- Is it possible to run an election so that everyone, win or lose, accepts the results?

This week, on "Firing Line."

- We have now counted legally cast ballots three times, and the results remain unchanged.

- He's the Georgia Secretary of State who rejected former President Trump's pressure.

- [Trump] I just want to find 11,780 votes.

- [Margaret] Enough votes to overturn Trump's loss in Georgia.

Brad Raffensperger is a lifelong Republican, an engineer who turned to politics, then found himself in the middle of the 2020 firestorm.

- I understand the secretary of state, who is really, he's an enemy of the people.

- [Margaret] He's received death threats and won reelection in 2022 despite a challenge from a Trump-backed opponent.

- [Group] Black votes matter!

- [Margaret] He's also defended his state against allegations from the left.

- Jim Crow 2.0 is about two insidious things: voter suppression and election subversion.

- [Margaret] With Trump's phone call at the center of criminal investigations and Georgia preparing for 2024, what does Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger say now?

- [Narrator] "Firing Line" with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by: Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, The Tepper Foundation, The Asness Family Foundation, The McKenna Family Foundation, Charles R. Schwab, and by The Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, and Damon Button.

Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. - Secretary Brad Raffensperger, welcome to "Firing Line."

- Thank you.

- Many people may know you first and foremost as the Georgia state official who, on January 2nd, 2021, was asked by Donald Trump to, quote, "find 11,780 votes" in order to help him overturn the 2020 election, which you refused to do.

Viewers may not know that, before you were in politics, you were a structural engineer, and you have written that, "As an engineer, I think about the machinery of elections.

"I think about the process."

How has your engineering background prepared you to run elections in one of the country's most contested states?

- Well, it's interesting.

The mechanization, the operation of elections is really something that is well suited for someone that is very methodical.

And so for engineers, we're very methodical about the process.

- That call with former President Trump, you've written how it turned your life upside down in some ways.

You and your aides spent days, hours, days, weeks, refuting the various conspiracy theories about voter fraud.

And at other points in your tenure as secretary of state, you've also faced accusations from the left of voter suppression.

How widespread are these two hot-button issues, both voter fraud and voter suppression, in today's debate about voting?

- I think there's segments on both sides of the aisle.

The losing candidate for governor, Stacey Abrams.

She lost by 55,000 votes and she then talked about voter suppression.

But they're really the same coin.

It's about, really, stolen election claims.

But one is voter suppression and the other one is voter fraud.

And neither one are supported by the facts.

- Is the real epidemic a lack of confidence and integrity in our elections?

- I think the real issue is that when people lose their race, I think they just really need to accept the loss and then come back four years later if they want to run again.

Because I think it would probably work out a whole lot better for them.

Because when Stacey Abrams ran the last time in 2022, she lost by over 350,000 votes.

It wasn't close at all.

- Both Stacey Abrams and President Trump, former President Trump, spent a lot of time berating and undermining the process and the system.

And I wonder if you would care to comment about what the rhetoric about voter fraud and voter suppression does to the public's confidence in the integrity of the election system.

- Well, I think it really tears apart the social fabric because people don't trust it.

So they have a lack of confidence.

- I want to ask you about election deniers.

I mean, there are people who flat out deny the election was won by Joe Biden.

There's sort of a sense of disbelief about the notion that Joe Biden could have won.

12 million more votes he won than Barack Obama in 2008.

How do you tackle just explaining this to somebody?

- Well, number one is so many more people were voting with absentee voting, you know, voting by mail.

And most people were at home.

So, you know, there's just more opportunities.

They weren't distracted with other things.

More people came out to vote during the pandemic.

They thought it was important, and so they came out and expressed their vote.

But also President Trump, he actually got more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016.

So just really the turnout model for everyone was just a lot higher.

- And what do you tell Republicans in Georgia who still question the results of the election?

Why did Donald Trump lose Georgia?

- Well, simply put, when I go out and I talk to community groups, I tell them here is a simple fact that 28,000 people skipped the presidential race.

They didn't vote for anyone, and yet they voted down ballot in other races.

And what's really interesting is that the Republican congressmen collectively got about 28,000 more votes than President Trump did.

That's why he came up short.

- Your chief operating officer, Gabriel Sterling, spent two months after the election holding regular press conferences challenging the misinformation that was flowing from Donald Trump and his allies, and Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll conducted in August found that 61% of likely Georgia Republican primary voters still believe there was widespread fraud in 2020.

Are there some people who are not persuadable?

- Well, that's why I do go out and I talk to people, because I also let them know they said there was 10,000 dead people and there was only four.

We actually have very good records and we verify, you know, who the voters are.

And we found that there were four people that voted, assumed the identity of someone who had already passed away.

- And in two cases wasn't it family members?

- It was family members.

