S2E1 Election Integrity: Bailey Kelley

SO WHAT SEASON 2.1 NEWEST EDIT: Hi, welcome to So What, the podcast where we talk to experts about one thing in their field that they think everybody should know about. We've all experienced elections that we didn't like the outcome of, but I think trying to retrofit a way to get the numbers to fit what we want want to do the outcome is not the answer. I'm Madhima Chakarati. And I'm Sean Johnson Andrews. today we're speaking with Bailey Kelly. Bailey is an alumnus of Columbia College Chicago's Cultural Studies program, where both Madurama and I taught. and she went on to get degrees at University of Illinois, Chicago, and University of Iowa. But today she's talking to us about the field of election administration, which she entered as a temporary employee during the pandemic and has since worked her way up. she now serves as director of elections for the state of Iowa. So welcome, Bailey. Glad to have you with us. thank you very much. I'm very excited to be here. So I wanna wanna start with there's been a lot of discussion about election integrity, where there's this new Save America Act, a lot of concern about the integrity of elections. So I guess you all are finally deciding that it's important to have you know, secure elections. Is that is this something new to you guys? We're coming around to it, yeah. no, in all seriousness, we have been taking this terribly seriously for decades. Election integrity is baked into American democracy and we find new ways to improve it. Every election cycle, every time technology changes, we are at the forefront of how we make that technology work to make elections more accessible, more secure. So basically you don't have to worry about it. You've got it covered. You've got it covered. We in Illinois just had primaries and of course election there's these elections that are the midterms that are slated in November. There's supposed to be all these changes that hopefully will take hold in the next few months or are expected to take hold in the next few months. And I'm just kinda wondering, you've been doing this job for a while, right? For a few years. As Sean mentioned, I started as a temporary employee in twenty twenty. At the county level. I've been in this office for almost three years now and went up on one there as director of elections. So you've seen a lot of like you've put on a lot of hats in that in in I've touched every part of elections, yes. So what are if you had to name some myths, you know, like the like the the strongest stories about like election integrity, election fraud, what do you think some of those might be and like how how truthful are the myth? So I think one of the biggest ones that we deal with is that elections are hackable. they are open to anybody just getting on a computer and changing the results. even like Venezuela, like a whole other country can just sort of And I I do want to preface this by saying that I can only speak to Iowa elections because we do have 50 some jurisdictions that administer elections. I say 50 some because you also have the District of Columbia and the the US territories that also have elections. and I love running into them at our national conferences. so there are 50 plus ways of doing all of this. but there are so many levels of physical security and cyber security and paper backups and multiple people you know looking at things, reviewing them, making sure that things are done correctly. It's we spend our time trying to figure out ways to pack an election. And it's pretty impossible. it's I mean, because again, we have paper ballots in Iowa, you have bipartisan teams that are helping people vote. You have all of these aspects. You have around the clock cybersecurity experts that are monitoring the situation. We have partnerships with federal agencies, state agencies, local agencies that are constantly on the lookout for any kind of strange strange behavior, any kind of, you know, this doesn't seem right. when they get the paper ballots back. They go in and they count them by hand, at least a small percentage of them, to make sure that all of this is working correctly. On the front side of that, you have physical security measures to make sure that no foreign media devices are getting put into computers that dictate how the machines are going to be run. so we have all of that in place to take care of Any attempt at affecting an election. And if that if that attempt is found, it is immediately pursued and prosecuted. So I can just show up at an election space with my l laptop and a nifty key drive and then change who who gets to be president. And and that's and that's just it. I mean, even if even if somebody were again, it's a it's the layered security approach, is even if you were able to gain physical access. You don't have the right password. Right. Even if you have the right password, you don't have physical access to the computer that's actually controlling that. Even if you were to get through all of that, there's a public test before every election that confirms that machines are counting the ballots correctly. so you're gonna get caught somewhere along the way. Right. And I and I really would, just to be clear, I I really would. Well I mean give your give yourself some credit. Maybe maybe maybe with some practice. No, it doesn't it doesn't sound like it, I have to say. One of the other things that Donald Trump and and some of the other folks in who are who are trying to pass this this act have been talking about is absentee voting or or mail-in ballots, which are something that many many jurisdictions use. Why are you telling your supporters to vote by mail if you think it's fraud? no vote by mail or vote in person. I'd rather