Authors laud election workers, analyze rise of election deniers

Major Garrett, CBS News’ Washington correspondent, and David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, said they set out to write their new book, "The Big Truth: Upholding Democracy in the Age of THE BIG LIE,” as a “love letter” to election workers. They spoke at a National Press Club headliners book event, Tuesday, Oct. 11.

“As the events of 2021 and 2022 asserted themselves, it became a much larger, more ambitious meditation on the current state and possible future trajectory of this democratic experiment,” Garrett said.

As they explained, widespread lies that the election was stolen from former President Donald Trump have raised fears of violence against poll workers and even a civil war. 

The discussion at the book event focused on the origins of election denialism among the American electorate and elected officials and the responsibility of everyday citizens to restore faith in democracy.

Becker explained that the vote-counting process is deliberately rote—designed to be redundant, duplicative and, in tight races, slow.

Election Day is the “worse-case scenario” for the media business, he said. Demand for news peaks, and the supply of news is often “zero.”

“Election workers have this almost impossible job that they get right every time,” Becker said. “They’re going to take some time to do this. It means the process is working.

“We did that in 2020, and let’s celebrate it,” Becker added.

Instead, as the authors explored, lies about the election results, which were upheld by dozens of court rulings and recounts, have proliferated.

Garrett said he knows many Congressional Republicans knew the election was accurate and still voted to overturn the results because of pressure from their staff to keep their job. 

“These people have found themselves under assault,” Garrett said. “Harrassment is real.”

A dark irony, he said, is that the lawmakers, by taking office to vote to overturn the results, became the biggest defenders of the 2020 election results. After all, they were on the same ballot as the president who lost. 

Election deniers seek to sow doubt during those hours or waiting for results, the authors said. In an era where facts can seem to not matter, the media can do a service by educating voters in what to expect and how to process results, Garrett said.

Growing up in California, Major Garrett watched his mother, a communications executive, walk up a hill each election day to volunteer at the neighborhood polling station.

It was an early glimpse for Garrett, CBS News’ Washington correspondent, into the intricate and miraculous world of U.S. elections—driven by legions of civil servants and volunteers who work under extreme pressure and media scrutiny to keep American democracy humming. The election system pulled off no greater feat than in 2020, when more Americans voted than ever in 10,000 jurisdictions, with hundreds of thousands of professional election workers and a million volunteers.

In 2020, Garrett’s eldest daughter, in honor of her grandmother, served as a poll worker for the first time. 

“I believe in the generational tendency in Americans to participate, not only as voters but as workers,” Garrett said. “Be part of this process. Be part of your neighborhood decentralized, localized, small-m miracle that our democracy is.”