- Who were voting for their deceased family members, and they believe they would've wanted to-- - Yeah, and actually, two of them were actually Republicans, and two of them were the other side, you know, so it was bipartisan, you know, on both sides.

- [Both] They canceled each other out.

- But they're both brought before the state election board, and they're prosecuted for that and they get the penalty, but it's not widespread.

- Tell me, Secretary, Mr. Secretary, have you had the personal experience of being able to persuade or change the mind of any individual who first was in total disbelief about the things you've said and then came to see it through the lens of the truth that you've laid out?

- I won my primary without a runoff.

- So what you're saying is-- - And I was reelected.

So I think that I've obviously-- - You've persuaded the state of Georgia.

- I've convinced enough Georgians, you know, that, okay, I see that.

- It seems to me that there has been a sea change in how voter ID is discussed and understood in the popular conversation.

There was a time around 2018 and early 2020 where voter ID laws were widely panned and criticized by the left, and it seems as though there has been a change in the thinking and, frankly, the opposition to voter ID laws.

To what do you attribute that?

- Because we have peer-reviewed studies from intellectuals at universities, think tanks that have showed that it does not hurt turnout.

- Of the sort of 2%, a very low percentage of people that don't have any sort of IDs, the largest group of those individuals are Americans of color.

How do you tackle that continued critique of voter ID?

- Well, when the General Assembly did photo ID years ago for in-person voting, they said it's not just your driver's license, not everyone has one, but 95, 96% of all people do, but we'll accept all these other forms of government ID, plus even a power bill.

Well, there's less than 200,000 people in the whole state of Georgia that would not qualify for this.

But they can get a free photo ID or voter ID all by just asking the state, and we'll make sure they get it.

- Switching Georgia to a system where printed ballots were used was one of your first priorities when you came to office.

How did the 2020 election reinforce the importance of having a physical paper trail?

- Well, it's really important to have a paper ballot.

Over 95% of all ballots in America this next election will have a paper ballot.

But that means you can audit any race.

In fact, in 2020, many Georgians and many Americans don't realize we had recount all 5 million paper ballots.

And we had three stacks: one for President Trump, one for Vice President Biden and one for the Libertarian candidate.

Three different stacks, added them all up, and President Trump still came up short.

- Starting in 2020, Georgia allowed election workers to begin to open and scan absentee ballots before Election Day.

This process, called pre-processing, is something that other swing states, especially in the wake of COVID, had implemented.

And in some cases where they had not, it did create significant delays in counting the ballots.

Does getting all of the ballots counted faster contribute to higher confidence in the results of the election?

- I believe it does.

You know, when things get extended out, you know, that really becomes the breeding ground for conspiracy theories.

So we believe that it makes a lot of sense to go ahead and do pre-processing.

That way, you're gonna have much quicker results.

And where it really matters is in these states where the margins are so close.

So when it's 10 to 20,000 votes difference between the top vote getters, the more that you can get those results posted quickly, that is good for, really, the calmness of the electorate.

- As you think about these reforms in states, which states, besides Georgia, are doing a good job of making those kind of reforms in order to eliminate uncertainty around the counting of the electorate?

I know you're focused on Georgia, but you must look over your shoulder and see what states are also sort of representing a gold standard.

- I think I'll stay in my lane, but what I will say is, if you look at where we are right now, we're recognized as one of the top tier states for election integrity, which we think is the proper balance of accessibility with security.

So in Georgia, we know you're gonna have an honest, fair, accurate election.

And that's what we, you know, we've struck that balance.

And so we have 17 days of early voting.

We have photo ID for all forms of voting.

And we put in state law that lines have to be shorter than an hour on Election Day so people have a pleasurable experience.

We understand that people aren't going to be happy.

I said this back in January 2020.

We live in a polarized nation.

I know that half the people are gonna be happy, the other half won't be.

We want them to have 100% confidence in the race.

It's kind of like the football game.

We don't want you grousing about the call that the ref made.

We want you to accept the victory or the loss of, you know, the teams that played that game.

- Let me ask you, a few months after President Biden was inaugurated, the Georgia state legislature passed SB 202, a series of voting reforms.

Many of these new measures were tested for the first time in the 2022 midterm elections, and results seemed resoundingly positive.

Record high turnout, accurate results, quick results.

And you said that the state's election system, quote, "passed every test."

- It did.

- For the people who looked at SB 202 and called it Jim Crow 2.0, what gives?

- Well, we don't expect any apologies, because the people that said that, a lot of them are politicians from up in Washington, D.C., or they used to run for office here in Georgia.

We get that.

But we showed that we have safe, honest, fair, accurate elections.

And we kept lines short.

And so we really hit the high mark.

And so we just continue to put our head down and we just continue to make sure we have great elections for our fellow Georgians.

- To administer our elections, we have historically relied on volunteers to manage their precincts, their polling places.

