JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The 2024 election was widely considered a success in that majorities of both major political parties say they thought it was administered well and run fairly. But so-called election integrity advocates are not taking a victory lap. NPR acquired audio that shows how the people who think 2020 was stolen are already making plans for 2025. NPR voting correspondent Miles Parks has that audio, and he's here in the studio. Hey there.
MILES PARKS, BYLINE: Hey, Juana.
SUMMERS: So Miles, tell me about this audio.
PARKS: So it's a recording at a meeting of ALEC, which is the American Legislative Exchange Council. This is a conservative organization that helps draft policy for state lawmakers. We got this audio, which was secretly recorded, from the watchdog group Documented. And the audio is of a panel which was put together by conservative election attorney Cleta Mitchell, who was a key figure in Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Listeners might remember she was on that call after the 2020 election where Trump tried to pressure Georgia election officials to find votes. She's not an ALEC employee, but her Election Integrity Network has become really influential in crafting policy for the sort of election denial wing of the Republican Party.
SUMMERS: Got it. Miles, what was her main message?
PARKS: So the message was that, despite a successful election for Donald Trump and for other Republicans, elections still need major changes. One interesting point that Mitchell made was that she wants to target election officials who are going out of their way to make voting easier or to register new voters.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CLETA MITCHELL: Your job is to administer the election according to the law and to treat every voter and group of voters the same. Your job is not voter turnout.
PARKS: You know, Republicans succeeded this election cycle on a very high turnout environment. Trump won low-propensity voters. But Mitchell's comments suggest that this wing of the party is still wary of policies that might bring new people into the electorate.
SUMMERS: OK. So what kind of changes are Mitchell and her group pushing in terms of policy?
PARKS: So ahead of this meeting, she did release a document that laid out a lot of her policy priorities. Some of the things in there are things that even election - many election experts would get behind - things like election offices sharing data with their state DMVs to keep addresses up to date, for instance. But she also wants the U.S. to move back to single-day, in-person voting. And more importantly, she wants to add new restrictions, new requirements for people in terms of the documents they need to be able to register to vote.
I mean, broadly, the tone of this panel was this idea that election administration is still in chaos. And Mitchell and I emailed about this this week, and she said the reason that this year's election went well was because people like her and her advocacy group were kind of watching like hawks over election officials.
SUMMERS: Right. But, Miles, I know this because you've reported it for us. That intense scrutiny has led to threats and harassment for some local election officials and clerks. Did that come up at this meeting?
PARKS: It did, and they basically said it's not actually happening. You know, similar to the riot at the Capitol on January 6, it's going to be really interesting over the next couple years as we see Trump and then some of these advocacy groups try to paper over what has been happening when it comes to the local election officials because, as you mentioned, we know from reporting and survey data that many of their lives have been upended by this campaign. You can listen here to Sharon Bemis, who's a former town clerk who now works for Cleta Mitchell's group, talking about what she calls the election official threat narrative.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SHARON BEMIS: So many of us are familiar with the threat narrative that has been very prominent. I think you'll find in your state that it's unfounded. If you ask for police reports related to threats against your election administrators, I think you'll find that it is very rare.
PARKS: Now, Bemis' organization did not respond to requests for comment from NPR, but during this panel, she specifically told the lawmakers in attendance, do not pass bills that give election officials more protections from harassment or from threats than other people.
SUMMERS: NPR's Miles Parks. Thank you.
PARKS: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF CURREN$Y AND STATIK SELEKTAH SONG, "GRAN TURISMO") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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