have them vote in person but they can vote by mail if they want because we seem to have no choice because lot people want to vote vote by mail, but a lot of very good people also want to vote in person. You can do either. What we're concerned about is there seems to be a lot of cheat not seems to be. There is a lot of cheating in vote by mail. A lot of cheating all over. I'll tell you what, start off by taking a look at California. Take a look at take a look at no evidence with millions and millions of ballots, you are fake news. What what what's been the Your experience with with with absentee ballots or the fraud around absentee ballots. Yeah, you have some states, Washington state, for example, is all mail-in and every voter automatically gets a ballot. in Iowa, we are what's called a no-excuse absentee ballot. So you don't have to tell us why you want to vote by mail. You just have to get us the form and we'll send it to you for every election. and I think there's a misconception that that's a real opportunity for fraud to occur in the delivery of them, in the marking of them, in the return of them. And I know that we saw a lot of photos online of that claim to be ballots dumped into a ditch that are were proven to be incorrect or proven to be fraudulent. images. you know you have to balance access to the ballot with the security of those ballots. And so the voters have to sign an affidavit saying I am this voter and I am eligible to vote and this is my ballot. And it gets returned to the in the case of Iowa, the county auditor's office for processing by a bipartisan team for counting. I think the other thing I wanna that this points to is does fraud happen? Yes, but the rates of it are so minor, so minuscule. just because you know you can point to one instance of fraud does not mean it's happening on a massive scale. so absentee voting is important. in Iowa, we have laws that allow bipartisan teams to visit hospitals and healthcare facilities to administer voting for for persons that can't get to the polling place. so even if you know you break your leg and you're in the hospital and you have missed the deadline to request an absentee ballot by mail, we will send a team out to you to vote your ballot. And we make sure that it's a bipartisan team and that they're The ballot is being tracked and all the ballots are being brought back and we have all the signatures. So we we really prioritize simultaneously security and ballot access. And that's what leads to elections with integrity. Now one of the things we keep hearing, which ironically there there is this is the Save America Act that we're that we're looking at. There is also a a save act around this, which is around non citizens voting. Right? Now so this must be a massive problem you have to deal with every year. is just kind of keeping all the non citizens from voting. I'm sure they're they're knocking on your door. They have fraudulent IDs. They're desperate to put in a vote. It's not a problem that we have. No, we know. We have worked actually in we've worked very closely with the US citizenship citizenship and immigration services, USCIS. so the other SAVE that you're referencing is the SAVE program, which is the systematic alien verification for entitlement program. it's not a database. It's a process where states and other jurisdictions can submit information about individuals and ask for confirmation of their citizenship status. Historically, it's been used for things like Medicare, Medicaid, other entitlement programs. Several states have started using it to confirm citizenship status for voters. And our state has done that. And back in 2024. We had a little over 2,000 voters that were flagged for one reason or another, most of it self-reporting through our Department of Transportation that they were not citizens, but they were registered voters. And we sent them through that program and we got the results back, and out of the almost three million registered voters that we have in Iowa, it was point zero zero zero one two percent non-citizens that were registered to vote. That's that doesn't mean they voted though. It just means they were registered a few of them a few of them did, but most of them were just registered because when you're walking around a library or a farmers market decide whatever's in front of you. So reading up for this episode, I was looking at some of these statistics that have to do with the non-citizens voting, right? Because that's the that's the rhetorical push behind the Save Act has to do with, you know, and and I also read that at least on the face of it, the Save Act is something that could be pretty popular. You know, like if you just said, are you for ensuring that citizens are the people who are voting? You know, like everyone, as you're saying I've done some I've done some qualitative research in my time and you can write any kind of polling question to get people to answer it a certain way. Right. Do you like integrity generally? Is that a thing? Is that a thing that you are for? Or do you hate honesty? You know, like that could be that could be a way that you answer that question. There's this stat that I thought was pretty impressive. So in Georgia, a 2022 review, so this is before like this is what's already in place, right? So 2022 review found that 1,634 people had attempted to register to vote and could not be verified as citizens between 1997 and 2022. So that's in 25 years, in 25 years, 1,634 people had attempted to register to vote. None of them had voted. And in October 2024, The Associated Press reported that Georgia election officials said twenty out of the eight point two million on the state's register were not US citizens, and that nine had voted in previous