Unlike the majority of journalists who cover U.S. politics, columnist Salena Zito lives far away from the centers of power and wealth. Twice a year she leaves her home in western Pennsylvania and drives thousands of miles across the country visiting towns and rural communities, many of which supported Donald Trump for president. In this episode of the Let's Find Common Ground Podcast, we learn more about the perspective of these voters in rural communities.
People watch the debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
Schmidt is a columnist and editorial board member with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The 2024 election is shaping up to be a “Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know" kind of contest.
That saying is rooted in ambiguity aversion bias. Even if a situation is bad, individuals would rather stay with what they know rather than face uncertainty.
So it goes with our presidential nominees, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. Not liking Trump the man may not be enough for Harris to beat the former president.
Behavioral economists describe ambiguity aversion, or uncertainty aversion, as the tendency to favor the known over the unknown, including known risks over unknown or incalculable risks. In a professional situation, one would prefer to have contact with or do business with a person they already know, even though they don't like them, than with a person they hardly know. This principle also seems to apply to political candidates and voter behavior.
Voters make choices based on their own information set; this is true regardless of the truth, accuracy or reliability of their information. Their own data set drives their choices, which they believe will result in the best expected outcome.
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A recent New York Times/Siena poll illustrated this fallacy in action. The poll shows Trump with a 52 percent unfavorability rating. The poll also has Trump ahead of Harris nationally by 2 points; 46 percent to 44 percent.
Of course, there is the margin of error, but something has to account for the approximate 6 percent of voters who view Trump as unfavorable while at the same time said they would be voting for him.
There are certainly voters that will cast their ballots for the former president because they prefer him as a candidate, preferring his leadership or his policies. But a majority of the electorate find Trump distasteful, whether it was his actions surrounding the 2020 election, the events around Jan. 6, 2021, his felony indictments, the fact that he is an adjudicated sexual abuser, or even just his obnoxious social media posts. Yet despite all of that, a majority of voters may just pull the lever for a Trump/Vance ticket since they are unsure about Harris/Walz.
The same poll asked the following: Do you feel like you still need to learn more about Kamala Harris, or do you pretty much already know what you need to know? Just more than a quarter (28 percent) of respondents said they needed to know more about her. Of that group, 66 percent said they would like to learn her policies and/or plans.
Only 12 percent said they needed to learn more about Trump.
Harris has only done one recorded interview. While Americans did get to see her on the debate stage on Sept. 10, she did not give many details on her administration’s plans. It took five weeks for the Harris campaign to add an “issues” section on her campaign website and even then, it was remarkably vague.
To date, Harris has not taken questions from the press pool and. as of this writing, has no other interviews scheduled, all of which impedes voters getting to know her better.
It remains to be seen whether there will be any further debates between Harris and Trump, although Trump indicated on Sept. 12, that there would be no more, which again would deny voters additional opportunities to learn more about Harris.
While it is also too soon for post-debate polling on the candidates, most observers and pundits remarked at how crazy Trump seemed during the ABC News debate, especially when he falsely claimed that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing people’s dogs and cats and eating them. Then again, this type of behavior might be baked into the cake after watching and listening to him for the last 10 years.
The dominant media narrative is missing the ambiguity aversion by assuming that Americans will be so turned off by Trump’s antics they cannot possibly vote for him. However, rightly or wrongly, many Americans think back nostalgically on the pre-pandemic economy or remark on how there were no wars going on while Trump was president. While they might not like Trump’s character or behaviors, they felt more prosperous and safer in contrast to the uncertainty of a Harris administration.
Thus, since Harris needs to move beyond her strategic ambiguity, as it is likely hurting her. Voters want to know more about her policies and agenda, and broad, sweeping statements may not cut it anymore.
Unless voters get to know Harris better and like what they see and hear, they might just default to the devil they know in November.
Florida Rights Restoration Coalition policy coordinators Sharon Madison (right) and Kellie Atterbury (left) present Cynthia Craig with a receipt showing her last court payments as a returning citizen have been paid in 2020.
