Ford and Carter: How DO we Run Fair, Safe Elections?

0:00:00.0 Celeste Watkins-Hayes: Good afternoon, good afternoon. And welcome to the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, I am Celeste Watkins-Hayes, the Joan and Sanford Weill Dean of the Ford School. On behalf of our school, we are so pleased to be able to host this important discussion sponsored by the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, the Carter Center and More Perfect. It is great to see Mike Ford back here at Weill Hall, Mike is Jerry and Betty's eldest son and has represented the Ford family on the Ford School Committee since 2006. He's also a past president at the Gerald R. Ford Foundation, Presidential Foundation. Jason Carter, it is nice to see you here carrying on the friendship and respect that President's Carter and Ford had for each other into the next generations. We are such admirers of the work you do at the Carter Center.

0:01:00.7 CW: Of course, our own professor of practice, Ambassador Susan D. Page, is on the board, and we look forward to more collaboration in the future. Hello, Susan. The topic you will be addressing, how do we run fair, safe elections, is relevant to the university-wide year of democracy, civic empowerment, and global engagement, which I'm honored to co-chair. Let me quote from our mission statement. We believe that through civic engagement, we can navigate the complexities of a democratic society together. We recognize that democracy depends on diverse perspectives, and in that spirit, hope to inspire everyone to be part of this democracy theme year. We'll be having more year of democracy events in the coming months, and we hope you will continue to participate with us. Check out our website. I wanna acknowledge Jeff Polet Director of the Ford Leadership Forum.

0:01:57.3 CW: Our collaborations with the foundation have been enriching for all of us as we mark the 50th anniversary of President Ford taking office. Including an essay competition about the relevance of Ford's presidency in today's political climate, I read the finalist essays, they're fantastic. A photo contest, so please be sure to grab your 450 buttons on the way out, I forgot to put mine on as I was... It's on my desk, I'm gonna put a button on in events in Grand Rapids and at the Ford Library on North Campus, so all kinds of great events happening to commemorate the Ford presidency. And look for members of the Ford family, along with Ford Presidential Foundation Executive Director Gleaves Whitney and me on the field of the Big House this Saturday. Gleaves and I will be taking the field in honor with the President Ford with members of the family. So Jeff will be leading the discussion, and after about 40 minutes we'll open it up for questions from the live and online audience.

0:03:01.4 CW: So we'll pass a microphone around the room, and if you're watching online please use the ask a question link underneath the video on the Ford School event page. So now let me hand it off to Jeff and to the distinguished panel. Thank you so much.

0:03:16.8 Jeff: Thank you.

[applause]

0:03:24.4 Jeff: Well, I have to say, it's an honor for me to be sitting here between the descendants of two of America's, not just finest presidents, but finest persons. And it's a good reminder that character matters in politics and that we can have people of good character holding our highest offices. You have both been involved in the Principles for Trusted Elections Initiative, I'm wondering if you can help introduce our audience to what the principles are and to your own interest in being involved in this. Jason, would you like to go first?

0:04:03.9 Jason: Sure, first of all, thank you all for having me. Thank you for hosting, it's a great honor for us all to be here. Of course, the connection we have with Ambassador Page is a very close one. We... I come from Georgia, I can assure you all, I know we talked about the Big House, you don't get to win the National Championship every year.

[laughter]

0:04:26.0 Jason: Not every year. So don't get greedy, Georgia might can win it every year, but no one else.

0:04:33.4 Jeff: Did you not watch the game last week?

0:04:35.0 Jason: I didn't, I'm not talking about the game last week, and I'm just acknowledging that you can't win every year. But we... It is a great honor for me to be here. And this moment, I think, in our history, the Carter Center, just to provide a little bit of background and the folks that are here from the Carter Center, David Carroll, and others who have been at the center for decades. The Carter Center has observed over 100 elections internationally, in more than 40 countries over the last four decades. And what that has taught us, and what we can see given that background, is that there's aspects of democracy that you cannot take for granted. And one of the most important things that I believe, and that I think we have seen, and that the data shows, is that people respect the outcome of an election when their candidate wins, and that's how they know it was a good election.

0:05:31.4 Jason: But the key to a democracy is making sure that the institution itself, that the process itself is strong enough and trusted enough so that we can all maintain that trust and that respect no matter what. And after, during those four decades, as we approached the last election that we had in this country, the Carter Center realized that we needed to turn our attention more to this country, and not just to what we would say are troubled democracies around the world, but here in the United States. And I think all of us have felt a nervousness perhaps, or a lack of confidence in confidence, right? And so what we did is, is we got together and when the Carter Center goes to Guyana, for example, or to Liberia, for example, no one questions our neutrality. But when we turned our eyes to the United States, everyone is like, "Well, Jason Carter is a Democrat." I was in the legislature in Georgia, I ran for Governor as a Democrat in Georgia.

0:06:33.2 Jason: And my grandfather obviously was elected president of the United States as a Democrat. And we knew that we had to ensure that we could approach these issues with real cross-partisan endeavors. This could not be a Democratic institution, and we have found great partners from all areas of our political system. And so one of the great things about this moment, and there's people here from the Michiganders For Fair Elections and folks from across party lines to have this discussion about what these fundamental principles are. And so there's so much that we agree on as a country, as people who care about our civic dialogue, and we tried to really boil down what it looks like to have an election system that people can trust. That's the background for us. And I'm happy to go through the five principles that we got to, but maybe I talked too long and you wanna talk for a minute first and then you can come back to me.

