This longtime election lawyer is showing skeptics how the system really works

MARK BRODIE: Early voting begins in Arizona in a little more than a week [Oct. 7]. But the claims of election fraud and rigging that’ve been prevalent here and around the country since 2020 have not gone away.

My next guest is trying to change that. Ben Ginsberg is an election attorney — you may remember his name from his time working for George W. Bush and Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns. He was national counsel for the Bush/Cheney campaign during the 2000 election and played a big role in the Florida recount.

Now, he’s the co-chairman of a group called Pillars of the Community, which is trying to boost public faith in elections. He was in the Valley recently for an event with elections and elected officials here. And when he came by the studio to talk about this work, I asked how much of what he and this group try to do is convince people who may be skeptical that elections are safe, secure and reliable.

BEN GINSBERG: Really, all we do is try and convince people that elections are reliable and safe. I mean, the fact of the matter is that I co-chair this group with Bob Bauer, who was my Democratic adversary for years and years. And we served together as co-chairs of a presidential commission on election administration when all around the country, trying to make voting better, talked to tons of election officials.

And I think both of us, who were political combatants, came to see the election system in a much different light, that we saw how much election administrators care, and we saw all the safeguards in the election system.

MARK BRODIE: So you had, you know, kind of an insider’s look at that election system. Is that part of the key, do you think, to get people who are skeptical of the way elections work to really sort of see how the sausage is made, as it were?

BEN GINSBERG: Yes. That’s really our goal with the Pillars of the Community program. I mean, we believe that you hear an awful lot of information about elections, most of it not true. And the way to deal with that situation is not to mutter on the couch about it, but rather to take advantage of an opportunity to kick the tires of the election system.

It can be through us. We try and get people, especially skeptics, together with election officials, give them tours of election facilities, let them ask all the questions that they want. I think people can also get involved in the election process themselves by becoming poll workers for their local governments or poll watchers on behalf of their political parties, if they want.

MARK BRODIE: At the risk of asking a question that might give you heartburn, though, you know, you can give tours to people of election systems, but, you know, you can take, you know, a couple dozen at a time. Somebody sends out a tweet, that could reach 100,000 or more people in five seconds. Like, it seems like it would be hard to sort of combat that with sort of the facts here.

BEN GINSBERG: Very fair observation, really a great part of the challenge that we face. But we do believe that finding people who are leaders in their local communities with networks is the best way to combat it. And, of course, the real test of an election system is in a close race.

And we hope if there are close elections here in Maricopa County or in the state of Arizona, that there will be enough people who will have seen the election systems up close to be able to say that the supervisors and the recorders, all the people who put on elections, know what they’re doing and have followed the safeguards.

MARK BRODIE: Well, it’s interesting you mention close races here in Maricopa County because one of the things that you hear from a lot of political consultants and election officials here is that the system is roughly the same as it has been for a couple of decades.

But now, you know, the state of course gets a lot of flak for the amount of time it takes to get the final results. But a lot of election folks say is like it’s always taken that long, just the races weren’t in doubt, so nobody paid attention. It’s really because the races now are closer and more in doubt that people are paying more attention to how long it takes to count all the votes.

BEN GINSBERG: Yes. That and the fact that elections have become the focus of a national debate in a way that they really weren’t. There have certainly always been recounts and contests throughout the history of the country, but they have been sort of isolated incidents that came about just because of close races. Now there’s the assault on the reliability of the election system that puts much more into play.

MARK BRODIE: You mention recounts and everything. I want to ask about some of your experience because you worked for the George W. Bush campaign and were involved in a very, very close election, of course, in 2000. Could you have imagined at that time that 20-plus years later this is where we would be in terms of the way people feel about elections?

BEN GINSBERG: No. I mean, the Bush versus Gore recount, the 2000 recount, was a really sort of tumultuous, very anxiety-producing incident. But what Florida 2000 did is also prompt a revamping of the election system and the election machinery so that I think we would not have forecast an assault like this on the basic integrity of the system the way it’s taken place.

MARK BRODIE: Do you find that you are able to convince election skeptics or election deniers that elections are, in fact, fair and accurate and run properly?

BEN GINSBERG: Well, it’s been very interesting for us because we do try and recruit people from across the political spectrum into our Pillars program. And we do put them there with election officials and let them ask any question. And the truth is is that I don’t know if we convince everyone that we bring in, but I do know that there is a change in attitude once somebody gets to ask all the questions, hear all the answers, see the equipment, understand how the process works.

MARK BRODIE: Is this the new normal, do you think? Like, can the toothpaste go back in the tube at this point?

BEN GINSBERG: Yeah, I think it can. I mean, so far, there has been absolutely no evidence of systemic problems with the system produced. Suspicions, which are plentiful and have always been, are nonetheless not evidence. So after the 2020 election, there were 64 court cases filed, including plenty here in Arizona. No evidence of systemic fraud. President Trump, in his first term, was able to appoint a commission to look specifically at that. No evidence.

Right now, there is an unprecedented unleashing of federal investigative power to look at elections. So far, no evidence produced despite a series of extraordinary steps. If there’s really evidence of problems with the election system, they have to be fixed. But having all the investigative powers of the government, if there is no proof of election unreliability that comes out of this election, then it is, I think, the responsibility of people in charge to stop the talk.

I think the answer to your question of is this going to stop is that this seems to me to be very much a sort of political strategy to talk about elections. If that strategy is not successful because people realize that it’s not correct, then I think it goes away.

MARK BRODIE: So you think that this election, it sounds like you’re saying this is maybe a bit of a turning point because there hasn’t been evidence, as you referenced, since 2020 of there being problems. And yet, there are still a great number of people who think that the elections are rigged and fixed.

BEN GINSBERG: Yes. And again, every investigative power that the federal government has seems to be being employed to root out that systemic problem that they believe exists. So we’ll see what the evidence is. And if there’s evidence, I think we’ll all try and fix the problems.

MARK BRODIE: How do you gauge the success of this program that you’re running?

BEN GINSBERG: Really great question. We have metrics about number of people involved and public communications. But the truth is, elections are a one-day sale. You don’t know if it’s successful or not until November 3, 2026, and then the aftermath, because contests, recounts, litigation, all part of the process that should go forward. And so I don’t know how to judge the success of the program in the interim stages, although we do try and measure where we are. But it is a one-day sale.

MARK BRODIE: All right. That is Ben Ginsberg, co-chair of the group Pillars of the Community. Ben, thanks so much.

BEN GINSBERG: Thank you.