(CBS, KYMA/KECY) – Adrian Fontes, Secretary of State of Arizona, and Al Schmidt, Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, spoke with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday about the upcoming election.
When asked if both Fontes and Schmidt will commit to certifying the election results “even if the winner is of the opposite political party,” both men said, “Yes.”
During the interview, Brennan, Fontes and Schmidt talked about election safety, with Brennan bringing up what the FBI director saying, this past week, that “it is incomprehensible and unacceptable that election workers have to be worried about their security,” as well as the Justice Department indicting ” individuals for making threats to workers” in both Arizona and Pennsylvania.
When Brennan asked Fontes if there was going to be snipers on top of tabulation centers, and whether it was based on a “specific threat intelligence,” to which Fontes said:
“Well, first and foremost, the authority and jurisdiction over the specific tabulation centers are within the counties. My office provides support for all of them, and frankly, we don’t get into the specifics when it comes to our safety and security protocols, particularly the source or frequency or nature of any of the specific threats. We are in the kind of a circumstance right now where we’re taking whatever precautions are necessary to ensure not just the security of the vote, but of all of our employees, our workers at the polls, at our tabulation centers, and of course, keeping first and foremost in mind the safety and security of our voters.”
Fontes also answered Brennan’s question about whether the increase in security from what he had to do back in 2020, saying, “It’s absolutely, completely different from 2020. In fact, I remember in 2018 our greatest security threat was a rattlesnake in the parking lot at the Pinnacle Peak precinct. So this is a radically different set of circumstances that we are dealing with, but we are prepared, and we’re going to have a secure election.”
Brennan also asked Schmidt the same question about what he had to do to increase security in his state, to which Schmidt said:
“As part of the lessons learned from the experience of 2020, the Shapiro administration organized an election threat task force that I lead made up of federal, state and local partners in law enforcement and election administration, so that if any of the ugliness returns that we experienced in 2020. Everyone will be ready. In 2020 it was, as Secretary Fontes said, so different than before, and many of us had to scramble to figure out when threats were incoming, where do we refer them to, and and all the rest of that. Now we have open lines of communication. Everybody is very clear about what everyone else’s responsibilities are, so we’ll be prepared. Should, again, any of that ugliness return.”
Following her interview with Vice Presidential nominee J.D. Vance, Brennan asked Schmidt how concerned he is about U.S. intelliegence learning about “a fake video made by Russia to trick people into believing that ballots were being destroyed in Bucks County, Pennsylvania,” and why he thinks Russia’s targeting Pennsylvania.
“I’m very concerned, and it’s and it’s clear that bad faith foreign actors are seeking to undermine confidence in our election results, and it’s no surprise that they’ve targeted several of the so-called battleground states and Pennsylvania. The video that you’re referring to from Bucks County, to anyone who has years of experience in election administration, was conspicuously fake. But if you don’t, it’s so easy for people to be sort of deceived by by others trying to undermine confidence in our system of government. So it’s important that that our counties remain vigilant, that our Commonwealth remains vigilant, and our federal partners remain vigilant, and to call out any of these sort of efforts to deceive our voters.”
Al Schmidt, Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Later in the interview, Brennan, Fontes and Schmidt talked about Fontes’ and Schmidt’s swing states of Arizona and Pennsylvania, with Brennan asking Fontes what he is doing in Arizona to make sure “on-citizens are not voting in federal elections, which is already against the law,” to which Fontes said:
“If and when something like that happens, it is absolutely vanishingly rare. No system is perfect, and I’ll admit that right off the top. But the allegation that this is something that might turn an election or is something much bigger than it is, that’s the nonsense that we are dealing with. And unfortunately, we still have candidates, elected officials and folks with large megaphones lying. They are directly lying to the American public, and they are basically playing the role of useful idiots. Now we know for sure two foreign enemies who want to sow distrust in our democracy. They want us to be losing that civic faith that we have in one another as Americans and dividing us further. Again, the source for a lot of this information and misinformation, I should say, is coming from outside of the United States. It gets amplified by folks in America who are helping those folks, and that’s just bad, and it’s bad for our democracy. It’s bad for business, it’s bad for the law and education and science and everything else. So what I encourage folks to do is stop being a Russian puppet. Look to the folks who are actually doing the work, ask them what’s actually happening, and go with the truth, instead of amplifying lies from foreign adversaries.”
Schmidt was asked the same question and he answered saying, “I was a Republican Election Commissioner in Philadelphia County for 10 years…I assure voters that I care as much about election integrity as anyone possibly could. I investigated hundreds of allegations of vote voter fraud over that time, whether it involved double voting or allegations of people voting for dead people or non-citizens, and what that research showed time and time again was how incredibly rare it was that it occurred and how easy it is to catch whenever there are incidents of it. There are safeguards in the system from tooth detail to make sure that that voter fraud in the few instances it does occur, is identified, investigated and responsibly prosecuted.”
Also during the interview, Brennan, Fontes and Schmidt talked about potential voter fraud in both Arizona and Pennsylvania.
“[Lancaster County] reached out to us right away as soon as they became aware of it for guidance. As far as we can see, the county is, is pursuing this investigation responsibly. The county hasn’t concluded that investigation so I can’t speak to the number of cases yet. We will be relying on them to make that determination and be supportive of our county partners as part of our commitment. I visited 67 of Phil of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties to sit down with them and make sure that if there are additional resources, they need additional equipment or anything else like that, we provide that to them so that we have a free, fair, safe and secure election in 2024 just as we had in 2020.”
Al Schmidt, Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Brennan asked Fontes about former President Donald Trump’s comments on Joe Rogan’s podcast, where the former president said, “…Unless you have paper ballots, it can never be an honest election,” as well as how long it will take for Arizona to know the results, which Fontes replied:
“First, I’m glad that Mr. Trump agrees with the security of Arizona’s elections, where we have 100% paper ballots, and have had so in Arizona for several decades. Number two, it’s going to take us as long as it has always taken us, while we have more voters, and in many cases and counties, a lot more voters. The time that it takes us to process our ballots is based on doing it right the first time, not doing it quickly for news cycles or for the sake of political satisfaction. We will have official results in about 10 to 13 days. But everybody knows that the networks and the newspapers will make their prognostications whenever they see fit based on their math, and that’s just the way it works. We’re perfectly confident that we’re going to have what we need when we need it, which is when it happens and it will be accurate.”
To watch more of Brennan’s interview with Fontes and Schmidt, click here.
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