0:07:31.0 Mike: Yeah, no I... It is a joy and great privilege to be here with Jason and representing his family and the Carter Center. And I... When Jason approached us and the Carter Center, the Ford family and the Ford Presidential Foundation with this invitation to join together, partner with as families, foundations around these core principles for trusted elections. I took a look at them and I said, "My father would be all over this." This is the heart and soul of what my dad stood for and myself as a active, engaged American citizen who stays up with the political governing process. I have children, I have grandchildren that I want them to be able to grow up and in a strong constitutional republic like we have. And so I definitely embraced it and thrilled and we've been doing this for about a year now. And now we're kind of coming up on the November election, so it's more important. But I did wanna share one thing from my, actually my father's words.

0:09:19.0 Mike: That kind of resonated with me and also why this is important to him and to our family. And this is actually something you'll probably recognize, it's his first words and speech when he was sworn in as president 50 years ago. So this was, this is...

0:09:41.0 Jeff: In a crazy time.

0:09:42.9 Mike: Yeah.

0:09:43.0 Jeff: His selfless actions to take over at a moment of incredible distress for our country is something that I don't think we all appreciate very much. This is super important to me, I have an outburst, but I'm excited.

0:09:55.8 Mike: Yeah, no.

[laughter]

0:09:58.5 Mike: I think there are parallels between what we saw in 1974 with the Watergate scandal and the breaking of the trust with the American people around governing and all the other things going on, like the Vietnam War coming out of there and the energy crisis. It was a tumultuous time and not unlike what we have today in some ways. But so here he steps in and he's sworn in and he, the first few first words, "My fellow Americans our long national nightmare is over, our constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws and not of men, women. Here the people rule, but there is a higher power by whatever name we honor him who ordains not only the righteousness, but love, not only justice, but mercy. As we bind up the internal wounds of Watergate, more painful and poisonous than those of foreign wars. Let us restore the golden rule to our political process and let brotherly love purge our hearts of suspicion and of hate."

0:11:23.8 Mike: Those words.

[applause]

0:11:29.7 Mike: I read that and it kind of resonates with the principles for trust elections, that there is a code of, not only ethics, but legal guidelines and processes that have stood the test of time and that is what holds us together. Is not what people in one party or other, thinks we should do, but how we govern and how we move through our democratic process. So this initiative, the principles for trust elections is, I think a really wonderful bipartisan adventure and we can talk a little bit about that.

0:12:23.4 Jeff: Great. Jason, you mentioned the principles. Would you like to...

0:12:26.7 Jason: Principles, yes.

0:12:27.4 Jeff: Describe them and...

0:12:28.5 Jason: I took them out to make sure I have them here, but we the Carter Center has found and all of the other social science data about elections in many other countries, there are codes of conduct, for example, that are enforceable in some places. In some places there are codes of conduct that everyone agrees to and we realized and begin looking at what that would look like in this country. What is it that we would say, how is it that candidates and others who are participating in our political system should engage in that system? What are the rules? And they're really not enforceable rules in this country because of the way that our legal system works. But what we thought that they would be is these are the sort of fundamental norms that underpin all of our trusted elections and those five norms that I think everyone will agree with. One is honesty, that there's an honest process. The next is that there's a nonviolent campaigning.

0:13:30.9 Jason: The next is secure voting to ensure that the system itself works and with enough transparency to be trusted. The fourth is called responsible oversight, which means that people have access and transparency to look at and examine the way that the system works. And the last is that you have... You trust the outcome. And so those five principles, you can see that things flow from that and these are not partisan principles. These are not... They're not really even American principles necessarily, they're just democracy. The way that it works, you have to have a process that matches those things. And so we believe that based on those five pillars, you can establish a sort of an ethic around these particular norms to ensure that if we know as people that we expect this of our leaders, that they'll respond. And so the goal for us has been over the last year or more, really, the last several years to dive into this process.

0:14:35.0 Jason: We've had a huge number of candidates sign up for those principles, espouse those principles, adopt those principles, honor those principles. In fact, in Georgia, before the last election, all of the major candidates of all of the major political parties signed on. And so it's helpful and it begins this process of what it takes to have trusted elections. So those are the five, we can talk more about them specifically or however you wanna do it.

0:15:06.0 Jeff: Sure. Well, I was gonna tie that in for Mike here. Part of the idea of having trusted elections is that it allows for the peaceful transfer of power. So you were there in the election in 1976 between your father and Jason's grandfather. Talk a little bit about how... About your experience in that election and then specifically about the transfer of power between your father and Jason's grandfather.

0:15:33.0 Mike: Yeah, we'll take you back in history a little bit here, 50 years, but yeah, it was a I think a very vigorous and very engaged campaign by both President, yeah, President Carter, President Ford. And there was a time at the end where it started to look like my father might win this thing, it was, the gap was closing. But in each of the debates and they had three debates, and in the ways in which they communicated to the public, it was always with great respect. My worthy opponent, my... It just they kept it very, I think, respectful and honorable. But they were able to really lay out their strong differences in the policymaking and how to govern the country. And it went right down to that last night and our family was gathered in the White House, up on the family quarters and we were watching the TV, and some states went Ford and some went Carter. And, but around midnight, it became clear that President Carter was gonna win.

0:17:21.0 Mike: And my father and mother and our family, my brothers and sisters, all of us, who had been out campaigning and been surrogates and really gave it 100%, we were disappointed, greatly disappointed, but we felt good about how we conducted ourselves and how the Carter's conducted themselves. And it was a very honest and thoughtful and respectful campaign. I'm gonna read one more thing, because I knew this question was coming.