There has been a change in the climate.

And there has been a diminishment of volunteerism.

What can be done to address the lower participation rates amongst our citizens in our election administration?

- I think that if you go back historically, elections are run at the state level and, really, at the county level, and I'm really grateful and gratified for what I'm seeing here at our counties in Georgia.

We have 159 counties, but so many of them have newer facilities or updated facilities, remodeled facilities, more secure facilities, and they're investing in their staff and their teams.

And I'm really grateful to see that investment in that.

And I think it's really, you know, speaking to people's civic pride.

If you want to make your community better, you want to make your state better, or your country better, volunteer to be a poll worker.

If you have questions about the whole process, volunteer to be a poll worker.

Not a poll watcher.

Actually do the hard work of showing up there at 6:00 am and being there till 8:30 or 9:00 that night.

Then you're gonna go through that whole process and you're gonna have your eyes on it and you're gonna be an educated expert and you're gonna be able to say to your friends, "Oh, no, that's not how that happens."

And you can start nipping some of these conspiracy theories in the bud at the grassroots level because you understand the processes that we have in place.

- There are real risks for poll workers.

You know some Georgia citizens came under attack by the President of the United States for just showing up and doing their job and supervising the election in the last election.

How do you combat the fact that the climate has really changed around-- - I know it has.

But you have to understand, I don't think the American people are fearful people.

We haven't been.

We've been bold.

And we've always led with our great values that we do have.

And that's what you see at the community level.

We just really, you know, people just say, remember, remember who we are.

We're Americans.

And we can do better and we can step up when our nation needs us.

And right now, we need you to volunteer to be poll workers.

Imagine if we all showed up to vote and we didn't have poll workers.

What would we do?

Yes, they're indispensable.

- I know you admire Ronald Reagan.

This program, "Firing Line," was once, obviously it was hosted by William F. Buckley Jr. for 33 years.

And Ronald Reagan was a regular guest on Buckley's program.

One of the things that they talked about in one of their interviews was gerrymandering.

Take a look at this conversation from 1990.

- What I think should be done is that there should be a bipartisan commission appointed every 10 years to redraw the districts to reflect, what were the changes in population and so forth?

Instead, when you leave it to the legislatures, it is a conflict of interest, because these are people now that are looking at their own district and so forth.

And the result has been the gerrymandering is they will shape a district.

Granted, they will funnel as many Republicans as they can, but into as fewer districts as possible.

And then they're assured of the majority.

And they've done this.

And when I asked for a look, a map of the districts of the Los Angeles area, I got a package that looked like a nest of snakes.

They just, every twist and turn that you can find in order to maintain that majority in the legislature.

- Both parties do it.

Is it time that we consider Ronald Reagan's suggestion?

- Well, some states have, and other states use the General Assembly.

And over the years, I've always been pretty strong that leave it up to general assemblies.

And right now, you know, the districts have been looked at by a federal judge.

It's an ongoing legal case.

I won't comment further.

- For the viewers, a federal judge last month ruled that the districts drawn by Republicans in Georgia's legislature discriminated against Black voters by diluting their political power and must be redrawn before the 2024 election.

- And so we are where we are, and we'll have a special session here in Georgia, and then that'll come before the court.

And because it's before the court right now, I don't weigh in on legal matters like that.

I let the General Assembly do their work.

- Just some broader questions for you about the state of the Republican Party.

You got into politics, as you write in your book, thinking that you would be focused on completely different issues, perhaps criminal justice reform, making government more conducive to building businesses.

You write about a deeply personal experience you had in the loss of your son to a fentanyl overdose.

I don't know that when you got into this, you thought you would end up becoming a poster child for election integrity and for standing up to a bullying president who wanted to overturn an election.

How do you reflect on where you've ended up?

- I guess the sovereignty of God.

You know, He put me here.

And I'm just here to do my job.

It's as simple as that.

You know, we've got a law, follow the law, follow the Constitution, respect it.

- In a Veterans Day speech last week, former President Trump declared himself, quote, "A very proud election denier."

The recently elected speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, as you know, was part of the congressional leadership back in early 2021 that organized the Texas lawsuit that intended to overturn Georgia's election results.

You spent your time ensuring the integrity of the elections in your state.

How do you handle or grapple with the fact that a significant and important part of the GOP has glommed onto the lies around our elections?

- All I can do is just continue to do my job, continue to speak the truth.

I think right now, it is better to have a calm voice, a quiet voice than a loud, angry voice.

I think that I always lean into just the basic goodness of the American people, my fellow Georgians.

I think people are looking for someone that will do the right thing.

I think we're looking for calmer days.

I said, I mean this with full respect, but maybe we need to make boring great again.

Maybe we need an Eisenhower, because people say, oh, you know, oh, that was kind of boring.

Was it really, in the 50s?