Desmond Meade is the President of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition and serves on the Power the Polls Advisory Council.
Nearly six years ago, Florida voters went to the polls and overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights for millions of Floridians with past convictions. This historic achievement marked the single largest expansion of voting rights in our nation in half a century.
Since then, at the organization I lead — the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition — we have been working with our partners across the state to help as many of these returning citizens as possible regain their voice in our democracy. Despite numerous obstacles, including the state struggling to provide information to returning citizens about when their rights have been restored, we’re proud to have helped tens of thousands of these individuals vote over the last several years.
As a returning citizen myself, it’s been inspiring to see the progress we’ve made in empowering and engaging so many of our fellow Floridians. But I’ve also seen how ongoing uncertainty, coupled with the state’s highly publicized 2022 campaign to prosecute returning citizens for voting, has led to widespread fear about voting among returning citizens. These citizens — our friends and neighbors — don’t just deserve to have their rights restored in theory, they deserve the opportunity to participate fully and confidently in our elections.
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As we seek to ensure that the promise of Amendment 4 is fulfilled by every one of Florida’s 1.4 million returning citizens, one essential piece of the puzzle is having trained, informed, compassionate poll workers who are ready to support returning citizens and ensure they feel comfortable at the ballot box. Whether you’re in Florida or in another state, if you want to help make democracy real for the people in your community, there’s no better way than signing up now to be a poll worker for this year’s elections.
Each election cycle, hundreds of thousands of Americans vote either for the first time ever or — in the case of some returning citizens — for the first time in many years. For these voters, there’s usually a lot of excitement, but also sometimes a feeling of anxiety or uncertainty. For voters casting their ballots in person, poll workers are the ones we rely on to help make voting a smooth and enjoyable experience. They welcome voters to the polling place, get us checked in and provide the information we need to complete the voting process with confidence.
Poll workers exemplify a commitment to democracy and to serving our communities and neighbors. That’s why I’m proud to serve on the advisory council for Power the Polls, the leading nonpartisan poll worker recruitment initiative. Experts estimate that we will need about 1 million poll workers to ensure this year’s elections run smoothly. And though we’ve made a lot of progress toward this goal, there are still jurisdictions around the country — including several in Florida — that urgently need more people to sign up.
While poll workers will play an essential role in helping all voters take part in our elections this year, we know the unique logistical and legal dynamics involved for returning citizens mean these voters may need additional support and guidance. That’s why, at FRRC, we’re also training teams of returning citizens and attorneys to advise and assure potential voters of their rights at polling locations throughout Florida. These poll monitors will be tasked with identifying obstacles to voting by offering themselves as a resource to voters experiencing issues and reporting these issues to a team of election law experts, who will, in turn, assist voters in real-time.
We were thrilled to have 50 returning citizens serve on these poll monitor teams during Florida’s primary election in August, and we look forward to having even more take part in the program during the general election. The stories of these fellow returning citizens are inspiring — people who could not vote six years ago are now engaging in the election process as poll workers.
While the election is just around the corner (in fact, ballots have already been mailed in some states), there is still time to sign up to be a poll worker, and returning citizens in Florida and across the country are counting on us to step up. Together, we can ensure that all voters — no matter who they are, where they come from, or when they last cast a ballot — can play their full and equal part in our democracy.
Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor, is of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy.
On Sept. 17, the highly regarded World Justice Project released a detailed report reflecting some major good news amidst a continuing modest slide in Americans’ trust in our institutions. Encouragingly, WJP’s survey of voters shows that more than 90 percent of Americans in both parties — an unheard-of polling number — believe that preserving the rule of law is important or essential.
That vital fact tells us that, contrary to skeptics’ views, the concept of the rule of law is not too abstract to influence American voters in the upcoming election. People care very much about it, and the evidence of declining trust in our basic institutions suggests that the rule of law can play a potent role in the election.