elections plural. So nine across you know, I mean, so it just seems to me like if this is the problem in Jo in Georgia, w how big of a problem is it? How big of a problem is it really? And also There seem to be mechanisms in place, before we spend new tens of millions of dollars or hundreds of millions of dollars on I I will say that y there are mechanisms in place and oftentimes those mechanisms can be improved. Sure. So there have been tremendous changes made to the SAVE program that allowed for bulk uploads. Because before this became a real national issue, it was it was individual checks one at a time that these entitlement agencies were were conducting. So different states, some states don't use it at all, some states have been using it for years, but I will say that they have improved the process for us to use it. However, they will be the first to say it not. definitive and it's just another tool in our toolbox to make a determination, you know, reach out to a voter, ask for some clarification, whatever the case might be. And they're so so we get information back from them, but that is not the the end of it. Right. And so it's it's useful, it's helpful, but yes, you're you're absolutely correct that there are mechanisms in place And once we go through everything in our toolbox and make a determination, you know, the appropriate legal procedures procedures will be followed and that person will not be allowed to vote in the future. so it's it's frustrating when people think this is a a quick fix to a problem that really doesn't exist. It's a massive lift of a quick fix to a problem that doesn't exist. And potentially an an expensive one too. Yes. Yes. Well, and this isn't so what we're we're getting to this moment of the Save Act after years of misinformation and disinformation about election integrity. you know, really as a sort of political tool to I guess disincline voters from seeing elections as secure. so what, you know, I assume as an election official, this is something that becomes part of your context, part of your atmosphere. W what sort of what what is the effect of this misinformation on on your work, on on on what you do in your office? So since I started in 2020 This narrative, this discourse was already happening. So I have never worked in the election space without this misinformation. but I can tell you it takes up a great deal of our time and energy. It takes up time by responding to the public, responding to legislators, responding to media, to clarify things. It takes time to Do proactive voter education, clearing up myth versus fact. it takes time, honestly, out of our really, really productive national conferences where we get together from all across the country and share our stories and share our concerns and our challenges and our successes. when we have half a day devoted to How do you handle misinformation? That's time that could be taken away from the other things that we could be doing to improve the voting experience, improve voter education. right, there are advances in AI. Two years ago, AI was the boogeyman in the room and nobody wanted to touch it. Now you have states that are exploring ways to ethically and productively apply it to election administration. Right, there are ways that we can look into enhancing election integrity through extra cybersecure measures for the transmission and the return of electronic ballots. right, all of those all of these are things that I would I wish we had more time to spend looking into and implementing because it's a lot of our time and energy devoted to. discussing these issues with, as our office calls them, the enthusiasts. So outside of the sort of time it takes up, and the and the sort of hassle of having to kind of deal with it in a bureaucratic sense, has there any been have you had any credible threats against your office or or people in your office? Is that something that you're also having to deal with? Because that's certainly in the news, those kinds of things happening. We have. So I would say At least a couple of times a month we'll get a letter in the mail from they're sometimes known as sovereign citizens. those get turned over to the FBI. There are no direct threats, but it's something that is being tracked and is known across the country as as different government offices receive those letters. We had a white powder incident in our office last year that turned out to not not be an actual substance of concern, but we had to completely readjust our mail processing, moved it to a different area on a different floor, bought a vent hood or a fume hood, I think it's called, had to require PPE for anybody opening the mail. so and we get trainings all the time from so we get we get trainings about Narcan usage in situations where you are exposed to a substance. we bring in the US Postal Inspection Service to give trainings to county auditors about mail handling. we are signed up for services that monitor our names being used on the internet to see if we are in any forums or anything like that that is suggesting that we could be a target of any kind. that's a that's a it's a lot. Bailey that sounds like a that sounds like a a a lot to like come into work every day, you know? If you you really put it out of your mind, I can I can tell you that my my partner thinks about it a lot more than I do and I feel bad for him for that. But it it we d we we do our best to take care of ourselves and protect each other. but we're not the only people that face these kinds of of dangers every day. Well, and i as I understand it, the point of elections is to let each person have a choice. And if you're restricting the number of people who have that choice, then inevitably it's going to hurt it could