Why You Shouldn’t Run Elections on Windows 7 with Tiana Epps-Johnson

Battleground with Amanda Litman and Faiz Shakir

The Recount

Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2021

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Last year, roughly 8000 election departments across the country pulled off the near-impossible task of holding safe and secure elections in the middle of a global pandemic. They did it despite gross underfunding from Congress, crumbling infrastructure, and threats of violence. In a wealthy democracy like the United States, local election administrators shouldn’t have to rely on private grant money to cover the cost of things like pens or postage for mail-in ballots, but that’s exactly what happened last year. In order to find out why America's election infrastructure is so neglected, and what needs to be done to fix it, Amanda talks to Tiana Epps-Johnson, the founder and executive director of the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a national, nonpartisan org that helps local election administrators across the country modernize their processes and cover the budget gaps left by inadequate funding.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Amanda Lippman and this is Battleground, a podcast from the recount and eye-heart radio.
0:15.1	Fast is still gone this week spending time with his very cute new baby, but he'll be
0:19.5	back with us soon once he's truly bonded with the little fresh one.
0:24.1	In the meantime, our guest this week is Tiana Epps Johnson.
0:27.4	Tiana is the founder and executive director of the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonpartisan
0:31.7	organization that's focused on helping local election departments across the country bring
0:36.5	their old dated voting systems into the 21st century.
0:40.4	They do training, they do funding so that everybody who wants to vote can vote.
0:45.7	One of the things that I find really troubling and that we'll continue talking about is
0:50.2	that election officials across the country aren't getting the basic financial support
0:54.5	or resources they need to literally administer elections.
0:58.7	This was happening long before the pandemic, but 2020 added extra costs like hazard pay and
1:04.4	PPE to an already meager budget that made those elections incredibly challenging.
1:10.6	And that's before you even get into Trump's lies about a rigged election.
1:14.8	So it's understandable why lots of local election officials are seeking to retire or leave
1:20.1	the field.
1:21.1	Now, it really doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or a Republican, a conservative, a progressive,
1:26.7	a red district or a blue one.
1:28.9	We all suffer in our democracy suffers when Congress doesn't cough up the money we need
1:33.8	to help election administrators do their jobs.
1:36.4	But before we get to that conversation, which I loved so much, I actually want to talk
1:41.1	about two things that have been happening this week.
	...

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