[laughter]

0:18:08.8 Mike: And that is my dad's concession letter on November 3rd. And it gets a flavor to what... How transfer of power went about. So it says, "Dear Jimmy, it's apparent now that you have won our long and intense struggle for the presidency. I congratulate you on your victory. As one who has been honored to serve the people of this great land, both in Congress and as president, I believe we must now put the divisions of the campaign behind us and unite the country once again in the common pursuit of peace and prosperity. Although there will be continue to be disagreements over the best means to use in pursuing our goals, I want to assure you that you will have my complete and wholehearted support as you take the oath of office this January. I also pledged to you that I and all the members of my administration will do all that we can to ensure that you begin your term as smoothly and effectively as possible."

0:19:23.5 Mike: "May God bless you and your family as you undertake your new responsibilities." Signed, Jerry Ford.

[applause]

0:19:36.0 Jason: It's unbelievable. And it's unbelievable how far we've come. And I'll say, if you don't mind me jumping out of turn again. No, that's fine. Open conversation. This day, for me, 23 years ago was my first couple of weeks of law school. So I had to talk to someone who just got their JD. And we were actually learning about this really complicated part of civil procedure. And someone was like, hey, they're canceling school because this airplane just ran into the World Trade Center. And we had just come off of a really contentious election. People forget, right? 530 votes determined the election in 2000. George W. Bush took office in 2001. I had been a big supporter of his opponent. And the ability, on September 11th, to feel like this country came together in fundamental ways, that letter is one of those examples in my life. I was there, but I was young. In my life, the moment where I felt like we all came together the most was in those days after September 11th. And we have that capability as a country. We have that capability as a country, even though sometimes it feels these days like we're getting pulled apart, I just believe.

0:21:24.4 Jason: And part of the whole reason we're doing this is because that spirit that's in that letter and that spirit that I felt, frankly, rallying behind a Republican president with whom I disagreed about a lot of stuff on September 11th and in those days after, I just think that we still have that. And these principles and the reason that we're doing this is because those things that bring us together, I think, are still super powerful. So thank you for that, too.

0:21:49.8 Jeff: One of the things I find interesting about that is he's using the diminutive form of their names, just that familiarity there, Jimmy and Jerry. There's a great interview that Tim Russert does with Presidents Ford and Carter. And at the end, President Carter says, if you were to ask which presidents became the best friends, it would be the two people on this stage. And it's a really powerful moment because they were rivals in the 76th election, but they transcended that, the better angels of their nature.

0:22:23.7 Jason: And I think one of the things that maybe both of us can attest to pretty well is they're just people. I mean, you might think that we build these people up like they're superhuman in some way. I mean, and Jimmy Carter, he's a regular dude. He goes to Dollar General to buy clothes. You know what I mean? He called me some months ago before he went into hospice. I called him Pawpaw. And I get this call on my phone, and it says Pawpaw Mobile. And I'm like, oh, hey, Pawpaw. And he's like, who's this? And I was like, this is Jason. He was like, what are you doing? I said, you called me. He said, I didn't call you. I'm taking a picture. And I could just see him like, boom, boom, boom, you know? Like everybody else's grandfather in this room. Right, I mean, they're people. And the humanity of the Jimmy and Jerry, it's real, right? And I think that we've seen that with the current president. We've seen that in a variety of other contexts of just, at the end of the day, they're people.

0:23:27.6 Jeff: Let's turn our attention back to the principles a second. And I think they're all of equal importance, especially you would notice them in the breach, like a nonviolent campaign.

0:23:39.4 Jason: Sure, of course.

0:23:42.2 Jeff: Two of them, secure voting and responsible oversight. I think the last election brought those two things in particular into question. So how would you respond to people who are saying, okay, how are you going to ensure that in the context of our current politics?

0:24:00.0 Jason: So I think also the last election brought into question the nonviolent transfer of power too. But I think with respect to secure voting and with respect to the transparency, the responsible oversight, there's really two parts of that, right? We know what it takes to have a good election. You have to have a registration process that works and that's valid. You have to have a ballot casting process that works. And then you have to have the ability to count it and verify. And so at the end of the day, the thing that is fundamental across all of that is that there is the rule of law, right? This is a public voter registration process. Everyone knows how it works. Everyone has the ability to check it. The various political actors have the ability to check the voter registration lists, etcetera, etcetera. And there has to be some confidence there. The balloting process itself. In Georgia, we used electronic ballots for several years. And people didn't trust that process enough. And so in a bipartisan way, they established a paper balloting system that goes alongside the electronic balloting system, which is probably unnecessary.

0:25:12.9 Jason: But guess what? It makes people feel better about the system. And so we now have the ability to do a specific ballot by ballot audit of how people cast their votes in a paper trail way. And so you've got these multiple, multiple checkpoints that exist. I'll say one other thing, and then I'll let Mike comment about the security of the vote. But the other thing that's different about this country is that we don't have a single election system. We have an election system in every single state. And then in a state like Georgia, we have a different election system in 159 counties. I mean, we've got election supervisors here from counties in Georgia and from counties in Michigan that know that they have a process, and just to give an example, in Bartow County, Georgia, that may be different than the specific system or the specific issues in other states. And they're responsible for making sure that it works in fundamental ways.

0:26:12.2 Jason: There's an election board, etcetera. And so what that does is it's an enormous set of checks and balances. It is very hard to steal an election in a state where you've got 159 different election boards. It's just hard. But we have to be able to build that up in a way and make sure people understand it. And so the key to this process, to me, is, yes, you have to have a system that works. You have to have transparency. But then you've got to make sure that people are well-educated about how that system works and how difficult it is to actually try to affect the outcome of an election with some sort of massive fraud.