The one political party committed to the rule of law can profitably focus on the rule of law crisis — along with kitchen table issues — as the presidential campaign enters peak season.
WJP produces the biennial Rule of Law Index, ranking countries on their citizens' perceptions of compliance with principles essential to democratic government and individual freedom. Last year’s index ranked the United States 26th out of 142 countries in a world described as being in a “rule of law recession.” Since then, Americans do not think things have gotten better, and they are concerned.
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This sharp awareness of how short we are falling shows up throughout the report. Accountability is the backbone of the rule of law, and the WJP/YouGov polling results show a plummet in the last decade from 60 percent to 35 percent in the proportion of people who agree that high-ranking officials are likely to face consequences for breaking the law. Similarly, people’s confidence in Congress and the courts to act as a check on excessive executive power dropped markedly during the period from 2016 to 2024, though both still are in the 60 percent range.
Questions directed more generally to the independence and fairness of the justice system brought answers reflecting some decline in trust over the last few years. Two thirds (down from 80 percent in 2013) still believe that the courts guarantee everyone a fair trial, while broader questions about the independence and lack of bias of judges yield positive answers from a bit less than half of those questioned. Trust in other institutions, including the media, prosecutors, national and local government officials, and the police, has also eroded modestly during this period, and, except for the media (now 38 percent) generally hover close to or just above the 50 percent level.
Notably, in the face of these results, the report also records a significant rise in Americans’ perception of citizen power to step up and check otherwise unchecked executive action. Forty-nine percent of respondents — up from 30 percent in 2021 — report some confidence that individual Americans themselves can play a key role helping to stop abuses of executive power.
This is a tribute to individual citizens who have become active and organized, including countless people who are discussing these issues with friends and neighbors, and a great many who have spoken out publicly. They include a growing number of prominent Republicans like former Vice President Dick Cheney who have made the rule of law the primary issue for them in determining who they will vote for in the upcoming presidential election.
In recent years, numerous groups supported by a broad base of Americans — like Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Protect Democracy, States United Democracy Project, the Society for the Rule of Law and Lawyers Defending American Democracy have been fighting to preserve American constitutionalism as it has come under relentless attack. You can safely bet that the 90 percent or more of Americans who accord great value to the rule of law, and the 20 percent rise in citizens’ awareness of our own power, is attributable to individuals’ and groups raising the alarm about what so many took for granted before the current crisis in democracy.
Ultimately the rule of law protects the rights and freedoms of all Americans, including their rights of self-government, and the principle that no one is above or below the law. Power in this country has always derived from the people, and a people organized to protect ourselves is the ultimate guardrail of our freedom. The WJP report brings the welcome news that nearly all Americans care deeply about the principles the country is based on and they want to see our system of democracy and individual rights preserved.
The nation is now embroiled in a national election where the stakes are nothing less than our most fundamental constitutional principles and norms, and the individual rights they preserve. Given that the WJP survey of voters shows that more than 90 percent of Americans in both parties believe that preserving the rule of law is important or essential, it is surprising that only one set of candidates has fully embraced the rule of law as the determination of the election results. Our citizens deserve this being front and center in the campaigns of all candidates for office whether they are Democrats, Republicans or independents.
It is up to us, as Benjamin Franklin famously said in 1787, to keep the Republic the founders gave us.
President-elect Jimmy Carter and President Gerald Ford in the White House.
The following editorial appeared last month in the Detroit News after the July assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. Given the events of this week, the piece is reprinted below, again denouncing political violence. Last week, the authors helda national joint convening on election norms, advancing strategies for leaders, voters and the media to support the United States’ tradition of a peaceful transfer of power.
Carter is the grandson of former President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, and Ford is the son of former President Gerald Ford, a Republican. They serve as co-chairs of the Principles for Trusted Elections, a cross-partisan program of The Carter Center, the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation and Team Democracy.
The assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump on July 13 is a stark reminder that the specter of political violence casts a long shadow over our democratic ideals. This outrageous act underscores the sad reality that those engaged in our democratic process — whether as candidates, public officials or citizens — can find themselves in situations where their safety is compromised simply by participating.
This is not just an attack on individuals; it is an assault on the principles of democracy upon which our great nation was founded.
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For us, as members of presidential families, the violence evokes memories of a tumultuous time in our nation’s history. For Mike Ford, it is particularly personal to recall the frightening times when my dad, former President Gerald Ford, faced two assassination attempts in 1975. Members of the Ford family experienced a range of emotions from shock to fear to anger and finally gratitude for the good people who protected him.
Together — on behalf of both the Carter and Ford families — we urge our nation to stand together in agreement that violence not only results in tragic losses but undermines the core values that define our American democratic system. The right to safely and peacefully engage in political discourse is fundamental to our identity as a nation.
The focus must now shift back to the citizens who form the backbone of our democracy. These are the people who attend rallies, volunteer at polling stations and participate in grassroots activism. They are not mere spectators but rather active participants in shaping our collective future. When their safety is threatened, it strikes at the heart of our democracy and weakens our ability to govern ourselves effectively.
We urge our fellow Americans and leaders at all levels to reaffirm their commitment to nonviolence and civil discourse. It’s the reason we co-chair the Principles for Trusted Elections to encourage citizens to tell their public leaders and candidates to stand up for safe, nonviolent elections. We condemn any form of threats or intimidation, regardless of political beliefs or affiliation. It is incumbent upon us to foster a political environment where diverse opinions are respected and differences are settled through discussion, not aggression.
As we move forward, let us honor the sacrifices made by those who have faced violence by ensuring that their courage and dedication to democratic values are not in vain. Let us elevate the voices of ordinary citizens who embody the spirit of civic engagement and uphold the norms of civil campaigning throughout the election cycle. Let us protect our democratic institutions and ensure that America remains a beacon of freedom and opportunity for all.
We stand behind the initial unifying remarks made by President Joe Biden, former President Trump, and their parties who denounce acts of violence. With this cross-partisan leadership, we hope that the nation can move peacefully forward in the months leading up to November. Candidates, voters, poll workers and election officials should be able to have confidence that they can each fulfill their essential roles and responsibilities for the democratic process in a peaceful electoral environment.
July 13 served as a sobering reminder of our responsibilities as participants in democracy. We can all rise to the occasion and safeguard the principles that have guided our nation through its darkest hours. Together, we can build a future where political discourse is marked by respect, understanding and a steadfast commitment to the ideals that unite us as Americans.
This writing was originally published in the The Detroit News, Aug. 14.
Minkin is a research associate at Issue One. Clapp is the campaign manager for election protection at Issue One. Assefa is a research intern at Issue One.
Bill Gates, a registered Republican, was re-elected to the Maricopa County (Ariz.) Board of Supervisors in 2020 after first being elected in 2016. Before joining the board, he served on the Phoenix City Council for seven years, from 2009 to 2016, including a term as vice mayor in 2013.
Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, is the fourth-largest county in the United States, and it has the second-largest voting jurisdiction in the country, with about 2.5 million active, registered voters and about 4.5 million residents. Gates represents roughly 900,000 residents as a supervisor for the 3rd district.
Maricopa County became a hotspot for election conspiracies after President Donald Trump lost the county to Joe Biden by about 45,000 votes, or 2 percent of the votes cast. The scrutiny of the vote count included official post-election audits as well as a partisan review of the results by an outside firm known as the Cyber Ninjas, which was hired by pro-Trump Republicans in the Arizona Senate. Each of the reviews confirmed Biden’s victory. Throughout it all, Gates weathered threats and harassment, later admitting he developed post-traumatic stress disorder from his experiences.