We had peace and we had prosperity.

And then you look at Reagan, you know, he inherited the inflation that he inherited, but he beat that.

And he also tried to beat back the Soviets.

So we had, you know, strength.

We felt pride in our nation.

- Former President Trump has been indicted in Georgia and in federal court over his attempts to overturn the election here in Georgia.

You testified before the Fulton County grand jury.

You were interviewed by federal prosecutors working with special counsel Jack Smith.

Do you feel that you've done all you can to hold Trump accountable for his actions?

- Well, it's not my job to hold him accountable.

My job is to say what happened and what didn't happen.

And I think the people, if you read a lot of business books like I have over the years, but Jim Collins' book, "Good to Great" is, number one, you've got to face the brutal truth.

And the brutal truth is 28,000 people skipped the presidential race.

The brutal truth is Republican congressmen got 28,000 more votes than President Trump.

The brutal truth is that's why he came up short.

But once you know the brutal truth, then you can kind of grow from that and move forward from that.

And so you could really build a campaign that could win based on the truth.

And that's gonna really be something that's stable.

If you don't face the brutal truth, it's always gonna hold you back.

I also would say to everyone, whatever you run for, no matter what you run for, just remember that the American people are positive and aspirational.

They're not into retribution, not into anger, and they're not into vitriol.

It may work for a season, but it won't work for more than two seasons.

Americans are looking for someone that's sunny, positive and leading people forward.

I rest my case with Ronald Reagan.

He just had a sunny disposition.

He was just really a nice guy, but he was also very principled.

And character was king when he was the president.

- The fact is, as all of us can see from the polls, that President Trump is leading in the presidential primary.

You have suggested optimistically that Republicans can learn from their mistakes.

And one of the mistakes in the past is that the majority of Republicans wanted somebody other than Trump in the primary but divided those votes so that he came away with a plurality.

It looks like that might happen again.

- Well, if it does, we are gonna run an election, and we will tell you the counties have reported these numbers and here we've collated them and here's the victory.

And it very well could be President Trump.

And if that is, we're gonna announce what the results are.

And we're gonna make sure we have fair and honest elections in Georgia.

- In the Georgia indictment, many Republicans have dismissed the Fulton case as, well, frankly, the Fulton case and the federal probe as a witch hunt.

In your estimation, though, do you think that this judicial process is motivated by partisanship?

- As it relates to?

- President Trump's indictments.

- No, I think that, you know, they're going through a process and they've already received, you know, people that have pled guilty to, you know, certain things.

And so that's there for everyone to come to their own conclusion.

But I know that what happened in Georgia, I've been very clear, and I've talked about all the allegations that were made, and we ha6ve the numbers on our side.

And time has proven us right.

- President Trump also said in his Veterans Day speech, quote, "We pledge to you "that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, "and the radical left thugs "that live like vermin within the confines of our country, "that lie and steal and cheat on elections."

I know you don't want to take a public position on the 2024 election, but as an elected, an elected Republican, are you comfortable with that rhetoric?

- I would prefer a speech that's more in line with what I guess I grew up with, with Ronald Reagan.

That was more positive.

I think that positive build, negative kills.

As an engineer, it takes a lot more energy to build a building than to go ahead and blow it up.

How do we increase people's individual, you know, prosperity?

That's what we really should all be about, not looking backwards and holding grudge matches.

We don't hold grudges.

Heck, we fought the British in 1776.

Then we fought them again in the War of 1812, and now they're just a good ally.

I think that's the American way.

You know, we make friends.

We don't make enemies.

We try to be friends with everyone.

But sometimes diplomatically and I know geopolitically you can't.

I understand that.

That's why we need someone with the guts of a Reagan that'll stand up to communists, the true communists that are out there, you know, in the other parts of the world.

- You were declared an enemy of the people.

You and your family and your staff received threats, death threats.

At one point, you even had to go into hiding, leave your house.

Are you ready for 2024?

- Best we can be.

And we've tried to prepare our counties for any potential threat factor we could have.

So we understand cybersecurity.

And after the fentanyl-laced letters we just got last week sent out to election offices, and one was intercepted before it got to Fulton County.

Okay, got it.

We'll put that on our radar also.

But so you look at what could happen and you try and game-play out any potentiality you could have.

We just know that it will be a contentious race because we live in a 50-50 very polarized environment right now.

We expect record turnout.

We expect a strong turnout, and we want to make sure people know that we have safe, honest, fair, accurate elections.

- Secretary Brad Raffensperger, thank you for joining me on "Firing Line."

- Thank you.

- [Narrator] "Firing Line" with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, The Tepper Foundation, The Asness Family Foundation, The McKenna Family Foundation, Charles R. Schwab, and by The Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, and Damon Button.

Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. [bright music] [bright music continues] [bright tune] [gentle music] You're watching PBS.