0:26:49.4 Mike: Yeah. Just to follow up with Jason, did a little research here. And so 97% of registered voters will have an option to vote early, early voting. And 95% of all of our voters are going to have paper ballot voting. And then there is this sense in which, like Jason said, it's a very thought-through process for each county to do the registration, to do the actual polling, and then the counting. And obviously, the value of having paper ballots is that if there is something contested and it's brought for review, you have hard copies there. You can actually check against maybe the electoral count as well. But I think that where things kind of got off the rail a little bit was back in 2000, when Bush and Gore had such a close election that really got down to the hanging chads in the Supreme Court. And that just really stirred things up within our American citizen voters, that particularly the Democrats lost, that something was not right here. There's some question about its integrity or its legitimacy.

0:28:43.8 Mike: So that planted the seed there. And then I think what we saw starting in 2016 and certainly 2020, the kind of, again, close elections, presidential election, but the kind of rhetoric that was shared about fraud here or undocumented people voting or staffing ballots, all those things, again, just fed into this, I think, particularly the Republican constituency. And it gave them pause about, is this really a legitimate election and outcome here? And I think that's unfortunate. And I feel like that's where we need to do our work, not only with candidates, but parties and citizens to be able to really bring forth and verify that the election process is secure, it is very true and creditable, and that there are people who are monitoring it all along the way. And we can have confidence in the outcomes of this. That's not to say that elections are perfect, 'cause they're not.

0:30:22.0 Mike: When you think of the scope of the number of people voting, there is a small fraction of error and probably some misdoing. But I think in the big picture of things, we shouldn't go into election feeling like there's doubt about how legitimate it is. I did see some polls, I think with Pew or whatever, that said, unfortunately, today's citizens, only 60% of today's citizens have confidence that the election in November here is going to be both accurate and fair, only 60%. And that's scary. Particularly, we know it's going to be close. And so it's a big drop from what it used to be in terms of our confidence as American citizens in how the process is done.

0:31:36.3 Jeff: I think a word that has come up a couple of times already is the word trust. And in a certain sense, the lack of confidence in the electoral system reflects a sort of general decline of trust in our governing institutions. Why do you think that is? I mean, when you talked about when your dad became president, well, you had Watergate and you had Vietnam, which were kind of clear devices for eroding public trust. And governing institutions, why do you think that public confidence and public trust in government has declined so much in the last 10, 15 years?

0:32:11.2 Jason: Well, you know, I don't know about the last... Let me say this. I guess as someone from Georgia, and I ran for governor in 2014, and a Democratic Party in Georgia is a true multiracial community, right? In Atlanta, we consider ourselves to be the cradle of the civil rights movement. And when we think about trusted elections, in Georgia, in the black community, for example, and in people who have looked at our history, there was a really long time where people didn't trust elections because there was a specific set of rules designed to ensure that only white people got to vote, right? I mean, so we've only recently, in fact, that 1976 election may really be, if you want to go back and think, and I'm not an academic, but someone may write a paper, that's the first truly sort of democratic election that we had after the Voting Rights Act of 1965, etcetera, etcetera. And so you've got a young democracy where you're bringing people in into a multiracial coalition for the first time. You're bringing people in to a set of new technologies that are coming in at the same time, where people are exposed to more and more different things.

0:33:24.9 Jason: And I think that you have to build trust in different ways. I think, to me, the biggest problem that we've had, if you're just talking about the last 15 years, I do think it's the social media technology and the rise of mis- and disinformation. I think that mis- and disinformation is a huge deal, and I would love to hear from the actual experts on what they think, you know, if David agrees or disagrees, among others. But that question of, you know, you have the ability, and I'm on everybody's email lists, right? I get pro-Trump emails, and I get pro-Kamala emails, and both of them say they're winning the election, right? And both of them show that the polls are winning the election, and that here's all the information that I have that wins the election. And now David and I have been in Liberia in 1997, for example, where there was no phones, no electricity, no ability to communicate across any sort of distance, and everybody who ran in that election also thought they were winning, right?

0:34:20.4 Jason: And you just, it's easy to convince yourself that you're right, and that other people agree with you, because guess what? Everybody on my Instagram feed agrees with me, right? And so that's how I know that everybody agrees with me, right? And I think it's really hard to convince, it's easy to convince yourself that if you lose an election, it's 'cause something went wrong with the system, instead of that something is wrong with you or your ideas. And so I think that's the biggest problem. So you have mis- and disinformation, and you have people isolating themselves social media-wise in echo chambers that makes it very, very difficult to trust the system if your person doesn't win. That's what I think, but there's a lot more to it, but that's one of the things, and that's why I think you attack that with trusted people, right?

0:35:14.2 Jason: The thing that we all know is we have to have somebody that we trust tell us about a candidate in order to really believe anything about them, I think, right? We can learn online, we can do this, but we have a community of people that we use to build trust, and it's complicated, and we have to have people in that community of trust that are willing to do it, which is why I think it's so important to have people in all of these different communities out there talking about the fact that this system works.

0:35:48.7 Jeff: So if you look at opinion polls about trust in government, really from the end of the Eisenhower presidency on, it was a steep decline. It flattened during the period when your dad was president. What did your dad do to help flatten the curve, to keep the, to help, to eliminate that steady decline that was taking place?

0:36:08.8 Mike: Was that before or after the pardon?

0:36:12.1 Jeff: Well. [laughter]

0:36:13.0 Mike: No, I think what my father did bring to the presidency was kind of a fresh, and fresh perspective and an openness that was not there before. When the Nixon White House, there was lots of secrecy, and with Nixon, there was lots of withholding of information and my father's just not that kind of person. I mean, he loved being out with his constituents, and he liked to hear from them, and this is in West Michigan, in the Grand Rapids area, for 26 years, and then he always, when he was president, he would have press conferences. That was unheard of.

