This year’s 2021 Net­roots Nation con­fer­ence kicked off with two fea­tured pan­els, includ­ing one fea­tur­ing four female Sec­re­taries of State: Jena Gris­wold of Col­orado, Denise Mer­rill of Con­necti­cut, Shen­na Bel­lows of Maine, and Joce­lyn Ben­son of Michi­gan joined Dai­ly Kos’ Car­olyn Fid­dler dis­cuss their role in state gov­ern­ment as well as the cur­rent threat to democracy

Fid­dler began the pan­el by ask­ing the pan­elists what they believed to be the biggest threat to democ­ra­cy. Over­whelm­ing­ly, all four sec­re­taries stat­ed that vot­er sup­pres­sion and elec­tion sab­o­tage cur­rent­ly pose a dire threat.

Sec­re­tary Mer­rill not­ed that since the 2020 elec­tion Amer­i­ca has been plagued with what she termed the “3 D’s: dis­trust, dis­in­for­ma­tion, and down­right lies”.

To address the threat to democ­ra­cy, we need a fed­er­al response employ­ing basic stan­dards every­one can under­stand. Sec­re­tary Bel­lows echoed this sentiment.

Sec­re­tary Gris­wold said that Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­ers and elect­ed offi­cials need to band togeth­er and take a hard line against those who break the law or tam­per with elec­tions. Sec­re­tary Ben­son added that the truth, facts, law, and the Con­sti­tu­tion are on our side. Col­lec­tive­ly, our work over the next year must be to push back against efforts to dis­man­tle democ­ra­cy by refram­ing when elec­tions are attacked.

Fid­dler then asked the sec­re­taries what they can do as elec­tion admin­is­tra­tors to knock down bar­ri­ers to vot­ing and improve bal­lot access.

Sec­re­tary Ben­son said she became an attor­ney main­ly to enforce the Vot­ing Rights Act and since then has ded­i­cat­ed her entire career to pro­tect­ing the vote.

Sec­re­tary Gris­wold said that sec­re­taries have three main duties: lead­er­ship, admin­is­tra­tive work, and mak­ing good deci­sions. She explained she’s been com­mit­ted to dra­mat­i­cal­ly increase vot­ing rights in her state for sev­er­al years.

For instance, Col­orado has increased drop­box­es by 55%, cre­at­ed forty-two new vot­ing cen­ters, part­nered with tribes and increased trib­al vot­ing, and imple­ment­ed auto­mat­ic vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dur­ing the pandemic.

Sec­re­tary Bel­lows not­ed that she intro­duced an auto­mat­ic vot­er reg­is­tra­tion bill in the Maine leg­is­la­ture when she was a law­mak­er. Now, as sec­re­tary of state, she has had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to imple­ment that legislation.

Sec­re­tary Mer­rill con­tend­ed that sec­re­taries can be pow­er­ful agents of change. In Con­necti­cut, she said that she has increased vot­ing at home by about 30% and deployed per­ma­nent bal­lot return boxes.

Look­ing for­ward to 2022, the four sec­re­taries con­curred that they are very con­cerned about the integri­ty of the midterms.

Sec­re­tary Ben­son says it is impor­tant to rec­og­nize that threats aren’t mere­ly tar­get­ing indi­vid­u­als; they are tar­get­ing democ­ra­cy and voters.

The 2020 elec­tion was very suc­cess­ful, but Repub­li­cans are ped­dling a false nar­ra­tive of fraud, believ­ing that Don­ald Trump was robbed. They’re now work­ing over­time to under­mine pub­lic con­fi­dence in Amer­i­ca’s elections.

To pro­tect our democ­ra­cy, the sec­re­taries agreed that we need to make sure liars are held account­able by the pub­lic and in the court of law. That means get­ting Trump-enabling attor­neys dis­barred and seek­ing sanc­tions against those who wast­ed court resources with false alle­ga­tions of cheating.

When­ev­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty lead­ers and elect­ed offi­cials can engage in bipar­ti­san coali­tion build­ing and get rea­son­able Repub­li­cans to help them pro­tect democ­ra­cy, they should, the sec­re­taries suggested.