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For decades, Gates has been an active Republican. In high school, he founded the Teenage Republican Club, and later he was an officer in the Iowa Federation of College Republicans. In the early 2000s, he served as a legislative district chair for the Arizona Republican Party and as the secretary of the Maricopa County Republican Committee. In 2006 and 2008, he led the Arizona Republican Party’s election integrity efforts, organizing groups of poll watchers and attorneys.
Outside of work, Gates is deeply involved in his community. With a law degree from Harvard Law School, he has been particularly active in law-related education, serving as a regional coordinator and attorney coach at both the high school and intercollegiate levels. Additionally, he is helping to organize the 2025 National High School Mock Trial Championship in Phoenix.
Gates has received various awards for his leadership and service, including the Maricopa County Bar Association's 2023 Public Lawyer of the Year award, the Ed Pastor 2023 Public Servant Award and the Truman Foundation's Joseph E. Stevens Public Service Award in 2022.
Since 2022, he has been part of Issue One’s Faces of Democracy campaign advocating for protections for election workers and for regular, predictable and sufficient federal funding of elections.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Issue One: How did you end up in this profession?
Bill Gates: I initially got involved about 20 years ago as a volunteer lawyer for the Republican Party. I would help to organize poll observers on Election Day. I first started in Navajo County, which is in northeastern Arizona, and then by 2006 and 2008, I was serving in this role for the Arizona Republican Party statewide.
After that, I ran for the Phoenix City Council and served there for seven years. And in 2016, I ran for the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. In 2019, when I was the chair of the Board of Supervisors, we negotiated with the county recorder at that time, Adrian Fontes, to take back all of our statutory responsibilities. So now we have a collaborative effort in Maricopa County for how we run elections. With the 2020 and 2022 elections, I became fully involved in some fairly famous elections here and just had an incredible opportunity to work closely with everybody on the team. This really is my life's work.
IO: What part of the election administration story in Arizona do you think is not told or widely understood enough?
BG: I think that people do not understand the size of Maricopa County and the breadth of the effort to run an election here. We are actually the second-largest voting jurisdiction in the country. We have about 2.5 million registered voters, so every time we run a countywide election, it involves thousands of individuals, including thousands of temporary employees.
People don’t understand that the people running these elections are your neighbors. It is your aunt. It is your uncle. It is your mother. That human element is really important.
IO: In your job, how have you worked to bring more transparency to the world of election administration?
BG: I would like to think that is something that we have excelled at in Maricopa County. Following the 2020 election, we could have gone in two different directions. We could have hidden in the corner and said we are just going to do our jobs and let the world go by. Or we could swing the doors open and shine a light on everything we have done, which is exactly what we have done.
We have absolutely transformed our communications system. In the 2022 election, working with the recorder, we held 16 press conferences before and after the election. As far as I know, that is the most election officials here have ever done. We knew the attention that was on us because we had a lot of high-profile statewide offices, and we had many candidates that had questioned the results of the 2020 election.
After the 2021 Cyber Ninja audit that the Arizona Senate started, they would share updates from the Cyber Ninjas, and for the most part, they were simply spewing misinformation. So we decided to transform our social media to live tweet as these statements were being made. We were live tweeting our responses and debunking the misinformation.
Also, we have swung the doors open to the community. We have held numerous tours of Maricopa County’s tabulation center. We bring people in here — and not just those who feel very comfortable with our election system and have no questions. We have opened it up to everyone, and that has been incredibly helpful in getting the word out. Finally, we have livestream cameras on our tabulation center running 24/7 so if people have questions about what is going on, they can sit in their house and watch it on their laptops. These are just some of the measures that we have made to expand that transparency. We are very fortunate in Maricopa County to have the resources to do those sorts of things.
IO: Why do you think that voters should have trust in election processes and results, specifically in Arizona?
BG: In the past few election cycles, it has taken approximately 10 to 13 days to complete the count. There are other states that take that long, but they do not have the close elections that we do. Our races may take several days because they are close and because of the processes. To dig into that a little bit more, people should have faith because we have eyes on everything — Republican eyes and Democratic eyes. If you are a Republican, you need to know there are advocates on behalf of your party, on behalf of your candidates, who are watching everything.