0:37:14.8 Mike: He would actually put himself in front of the press, have them ask him the hard questions. In fact, when he did pardon Richard Nixon, he went up to Capitol Hill to the Judiciary Committee, and sat there in front of his former congressional colleagues and got skewered, asked about why the pardon. So I think there was something in him that just wanted to be open and honest, and let people see things that he wrestles with, and why he had to make hard decisions. And he had a very friendly and congenial relationship with the press during that time.

0:38:15.0 Jeff: So, you mentioned there's a transparency to him. We have an inordinately complex system of government and system of elections. How does that complexity erode confidence in outcomes?

0:38:19.8 Jason: Yeah, I think that's... I think I just pitched it earlier today as something that makes it hard to steal an election, right? It also makes it hard to understand. But... And one of the things that I think we are trying to do, just to give an example, we almost never know who won an election on the night of the election, right? We have projections, we have other things. In fact, I went to bed in 2000 thinking that Al Gore had won the election, and I woke up in the morning thinking that he'd lost. And so it's... There is a level of complexity that makes it difficult. And what it requires is additional education, right? We need to know that in order to... The example that we've been kicking around with Kevin Johnson and Heather Vallies back there is this idea that if you play a football game under the college overtime rules, if it's tied at the end of the game, you know exactly what those overtime rules are. They're frankly a little bit complicated. But everybody understands them, they explain them, and then they go and they do it. In an election, if you don't know the night of the election because, for example, there's going to be election challenges or there's going to be an additional recount.

0:39:42.1 Jason: In Georgia, we have something called a risk-limiting audit that we can do for particular areas that come afterwards. That is the most important thing, is to let people understand what those rules are. And I think, ultimately, for me... I'm a lawyer in Atlanta, but I watched across the country as federal judges, state judges, etcetera, looked at the actual evidence that was brought forth about... And by the way, in Georgia, it was brought forth by supporters of Donald Trump and supporters of more liberal candidates, Joe Biden and others, and challenging the election system and the judicial system and that rule of law. We trust it to some extent to get things right, right? At the end of the day, when you go sit on a jury, people, I think, believe that juries get things right. But it's there, and that sort of post-election overtime period where you're looking at what these rules are, you're looking at how we validate the results, all of that, it's a very important part of building trust, even in the midst of that complexity. And so we all know, the folks from Georgia know, that there's Berrien County election officials that people know by name now because there was an issue that went into court.

0:41:07.7 Jason: And so, ultimately, I think, while some people continue to deny, based, in my opinion, on mis- and disinformation, we have the ability to go afterwards and look and figure it out. So that's my two cents on that.

0:41:21.7 Jeff: Let me go back to the nonviolent campaign. The two of you wrote an essay recently about political violence, and it's not just an abstract problem. I mean, both of you had to live with it in very profound ways. Speak about your experience, your dad's experience and your family's experience dealing with matters of political violence.

0:41:48.0 Mike: Yes. So many of you may or may not remember when my father was serving, he actually had two assassination attempts. Thank God they weren't successful. In September of 1975, in California, two separate events. But, so, it is something that is disturbing to our family. I know every political family that's had that experience of a threat on, or the life of their loved one. But, it kind of, we bring it down to the election officials, too, and to the people who were involved in the campaign process. Because, unfortunately, there's been an increase in the type of intimidation, harassment, and even threats on people who are good people, who are just trying to conduct a fair, and free, and secure election. And they're, many of them are volunteers besides the election officials. And this is so disturbing that the people who are trying to keep our democracy functioning well and get it right in the electoral process are undergoing this kind of harassment and threats. And so, that's one of the, I guess, the second pillar of a non-violent campaign is to really take that out of the electoral process, is to really strongly denounce that and protect the people who are doing the right thing and trying to bring this electoral process along smoothly.

0:44:06.5 Mike: So I just I think Jason and I feel strongly about that. It's something that concerns us even in this coming election. We need to just have no acceptance or tolerance for any kind of violence or intimidation.

0:44:41.4 Jason: And ensuring that not only is there no tolerance, but that you, to use your word, denounce it, right? I mean, the key here is if leaders have the ability to lead, then they need to lead in the right way. And that's what the Carter Center looks at in other countries. And if we think that someone is either fomenting violence towards election officials, towards people from the other party, we'll call that out. And it's not just a matter of allowing it. It's a matter of, to your point, coming out strongly and saying, this has no place among my supporters. This has no place for us in this country. That is what I think is the principle that we would espouse.

0:45:25.6 Jeff: And the Carter Center and your work in other countries, I mean, you've seen political violence up close. What do you do to mitigate that danger?

0:45:35.6 Jason: Well, I mean there's a couple things. I mean we have been involved in elections that themselves are the outcome of a negotiated peace process, for example, in a truly war-torn country. I mentioned Liberia in 1997. That was a negotiated election where these various warlords, for lack of a better term, agreed to put themselves up for votes and to go out and to try to resolve the question of who belonged in which power, who belonged in power through a democratic process, right? I mean, and so there you're talking about literal former combatants. I mean, South Sudan, for which Susan Page was the first American ambassador had a referendum and some elections. And so you're talking about places that are very destabilized, and democracy becomes one of the, or the election itself becomes one of the stepping stones. And so there's sort of two parts. One is what the candidates say, and the other is the actual security environment, right? We happen to be lucky in this country that people for the most part, feel like they can go to the polls in safety, And if there's incidents that question that or that call that into question, we have the ability to respond to that in real ways.

