 04:33.680 --> 04:38.680 erosion of confidence in the basic infrastructure America, of the elections, in our history. 04:40.560 --> 04:45.360 We see lots of retirements among these veteran election officials. We see that many of them 04:45.360 --> 04:49.680 feel that they're taking their lives in their own hands because of death threats and the like. 04:49.680 --> 04:54.680 And so these are challenges we have not faced before, and they're a direct result 04:54.800 --> 04:59.280 of the concerted disinformation campaign that's trying to undermine the legitimacy the outcome. 05:00.320 --> 05:01.760 But these folks are heroes. 05:01.760 --> 05:04.720 WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Nate Persily of Stanford University Law School, 05:04.720 --> 05:05.840 thanks so much for being here. 05:05.840 --> 05:09.840 NATE PERSILY: Thank you.