PBS announced a new one-hour special from Margaret Hoover on how voting works in America. She will look at how Americans cast their ballots, the reliability of voting systems across the country, and voter confidence, especially with recent questions about system integrity.
COUNTING THE VOTE: A FIRING LINE SPECIAL WITH MARGARET HOOVER will premiere on PBS on Tuesday, August 27 at 9:30 p.m. ET (check local listings) and stream on PBS.org and the PBS app.
“Voting is foundational to our democracy,” Margaret Hoover, the host of FIRING LINE said. “But our democracy is compromised, as is the very act of voting, if voters doubt the integrity of voting systems. In this special, I set out to uncover why we vote the way we do, and what practices can genuinely help to restore trust in how we cast and count our ballots.”
“PBS is proud to present this program as part of our commitment to extensive, thoughtful, and all-encompassing looks at the 2024 election,” said Margaret Ebrahim, Senior Director, Programming & Development, General Audience Programming at PBS. “This powerful film carries on the PBS tradition of thoughtful storytelling, in this case looking closer at the core civic function of voting. We are excited to share this with audiences as viewers are actively thinking about elections in their local communities and the national stage.”
In this one-hour special, Hoover explores voting systems across the United States. She looks at methods to increase voter confidence and highlights states facing challenges with vote counts as the 2024 election nears.
Throughout the documentary, she talks to leading voting experts, including David Becker, Executive Director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, Jocelyn Benson, Michigan Secretary of State since 2019, Ben Ginsberg, Republican election lawyer for President George W. Bush in 2000 who later testified against fraud claims before the Jan. 6 committee, and Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Personal stories of local election officials and voters provide insights into our democracy’s most powerful tool.
COUNTING THE VOTE revisits the closely contested 2000 and 2020 elections and examines efforts to make voting more efficient and inclusive. Since 2020, swing states like Georgia and Michigan have taken steps to improve election confidence, while others like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin could face crises.
Using archival footage and interviews, Hoover investigates how doubts about vote accuracy in Florida in 2000 and the Supreme Court’s involvement eroded public trust. She speaks to former Governor Jeb Bush about bipartisan reforms that followed and how Florida evolved to set a gold standard for election administration.
The show then moves to 2020, another pivotal election. Amid a pandemic, mail-in voting surged, and disinformation spread. Experts debunk conspiracy theories and explain the “red mirage” where initial in-person vote counts favored Trump, but later absentee ballots led to Biden’s victory. Why did some states count faster than others? How do inefficient processes fuel doubts? What can improve outdated voting systems in key states?
Hoover addresses challenges anticipated in the 2024 election. She talks to officials in Arizona about pushing back against conspiracy theorists, and to experts in Michigan and Georgia. She also looks at political obstacles in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania preventing faster vote counts and investigates new restrictions in North Carolina.
COUNTING THE VOTE returns to Florida, where Republicans led by Governor Ron DeSantis are rolling back some post-2000 reforms. Finally, with partisans casting doubt on the 2024 vote count, she asks whether American democracy can survive when voting is in question.