0:46:49.9 Jason: And so we have the benefit of a good security environment compared to many other countries. And then what we need is to make sure that we maintain that and that we recognize what voter intimidation looks like. Again, in Georgia, excuse my microphone, in Georgia our history, when people talk about voter intimidation, voter suppression in the black community in Georgia, those memories are raw and real, and they are based on not mis- and disinformation, but the actual history of the movement. And so those, it requires us to understand where people are coming from, make sure people feel safe, and continue to use that. But some of it is by talking and making sure that we're saying the right things. Some of it is by maintaining these norms, and then some of it's just the regular security environment. But we're lucky in this country. I mean, yes, we have trouble in our democracy, but we have a vast number of enormous advantages that give us what we need to make this thing work.

0:47:53.7 Jeff: That's a hopeful note. And another hopeful note, your presidents, Ford and Carter, I mentioned earlier, they developed this really deep friendship with each other. And we live in very polarized times right now. What kind of, how did that friendship develop, and what kind of example can they provide for us today? I mean, is it possible to have people across the aisle develop those kinds of friendships now?

0:48:24.4 Mike: Yeah, I think it is. It takes a lot of work and a lot of humility. I know for my dad and President Carter, they were pretty strong adversaries during the campaign, even though the letter is very gracious to transfer the power. And, but there were times during the campaign when I heard my father say, I can't believe that peanut farmer is saying that. He didn't say that publicly. And I feel like Carter and Ford, they never disparaged or demeaned people in the public setting. They may have some harsh words privately, but I do think the relationship really did grow, their friendship. And this is documented in Richard Norton Smith's book, that when my dad and President Carter flew on Air Force One over to Anwar Sadat's funeral in 1981, they flew over to represent the United States. They had personal relationship with Anwar Sadat. And this whole Israeli-Arab conflict was really important to both of them. And President Carter had the peace accords. And so this was a trip that took a long time. But during that time, they had some good conversation. And they realized that they had a lot in common, that they were pretty humble.

0:50:31.0 Mike: Both of them had humble beginnings in youth. Both of them served in the Navy for their country. Both of them were very active in their party politics. And both of them ran against Ronald Reagan, too. So they had some...

0:50:57.2 Jeff: It's a common enemy.

0:51:00.0 Jason: Ted Kennedy, too.

0:51:05.8 Mike: But I think that got it started. And then the next thing, they started doing cooperative programs together, like 25 programs from 1983 or '2 to when my dad passed away. But anyway, they discovered that even though they had differences, they had a common love for their country. They had a common sense of what the American Democratic Republic, the Constitutional Republic was about. And they wanted, in some ways, to find, to demonstrate how people from different political parties, different perspectives, could come together and try to find compromise or find some common ground to some of the problems we have in our country and to model that. So I think it can be done again. And I hope that after this election, there is a calming or a dampening of emotions and there is kind of some reconciliation among some of the political candidates and we can come together as an American nation in unity there.

0:52:36.5 Jason: I think when I was in the legislature in Georgia, a bunch of my best friends down there were Republicans. And the current governor, the current Secretary of State, the current Attorney General, these are all guys that I know. They're all guys in Georgia. Michigan has this beautiful ability to elect all these incredible women and Georgia has not done a very good job of that. But it will soon, is my prediction. But and since this is non-partisan, I think our country will probably do that soon too, either here or there. But the interesting thing to me about it is we have had this polarization and I do think there's a pendulum that swings. And I think that we've come a long way. And I frankly think that that attempt on Donald Trump's life that we all witnessed and that we responded to in the way that we did, I think you have seen a dampening of the rhetoric on both sides with respect to, people are still at each other's, they're still vigorously debating and they're calling names and it's maybe personal, but it is not the kind of rhetoric that I think you were seeing before that.

0:54:01.9 Jason: And I don't think we'll see that again. Maybe people may disagree with me, but that's my take. And I also think that the pendulum is swinging back. What was interesting to me in the legislature, some of my best friends, as I said, are Republicans and we would work together on issues that were, 90% of what you do in the legislature, certainly in the Michigan legislature or the Georgia legislature is non-partisan stuff. And you'd work and then the one hot button issue would come and everybody would kind of scurry back to their quarters and act like they hated each other. It was almost like they were putting on a show. And I think in Washington, and the good thing about the local legislatures and the local government folks, it'd be interesting for me to hear from as well, but the less press attention you have, the easier it is to get along. And the folks in Washington are up there putting on a show all the time.

0:54:49.7 Jason: And when you're putting on a show all the time, you gotta act like you're running in your own partisan primary because 90% of those people that run up there are running in a district that's totally safe for one party and so the only time they ever get challenged is in their own partisan primary. And so that makes them put on that show. But I think, again, to come back to the point about people being humans, people, for the most part, agree. Every single person in this room has a good friend that's from a different political party. And maybe not everybody. Some people may really truly be isolated in their own Instagram feeds. But for the most part, you can think of somebody. And I think that that pendulum is coming back.

0:55:34.9 Jeff: I think about that. The saying goes that the highest office in the land is citizen. And your grandfather was really, in his post-presidential period, just a sort of model of what an average citizen, what you would hope an average citizen would do.

0:55:44.7 Jason: Yeah, an average citizen who had been President of the United States. Of course there's that. It's an enormous platform. But no, think about it like this. He was the Governor of Georgia for four years. He was the President of the United States for four years. That's eight years. The rest of the time, he was just a citizen. I mean, for 92 years now. And there's not that many people. Joe Biden, who's leaving, was in high public office for 50 years. And Jimmy Carter was eight.