A lot of people think a hand count would be a solution to strengthen confidence. A hand count is not a feasible approach in a jurisdiction like ours with 2.5 million registered voters. A lot of people do not realize that we do hand counts as a part of the audit process in Maricopa County. We select a small but a statistically significant percentage of votes to hand count and if we see variances between the hand count and the machine count, then we expand the universe of votes that get hand counted. We just had a hand count audit in our primary election, and guess what? It came out exactly the same.
Various other transparency measures that we have, including the livestream cameras, make people feel good about our election results. I would argue that the 2020 and the 2022 elections were the most examined elections in our country's history, especially in Maricopa County. If there was something going on, we would know about it. Everyone would know about it.
If voters want to have more confidence in the process, take us up on our offer and come take a tour of our election facility. I’ve never had anybody walk out of that and say, “I feel worse about things than I did when I walked in this building.”
IO: In the United States, election administration is not centralized. Instead, 50 states have 50 different systems. In Arizona, both the county recorder and the director of elections play essential roles in administering elections. What are some key differences between the two roles? And how does the Board of Supervisors fit in?
BG: The county recorder is responsible for voter registration and vote by mail. Vote by mail now in Arizona is running around 85 percent in every election. A county’s director of elections, who reports to the Board of Supervisors, is responsible for all in-person voting, both in-person early voting and in-person on Election Day. In addition, the director of elections is responsible for the tabulation of votes. Finally, the Board of Supervisors is responsible for certifying the results of the election.
IO: Many people are surprised to learn that the federal government doesn’t routinely fund the costs of running elections. Why do you think the federal government should routinely contribute to election administration costs?
BG: In the United States, as opposed to many other countries, we run elections at the local level. This is a strength of our system, that those who are the closest to the people are running elections. For those who are concerned about alleged conspiracies to rig elections, it makes it a lot harder when you literally have thousands of jurisdictions.
For those of us who are in elections, like me in Maricopa County, where we are in 50 lines of business as the Board of Supervisors, that means our residents count on us for lots of services. It is unfair, and I would argue it is undemocratic to force us at the local level to make choices between things such as addressing the housing affordability issue, or making sure our elections are run efficiently, or making sure that our citizens are safe. In the end, this is a federal responsibility. The federal government should be providing sufficient resources so that elections can be run safely and accurately, and frankly so that the local jurisdictions can respond to all that misinformation that is out there.
IO: What is the price tag of running an election in your jurisdiction, and where does funding for election administration in your jurisdiction come from?
BG: Our residents in Maricopa County help fund our elections through taxes. We do also get some funding from the state. And sometimes, there will be funding that will come down from the federal government, but it is not something that we can rely upon.
While my colleagues and I always say that you cannot put a price tag on democracy, the price tag can run into the tens of millions of dollars to run an election here in Maricopa County.
IO: If your jurisdiction had extra funding, how would you spend it?
BG: We have needs from a capital perspective that we would spend it on. We have been in the same building now for decades. We are going to be building a new facility as our county continues to grow. We have been one of the fastest-growing counties in the country for years. Not only is it important that we have good facilities for our workers, but it’s also important that we have the space that we need.
We need a lot of space to run elections because we have a lot of people who are involved in all steps of the election process. We also need to build a facility that is built with transparency in mind. People who go into election administration do not do it to get rich, that is for sure, but we want to make sure that we can compensate these people who are doing such important jobs to a level that we can get the best and the brightest. So, I would use additional funding on capital, I would use it on people, and I would also, unfortunately, need to continue to invest in security for our facilities, our workers and our voters.
IO: Last year, you came to Washington, D.C., to meet with lawmakers and policymakers as a part of a bipartisan advocacy push organized by Issue One. What was that experience like for you and why was it so important to speak with members of Congress about issues like increased election funding and protections for election workers?
