I think everyone agrees, back in 2006 the Supreme Court said it is important to maintain public confidence in the election process. We don't want people questioning the outcome because they don't trust the system. We want an election system in which at the end of the day, when the winner is announced, everyone, including the candidates involved, and the voters whose candidate did not win, all say well, you know, my candidate lost, but it was a fair process, and there was no cheating or misconduct or errors by election officials that caused a problem.

Another big problem we saw in this election was what I believe was an unneeded push to get everyone to vote by absentee ballot all over the country. Early elections, particularly in Wisconsin and elsewhere, show that you could vote safely in person. the centers for disease control this summer issued guidelines on how to do that safely. As long as polling places follow the same kind of safety protocols we all see when we are going out to grocery stores, etc., people could vote safely in person with social distancing, masks, the cleaning of voting booths before and after voters used them. The reason i say it was a bad idea to push folks toward absentee balancing is because if you look at past elections, and the New York Times wrote a great article about this eight years ago. Absentee ballots have always had a higher rejection rate than the people -- then the ballots at people cast in person.

The reason for that is straightforward. When a voter is filling out absentee ballots in their homes and they have no election officials to answer their question. That is why they have a higher rejection rate. Everything from forgetting to sign ballots and not providing all the information needed, to ballots being delivered late. So pushing people to vote by absentee ballot was not a good idea. Obviously, we need absentee ballots for people who cannot make it to the polls, for people who are too sick or disabled to do that, but I think that was not a good idea, and i don't think it was needed.

Second,**there were a lot of lawsuits and actions by executive branch officials and state governments to change the rules governing elections, frankly in the middle of the process. and i think it is actually -- the campaign and others are correct in the fact that the constitution very clearly gives the power to set the rules for presidential elections to state legislatures, not state government. Pennsylvania is a good example of that. The deadline for receipt of absentee ballots in Pennsylvania was election day. The secretary came in and said i am overriding state law and we are going to accept absentee ballots for three days after the election. They did that with the approval of the state supreme court. **

So they changed the rules, basically in the middle of the election, but in an unconstitutional manner. No one questions that the state legislature -- if it wanted to change the laws it could have done so. That is the proper way to do it. The state legislature is the collective representative of the voter. Not one official in the state government making that kind of decision. What folks need to understand about that and the danger of for future elections is that the executive branch officials can on their own simply override a state statute.

You may in the future have governors or secretaries of state and other people who are partisan elected officials changing rules in a way that they think might help candidates of their political party, and that is a danger that we would face potentially from both democratic and republican officials. It was just a very bad idea, and frankly, I think a violation of the constitution to be changing rules in the middle of the election particularly because many of those rules were intended to weaken the security protocols governing absentee ballots. Everything from getting rid of signature verification, which is one of the few ways of making sure that the absentee ballots submitted by a voter is actually that of the voter himself or herself. Trying to get rid of witness signature requirements and other measures all intended to safeguard the security of the absentee balloting process.

The other problem that we saw in this election was, look, in every single state, we have state laws that make it a requirement and make it legal for candidates and political parties to have an observer in every aspect of the political process. This kind of transparency is essential to having secure and fair elections. We want the candidates for all political parties and we want the political parties themselves to have observers in the polling places in areas where central counting is going on. That helps assure everyone involved that the law is being followed and nothing is being improperly done. We had numerous instances, Detroit, Philadelphia and other areas where observers were capped out or locked out for example of the central counting locations.

Again, this should not be a partisan issue. That kind of transparency is essential. That's why our state department sends observers to fledgling democracies all over the world to protect the democratic process. That's why just prior to the election, I was asked to brief 100 observers from the EU who were here to observe our election. That's the kind of thing—we cannot allow that to happen. It of course raises questions in the minds of the public because they are sitting there saying, well, why would they do that? What was going on behind closed doors that would cause him to keep the observers out?

https://www.c-span.org/video/?507375-1/federalist-society-discussion-election-laws