0:56:19.2 Jason: And I just think it's a different perspective on what that looks like. We've probably never had a President like that. I mean, your father was such a remarkable, long-standing member of Congress and all the other things that he achieved. And my grandfather really kind of came in and was like, we're gonna see how this looks like. And I do think that when he, as I said before, a regular guy, but he did win the Nobel Peace Prize. He did do all these things. But mostly, in part, 'cause of his work in the White House, but in part because of his work as just, to your point, as a citizen with a platform. And those platforms are so much more democratized now than they used to be I mean, all of us know a 20-something-year-old Swedish girl who has a remarkable platform and who used it right. Everybody in this room has the ability, like you can start on... Put your music on YouTube, and then eventually you're Zach Bryant. You know what I mean? Like, it, like we have a real democracy now of platforms that give people the ability to have a real impact as a citizen.

0:57:16.9 Jeff: I would like to take a few questions from the audience. We have a few minutes. If there's anybody who'd like to ask a question of our guests? Right here, let's get a student here. That'd be nice.

0:57:39.4 Speaker 5: Hi. So we've been talking about polarization and the threat to democracy, and I was actually wondering to kind of look at a different lens. I, as a 19-year-old feel like there's this heightened polarization or politicization of the courts, whether that be the Supreme Court, state court. I worked in a courthouse this summer in Ohio, and I witnessed it there. And so I was wondering if you feel through your lives and careers, if you've noticed this heightened politicization of the courts and if you feel that's a threat to the functions of our government and what you think could happen going forward.

0:58:23.6 Jason: I don't mean to jump on this one either, but... So I think that's a really good question. And I said I'm a lawyer, right? And I apologize for that, probably but... And a politician. My wife was a journalist, like we alienated everybody. But anyway.

[laughter]

0:58:42.0 Jason: It is a huge problem, and it has the potential to be an even bigger problem, right? For me, I watched, and I said almost hesitatingly before that I have real faith in the rule of law in my home state. And I do, and I watched, I think we watched a lot of, for example, Trump appointed judges reject Trump supporters claims that the election was stolen, right? I think there were 60 separate lawsuits that were filed. Many of them filed in front of Trump appointed judges in the federal courts who rejected those 'cause there was no evidence, for example, right? And so when you see something like that happen, it gives me some faith. I think, and I don't know how they elect judges, for example, in Michigan, but in Georgia, we elect judges for a relatively long period of time, but in a state like North Carolina where there now have hyper-partisanship in their judicial elections, it becomes a really big problem.

0:59:37.8 Jason: And so I think that we should have actual reforms. I think the Supreme Court has been highly politicized at this point. It's going to be very difficult to rebuild that public trust, so I think that we should consider a variety of different reforms. The Supreme Court is its own thing, but for example, non-partisan elections for judge where you have a single 10-year term and you're not allowed to run for re-election. If we elected judges like that, I think you would see better things. I think in some states, in Georgia, for example, we have partisan elections for our district attorney. I think that's a terrible idea, 'cause then you have a "Democrat" or a "Republican" who's in charge of prosecuting people, right?

1:00:21.7 Jason: I think that's bad. I think that is one area where your generation and maybe my generation can get together and really start doing things 'cause I think it is really, really, really important that we don't have a hyper politicization of the judiciary and I think it's happened in real significant ways. I do though believe, especially at sort of the district court level and our federal district courts, that you've got folks that are trying to get it right, that I have real faith in. And is that true for every single human being that's there? No, that's not true for every single human being anywhere. But I think that, that at the federal level right now, I have real faith in the system, but as it grows, it's something that we need to nip soon. Maybe you guys disagree about...

1:01:03.6 Jeff: Yeah. Now we have someone back there with a question. No, it's great.

1:01:08.5 Speaker 6: Thank you for your insight. I am a Knight-Wallace journalism fellow at the University of Michigan. I'm the Korean journalist. The achievement of President Ford and Carter are well known in Korea. I find it impressive how victory and defeat are accepted by presidential families, and efforts are made to unite it afterwards. What I am curious about is whether there is any internal pressure within each party to refuse to concede, paint the opponent as the enemy or demonizing them. Okay. It seems that two party system, such pressure might be even stronger. So I want to... What are your thought? And one more question for this. And also regarding the Trump and Harris, the presidential election is highly competitive. So what do you think is the most important factor for ensuring fairness in US presidential election, and what concerns you the most? Is it social media or [1:02:30.8] ____. Thank you.

1:02:36.9 Jason: Pressure within the political party to not concede.

1:02:38.9 Mike: Not to concede? Yeah, I think it's changed since Ford and Carter ran against each other. And I think the two parties today unfortunately have in some ways been kind of overtaken by the more extreme elements in each party in some ways. And I think there's a strong sense of we don't believe that we should give up or we should concede or we should give ground. I feel like there's a real, not just polarization, but a real sense of distrust and unwillingness to work and towards a good outcome for the election. So, yeah, I feel like you mentioned a two party system and we've had that ever since our Republic was founded. And I do think that in some ways there is a... There may be some consideration to have a multi-party kind of national political thing. I see some of the value of that in other commonwealths or other countries too, but here we are in America. And I think it really is time to put down the hatchet, so to speak and for the good of our country and our nation to be more generous and more respectful and to each side, towards each side. So.

1:05:08.5 Jason: And I think to take sort of both of your questions a little bit, number one, it's pretty rare for someone not to concede. I agree that there's pressure, but if you think about how many different elections we have every single year, right? There's 56 senators that are elected in Georgia every year, and the person who loses those races pretty much always concede. We elect 50 governors all over the state and 100 senators, and how many people have we seen not concede? It's pretty rare, right? I think that for the most part, we do believe in our system, right? We really do, and I think what happens for all of us, and you mentioned social media or whatever, is we fixate on the highest profile election, right?