it it's gonna hurt everybody who's who's in the election, right? Because we don't know I mean, and I think this should have been something that we all learned in the last in the twenty twenty four election. You don't know how people are gonna vote. It it's it you know, it people could vote a different way for whatever reason and you don't know individually or collectively how that how that shift will will take place. Restricting who's gonna be able to get in there and and legitimately cast a vote doesn't seem like it's gonna be beneficial ultimately for for any particular party. You use your student ID, ballot thrown out. Your concealed carry permit, ballot thrown out. Your employer ID, ballot thrown out. Your tribal ID without an expiration date on it, comment on tribal IDs. You get the picture. Ballot thrown out. I could go on and on. I think if if any of us, you know, we've all experienced elections that we didn't like the outcome of. but I think trying to retrofit a way to get the numbers to fit what we want. wanted to be the outcome is is not the answer is and is not the spirit of American democracy. This sounds like you have to to deal with a whole lot. There's a lot of stuff that you're dealing with that's on top of actually administering elections at this point. Right. And this is, I I know you're not complaining. I know that you're not sort of trying to trying to kind of get sympathy here. But on the other hand, that's a lot of energy that you could be devoting to something else. Right. So the things I'm about to list off are not things that we're not doing. We are engaging with all of this. It just would be nice if we had more hours in the day to spend more time on it. So things again, I think the way Ohio has used AI as as a way to help their staff find answers more quickly. so it's basically you know looking at state law, federal law, finding the answers. They then go and look at the answers because we can't trust AI to give us the answers, but you know, helping find the source. That's something that I think I would love to try to bring to the state of Iowa. we have pending legislation that would allow us to do a pilot program for electronic ballots. transmission and return that would assist not only disabled voters but also overseas voters that's a great technology right those are all things that I would like to be able to spend more time pursuing. even very mundane things like I'm sorry, cleaning up my office or spending spending time making sure that the candidate lists are proof before they go up on the website. helping my partner cook dinner when I get home and do the laundry. Sure. those are all things I would rather be spending my time on. Sure. Well thank you so much, Bailey. It's been a real pleasure, incredibly educational to talk to you about elections and about, you know, our understanding of election integrity, maybe versus if not alongside the the reality of what all of this actually means to people, boots on the ground. So I I really am grateful for your joining us today. One of the things that we like to ask our guests is, I mean, obviously this is your wheelhouse. You you live elections. If you had something that you had, you know, if if there was something that's it has nothing to do with elections that you wish we had talked to you about or we maybe you'd recommend that we find somebody to talk to about. What would that what would that be? The TLC show Sister Wives. Really? Sister Wives. Okay. All right. I am so I wrote my master's thesis on MTV's Teen Mom. So I know my way around reality television. And it's been on the air since 2011, I think. They just wrapped up their 20th season. This is embarrassing. I think I listened to probably six podcasts about it. It's it's my Roman Empire. Polygamy Mormon polygamy is my Roman Empire. well that sounds that sounds really that sounds really interesting. So so you said two thousand and eleven, so that's many, many seasons. Twenty, she said. They the the calendar doesn't make any sense. okay. So they trust me, it's been twenty seasons. It's been twenty seasons. Yeah, but they start giving yeah. They so they have multiple seasons a year, but some of them are eight episodes, some of them are twenty one episodes. Yeah. So they've gone through several generations of sister wives at this point then, it seems like it's the it's all one family. Okay. All right. But most recently, three of his four wives have left him. Wow. So it they have to change the name of the show. Yeah, I was gonna say now it's just monogamy. Just wives. Just wife. Well again thank you so much for having me. This has been such a pleasure. It's been it's been great to it's been great to talk to you and and thank you so much for for you know you have little time and a lot to do and we appreciate you spending it talking to us. yeah, thanks so much and we really appreciate it. Today we've been speaking with Bailey Kelly. Who is the Director of Elections for the State of Iowa about election integrity? so thanks for joining us, Bailey. You've been listening to So What? This broadcast is produced in conjunction with the School of Communication and Culture at Columbia College, Chicago and WCRX FM. The music used in this show is composed by Chris Stokes. I'm Sean Johnson Andrews. Follow my writing on Culture and Media at breakingculture.substack.com. And I'm Madharama Chakravarthi. You can find my teaching and creative work at Madhramachakarati.net. For details about today's guests, check the show notes. To hear more episodes, go to our website at podsowat.com or just search So What wherever you get your podcasts. If you have a comment on a past show or a topic idea for an upcoming show, email us at podsowat at gmail.com. Thanks for listening.