The following is the transcript of the interview with David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research and a CBS News election law contributor, that aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Feb. 8, 2026.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re joined now by David Becker. He is the Executive Director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research and a CBS News election law contributor. Always good to have you here, David.
DAVID BECKER: Great to be back with you, Margaret.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to pick up on a few things that have come up in the program. Senator Warner voiced what some Democrats are concerned about, arguing that President Trump is laying the groundwork to undermine the upcoming election or interfere in it in some way. And, in fact, during the program the President is tweeting about American elections being rig– rigged, stolen and a laughing stock all around the world. What do you think of these statements here? Are both parties undermining confidence in our election? What do election officials that you speak to feel and think right now?
DAVID BECKER: Yeah, it’s very hard to predict where this is going. —
MARGARET BRENNAN: — Yeah. —
DAVID BECKER: — But we can look at what’s happened already. The President has signed an unprecedented executive order regarding elections trying to dictate policy to the states. That’s now been enjoined, blocked by three different federal courts. His Department of Justice is seeking highly sensitive data on hundreds of millions of American voters, is suing 24 states and D.C. Two federal courts just in the past few weeks have blocked that. The remainder are still to be heard. The cyber security apparatus that Senator Warner talked about, that had been built up under the first Trump administration to assist election officials, has been dismantled. So when I talk to election officials, they’re very concerned about this. I think it’s safe to say this is unprecedented. We have never seen a president try to exert executive authority over elections in the states like we have. And of course this is contrary to the Constitution, which specifically grants states the authority to run elections under Article 1, Section 4, the elections clause. Congress can also act, and if Congress does, of course, those laws will be followed. But both parties have tried to pass sweeping bills in the last five or six years and have failed.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So the Constitution, as you just point out, states it is the states —
DAVID BECKER: — Right. —
MARGARET BRENNAN: — who are going to run these elections. But the President — I want to play what he said so the public hears it — he has at least three times in the past week said he wants the Republican Party to nationalize voting and take over voting procedures in 15 states. Take a listen.
(Begin VT)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Take a look at Detroit, take a look at Pennsylvania, take a look at Philadelphia, you go take a look at Atlanta, look at some of the places that — horrible corruption on elections. And the federal government should not allow that. The federal government should get involved. These are agents of the federal government to count the votes. If they can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over.
REPORTER: But the Constitution —
(End VT)
MARGARET BRENNAN: So what would prevent the president from doing something you just told us is unconstitutional?
DAVID BECKER: Well, the President might try to act and that’s why it’s so hard to predict exactly what’s going to happen, but the courts have been very firm on holding the limits of executive power under the Constitution. There was just a court decision a couple of days ago from the state of Oregon, a district court there, that denied DOJ access to this highly sensitive voter data that they were seeking from Oregon. And specifically said, again, that the Constitution is clear. The founders carved out elections specially to say the federal government can only act if Congress acts. The states have the authority and they expressly excluded the executive from that at all. They were very concerned about the excesses of an executive, a president, who would seek to consolidate more power than the Constitution granted by seizing the mechanisms of elections.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So two other things I want to run through with you. The White House took down that video that we were just discussing with Congressman Gonzalez. The focus has been on the racist portion of it, which was widely condemned. The video leading up to it that Congressman Gonzalez defended was about election software and security. In that, when you listen to it, you hear descriptions of problems with technology and things that the speaker says were anomalies, like in 2025 key states stopped counting at a certain time. Can you fact check some of this for us?
DAVID BECKER: Yeah, this is a very common methodology for those that are spreading lies about the elections, defying, just throw everything against the wall and see what sticks. And the rest of that video, in addition to the ending, was also troubling because it was a lot of disinformation, just blatantly false. We have paper ballots in the United States. 98% of all Americans vote on paper ballots. The only exclusion is the state of Louisiana, which is moving to paper ballots. That means those paper ballots can be checked against whatever the machines tally, and they are checked. Famously, in Georgia, those paper ballots in 2020 were counted three times, three different ways, once entirely by hand. Over five million ballots counted by hand in five days with observation from both campaign and observers. There’s no way to get around the fact that this is the, 2020 was the most scrutinized election in American history. And every time when courts reviewed it, when people who lied about the election were taken to court, the work of election officials withstood that scrutiny. It’s really remarkable. We’re — not only are our elections not rigged, they’re as transparent and verifiable and as secure as they’ve ever been, no matter whether you like the outcome or not. And we’re seeing disinformation being spread, in this case, by the President of the United States, targeted at his own supporters, at others who might not like the outcome of elections. And, unfortunately, some are believing it.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, it’s unusual because the president won the election and Republicans won the last election. So when he is saying now that suddenly the system is broken, it seemed to work when it elected him, but it didn’t work when he lost in 2020. That, that is what is contradictory in sort of just the common sense version.
DAVID BECKER: That’s exactly right.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But on the facts of it, you’re saying this has actually been verified time and time again. But those ballots you just talked about from Fulton County, we have body camera footage of these FBI agents going and taking the ballots. Why would the FBI now be taking the ballots? Why was the Director of National Intelligence there and what would they do with these ballots?
DAVID BECKER: This is a great question, and it still has not been answered. First of all, there was no crime committed in 2020. Those ballots have been counted and reviewed so many times. We know exactly what happened in Georgia in 2020. Joe Biden won that state by a relatively narrow margin of 11,779 votes. In 2024, Donald Trump won that state. Democrats didn’t somehow have the magical ability, while out of the White House, to steal an election in 2020 and then forget to use that power in 2024 when they had the White House. So we know exactly what happened. If there was a true, honest review of those ballots, it will confirm exactly what the result was, just as when the cyber ninjas reviewed the Maricopa County ballots in Arizona. They found the same exact outcome. As for the Director of National Intelligence being in Fulton County, there is no viable reason to have a high level political appointee during the execution of a search warrant. That search warrant is — has many defects, as the body cam footage showed. There was a defect in the address when they first showed up. They had to go back and get a corrected search warrant. And there’s also this, this issue of the statute of limitations. There’s a five year statute of limitations under federal law for any of the crimes that they mentioned in the warrant. There were two specific statutes. That five year statute has expired by any measure, and so I’m not sure why a magistrate signed off on it. We’re not sure why the DNI was in Fulton County inside a local election warehouse. We’ve heard shifting explanations. First, the Deputy Attorney General said she happened to be in Atlanta. I don’t know that that’s particularly credible. —
MARGARET BRENNAN: — Yeah. —
DAVID BECKER: — And then the President —
MARGARET BRENNAN: — Right. —
DAVID BECKER: — Then we heard the President directed her and then Attorney General Bondi directed her. We have no idea what actually happened.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, we checked and at least nine top Trump administration officials, by CBS criteria, raised doubt about the validity or integrity of the 2020 election. That count does not include the President of the United States himself. David Becker, thank you. —
DAVID BECKER: — Thank you Margaret. —
MARGARET BRENNAN: — We’ll be back in a moment.
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