By Here and Now Newsroom, May 1, 2026
Over the decades, the Carter Center has monitored more than 100 elections around the globe, mainly in new or fragile democracies. Its attention has now turned to the U.S. for this year’s midterms.
Here & Now‘s Indira Lakshmanan speaks with Jason Carter, chair of the Carter Center Board of Trustees, about what can be done to instill more trust in the voting process.
TRANSCRIPT:
Indira Lakshmanan:
“For nearly 4 decades, the nonprofit started by former president Jimmy Carter has monitored more than 120 elections in 40 countries. Mostly new or fragile democracies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Since 2020, it’s also been monitoring elections in Carter’s home state of Georgia, where President Trump challenged his loss to Joe Biden six years ago. Trump’s claims of a stolen election were widely disproven, but that hasn’t stopped loyalists from believing them. Now the Carter Center’s election observers are focusing on this year’s midterms in the US and what can be done to instill more trust in our voting process.”
“Joining us now is Jason Carter, grandson of former President Jimmy Carter, and chair of the Carter Center board of trustees. He’s also a former Georgia State senator. Jason welcome.”
Jason Carter:
“Thank you for having me.”
Indira Lakshmanan:
“So the Carter Center has deep expertise in monitoring elections around the world, especially in fragile states or those transitioning to democracy, like East Timor and Sierra Leone. This year, you’re focusing your attention on the midterms in the US, one of the oldest and arguably strongest democracies, so what concerns you about our system right now, and what are you doing about it?”
Jason Carter:
“Well, I think the fundamental thing we have learned in our time observing elections elsewhere is that you have to build trust in the system. You know, it’s very easy, frankly, to design a system that avoids fraud, that ensures that every vote is counted, that has transparency. When you put those things together you could have an election that meets international standards but you have to also translate that reality of a high quality election system into actual trust among the population and so what we need in the United states is we have this trust deficit you’ve got people on both sides that are raising concerns that are nervous about the way our system works and we realized that we can bring the bear some of that expertise to help bolster the trust that the American people have in the system.”
Indira Lakshmanan:
“Well, Jason, there’s a republican sheriff in California who sees some half a million ballots over a disputed election outcome, the FBI sees voting records from the 2020 election in your backyard, Fulton County, Georgia and the president has made baseless claims of voter fraud there. We should note that the county’s 2020 results were recounted three times, backing up the results. What do you make of all this?”
Jason Carter:
“Well, let’s be careful what we are both talking about, right? I mean there is allegations of voter fraud for example or there was allegations of quote stolen elections but you also had dozens and dozens and dozens of court cases where the evidence was we have a system for resolving election contests for example and so you you’ve seen that that system worked very well and has worked very well in the past right and so we can you can always have people say I don’t trust that the question is why and the question is what happens in our system when someone makes a claim that they don’t trust an outcome all we can do is continue to bolster the idea that yes, people can come in and say what they want, but ultimately it’s a system of laws and we rely on that rule of law in order to at the end of the day believe in and trust the election.”
Indira Lakshmanan:
“So I wonder, when you look at all the learning that the Carter Center has gotten from observing and monitoring elections in other countries, are there any similarities that you can draw to what’s happening here at home, and lessons that can be applied?”
Jason Carter:
“Well, one of the things that’s always difficult in any political environment is that most people who are running for office believe they’re going to win. My grandfather used to say that politics is an art sometimes of self-delusion everyone thinks they’re going to win and before the election happens and so what you have to do there has to be some leadership out there from different political parties and that have credibility on both sides of the aisle to say after an election hey this is a fair outcome even though my party lost and that’s something that we saw in Georgia. For example, when the republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger acknowledged that his political party had not won the presidential election and stood firm on the truth, that’s very helpful, as people on all sides of our politics have to come together as advocates for the system when their party loses and express some leadership.”
Indira Lakshmanan:
“Well, the Carter Center is partnering with the Ford Center, which was established by the late president Gerald Ford, who served immediately before your grandfather, to train nonpartisan observers for midterms this year in Ford’s home state of Michigan, which is another hotly contested battleground state like your own. Tell us what you’ll be doing there. Are you monitoring certain elections or polling stations?”
Jason Carter:
“What we’re doing in in Michigan and many other places is we have built up a network of individuals leaders influencers who are able to support the system and provide that type of trust after the fact right who can analyze what’s happening and then they’re going to be there to identify and validate the transparency of the process from beginning to end including the count, and therefore be able to say regardless of the result that we can trust in the process, that it represents the will of the people of Michigan or Georgia or wherever else.”
Indira Lakshmanan:
“So, Jason, many Trump supporters and advisers have called for immigration agents to be present at polling stations to prevent undocumented migrants from trying to vote, even though claims of non-citizen voting have been roundly disproven. The president himself has threatened to have the federal government take over state elections. Does the drumbeat of such claims and insistence that there are problems with our voting system affect voter trust or undermine turnout?”
Jason Carter:
“Those are two questions that I think are really important, right? One of the things that we think happened in Georgia in 2020 is that the President was undermining turnout among his own base so much that it boosted democratic chances in the runoff elections. So, I do think that it’s an interesting political question right and on sometimes Democrats will talk about how there’s so much voter suppression, for example, that if sometimes Democrats then worry that their own voters feel like it’s too hard to vote when the president says that there’s this vast amount of in person voter fraud or undocumented people voting, when there is no evidence, yes that’s a problem because you’re providing a drumbeat, as you said, that undermines trust and that does so for no reason right without any actual evidence. But it also has this corollary problem for the person who’s making those claims, which is if those people don’t trust the election, maybe those supporters won’t show up, so I hope that there’s enough political reason to avoid that kind of untrue allegations of systemic problems because you know maybe that political incentive is you don’t want your folks to think the elections are bad.”
Indira Lakshmanan:
“Well, the Supreme Court just weakened part of the Voting Rights Act, which was designed in 1965 to give equal rights to black voters. Several southern states are already looking to redraw congressional maps to eliminate majority minority districts. How do you think this might affect trust in elections in our country, particularly in the South, where you’re from?”
Jason Carter:
“Yeah, so I live in Georgia, as you said, and Georgia is the cradle of the civil rights movement, right? Our leaders and our cultural identity in the South, and especially in the city of Atlanta, is one where we have overcome obstacles to voting repeatedly. The leaders in my community, Martin Luther King and John Lewis, were instrumental in the passage of the Voting Rights Act. I think it will be interesting to see what happens. I think these types of Supreme Court cases, for example, tend to have unpredictable results. One of the things that is true about any sort of minority community in any democracy is in order to get power they have to join together with others that’s the definition of being a minority and so in places like Georgia you have seen racial minorities in particular in the African American community be able to band together at different times and build political power without majority minority districts and I think you know gerrymandering is awful, it’s anti-democratic when either side does it but it also sometimes backfires I just think that we don’t we don’t always know what these maps look like in in two or three years and so I think it’s you know a bad decision by the Supreme Court but I also think we can’t predict the outcome so we’re going to have to wait and see what happens as sort of new political alliances get driven by these collection of new maps.”
Indira Lakshmanan:
“Jason Carter chairs the Carter Center board of trustees. He’s also a former state senator from Georgia and the grandson of the late President Carter. Jason, thank you so much for your time.”
Jason Carter:
“Thanks for having me.”
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