1:05:57.4 Jason: This presidential election is an incredibly important one, and Donald Trump is a huge factor in our politics and has been in each of the last three elections. And so I think that... And we get sort of caught up in that. But really, we do believe. The proof is in the pudding, right? We believe in our system. People don't... We've got... Raise your hand in here if you've lost an election, right? No. You don't actually have to, but a lot of people have, right? I have. And so we're there, but you mentioned social media and some of the things, right? We do get fixated on this tiny slice of things that are the problems. And I think sometimes, we have to broaden our understanding and what the issues are that we focus on because if we only focus on the things that are different from person to person or from political party to political party, and that's what gets 100% of the attention and 100% of the oxygen, it makes us feel like we're more divided than in fact we are. And so I think that as we broaden this out, and we really start thinking about what our democracy really looks like, and who it is that we are, I think we pretty much agree. And yes, we focus on this narrow band of issues in which we have disagreements, but broadening the actual discussion I think is also really helpful.

1:07:23.8 Jeff: I think we have time for one more question. And we'll, we will hang around maybe.

1:07:29.8 Sean: Hi, I am Sean. I'm a master's student here at Ford. Pretty excited to be in this room right now. Throughout this talk, and these first two questions actually too, I kept thinking about electoral structure as part of the perception of electoral security. The obvious example is the electoral college but I'm also kind of referencing first past the post versus rank choice voting, 50% majority versus 80% consensus margins of victory, political parties and primaries, all the other stuff. The reason we're here is to talk about election security and integrity and not structure, but I wanted to know do either of you feel that there are any particularly important things to consider regarding election security if electoral structure is being reevaluated or changed? Thanks.

1:08:16.5 Jason: You want me to go first on that?

1:08:19.2 Mike: You go.

1:08:20.0 Jason: Yeah. My two cents on that, and this is something that you should literally like lean over and talk to some of these folks from the Carter Center about, or maybe come be an intern at the Carter Center in the summer. There are structural problems that are real. To me, the two biggest structural problems that we have that drive all of this are the gerrymandering of the districts, which means that everything is safe seat, right? Like when I was in the legislature, I had Republican opponents every year. I could not tell you their names, I couldn't tell you their gender. I couldn't tell you anything about them because they were totally irrelevant to my life.

1:09:03.1 Jason: And every year I would go in and I would get 78% of the vote in the general election 'cause it was a gerrymandered district, right? I didn't do it. I was opposed to it. And it's easy when you're not in power to be against gerrymandering. And so we... But that drives people into these partisan primaries and have those partisan primaries to his point. That's the reason that we end up with, I think the more polarization from the leaders themselves. And I think the other is the way that money impacts it, right? And that those dollars are so huge and the people who donate are almost always on those extremes as well. Not entirely obviously, but like, it's still, that's who you're catering to as a candidate. And what I think both of those two things do is make it almost impossible to really change the structure too much, right?

1:09:54.9 Jason: You might... Could change. Go to first pass the post, excuse me, change to some rank choice voting or you could go after a third party or something like that, but the infrastructure that exists supports the status quo to such an enormous degree. And when you have gerrymandering and money, it's very, very hard to add a third party to really start to change things. And so I think that those are the places where it starts. And there are, just to throw two things out there, I think the rise of independent district drawing commissions are... Redistricting commissions are real and I think they're valuable. And I think that that's something that can be changed. And I frankly think that there's a clever way to have the electoral college to have states award their electoral votes based on the national popular vote. And so if you look at that, there are ways we can do it, but I think that you've gotta start with some of those, that's my two cents on that.

1:11:00.8 Mike: Yeah. And I would just echo what Jason said. I'm a big proponent of campaign finance reform too. I feel like this country of ours is supposed to be one person, one vote, an equal voice in the outcome. And when you have millionaires and billionaires who literally are buying elections or candidates, and it just is so undemocratic and it's so wrong. And so I wish both the congress would get the courage to be able to rein that in and change how money is collected and distributed during the campaigns. Yeah. So.

1:11:58.9 Jason: And I'll just note as an anecdote on that. When I ran for governor, I've raised more money than any challenger in the history of Georgia, and we raised and spent about $12 million. The next election, excuse me, our last election, both of the two Democrats at the top of the ticket, Stacey Abrams and Raphael Warnock, both raised and spent more than $100 million each. So you're talking about $200 million in the Georgia election, as compared to the 10 or $12 million that I raised, which is just in like... I'm not becoming dinosaur from a different political era, but I'm 49 years old. It's not like... So the world is changing very, very fast in that way, and it's not getting better.

1:12:37.6 Jeff: Well, thank you both. I think to quote, not a Ford, but a Lincoln, we are not friends, but enemies and in the Mystic Chords of memory, you can still swell the chorus of union and touch the better angels of our nature. So thank you both for being here and for this initiative, which I think is just of vital importance in this day and time. A reminder, we are gonna be hosting events tomorrow at the Ford Library from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM. We'll have a number of panels. A number of the people in the room will be here talking, and Heather has... You have something you wanna say?

1:13:19.9 Speaker 8: In the category of reminders, everybody in this room that believes in what these two gentlemen have been talking about today, they co-chair the Steering Committee for Trusted Elections, and they have a website up called principlesfortrustedelections.org. And every one of us can sign our name to that and declare to our candidates the expectations that we have for them in terms of the principles that we expect, whether they win or whether they lose. And so I just wanna remind that we all can take a tiny bit of action right here, right now, principlesfortrustedelections.org.