BG: I was very grateful to join other elections officials from across the country. That was one of the best parts, getting to meet people, and share experiences, best practices and challenges that we have faced in the past few years. There is nothing like being able to talk through that. It is very healthy and very informative to learn best practices from other election officials.
Going to Congress was a great experience. Our representatives in Congress are focused on so many issues every day. To have folks come in — particularly members of their own party, so for me, meeting with my fellow Republicans on the Hill — and telling them the experiences that we have had, the challenges we face, and for them to look us in the eyes and and see the passion that we have for elections, and for our workers, was extremely helpful, especially for Arizona.
You know, if you live in Delaware or something, it is just a short train ride to Washington, D.C., but for those of us in Arizona, it takes us a day to get to D.C. To be able to have that opportunity and the partnership of Issue One, we are so grateful for that. I certainly hope that down the road, this will make a difference and help members of Congress understand just how important that federal investment in local elections is.
IO: What’s your elevator pitch for why someone should work as a poll worker this year?
BG: There is no more important time to be a poll worker than right now, when we have folks who are raising questions — some legitimate, some illegitimate — about how our elections run. We need you to go out and evangelize in your community about what it means to work on elections, to be able to respond to a lot of the unfair criticisms out there.
If you have questions about elections, then I absolutely want you to volunteer as a poll worker, because then you can have those questions answered! And I am confident that you will have those questions answered!
And if you care about this election and feel strongly about one side or the other, I definitely want you to be involved, because if you have been involved, then you can have confidence that the results are accurate and that the election was run in a way that all of us as Americans can feel good about.
If you are on the edge, trying to decide whether to work as a poll worker, do it. It is not too late to get involved. Call your local elections office. [Editor’s note: Or visit PowerThePolls.org/IssueOne.]
The other thing to note is there are many types of jobs. Everyone thinks you are just checking in voters and handing them a ballot. But there are so many different jobs. Maybe you like to drive. In Maricopa County, we are really spread out. We have drivers who take supplies out to our vote centers.
IO: In 2023, you announced that you would not be running for reelection. Can you tell us how you came to this decision and what is next for you?
BG: Some people will say that I ran from this because of all the harassment, the death threats and things like that. That is absolutely not the case. This was a decision that I spent a lot of time making with my wife and our daughters. At the end of this year, it will be 15 years in elected office for me, between the Phoenix City Council and the Board of Supervisors. It felt like the right time to move on from this and to give someone else the opportunity to work on the Board of Supervisors, which by the way, is the best job in the world. I want people to understand I am not running away from elections or what has happened here. I have loved every minute of it.
I am moving on to Arizona State University, where I will be a professor in the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions. I will also be the executive director of the Mechanics of Democracy Laboratory, so I am going to continue in this space and work with my colleagues to help train the next generation of election administrators and to help provide continuing education to those who are already in election administration. We look forward to convening experts both here in Arizona as well as at our Los Angeles and D.C. campuses, to have discussions about best practices, do research and help push back on misinformation. I am really excited about this next chapter.
IO: Outside of being passionate about running safe and secure elections, what are your hobbies, or what is a fun fact that most people might not know about you?
BG: I play golf. I love to hike here in Maricopa County on all of our beautiful trails. I love to watch movies with my wife and our girls. And I love listening to music. People probably do not know that I have a very wide range of musical tastes going from yacht rock to hip hop.
IO: What is your favorite book or movie?
BG: My favorite movie is “Somewhere In Time.” It is from the 1980s, and it is the story of Christopher Reeve going to the Grand Hotel in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and he falls in love with a woman in a picture from the early 20th century [played by Jane Seymour]. He must then travel through time to meet her. I am really into time travel.
IO: Which historical figure would you have most liked to have had an opportunity to meet?
BG: I am fascinated by the French Revolution. I would have loved to have met Robespierre and talked with him about that whole experience, the uplifting power of democracy and also its very ugly side.
