GEOFF BENNETT: Let's turn now to election security and the prospect of potential election interference.

In recent months, the Trump administration and the Department of Justice have led an extraordinary effort to exert federal control over state-run elections, filing a series of lawsuits against states like California and Alaska, threatening to prosecute local election officials, attempting to curb mail-in voting, and working to obtain sensitive voter information from nearly every state.

Now, nearly all of those efforts so far have been blocked or rejected by the courts.

President Trump has also repeatedly cast doubt on the integrity of the election itself, something experts fear could be used as a pretext for interference in close races.

For insight and analysis, we're joined tonight by two guests.

Rick Hasen is a professor of law and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law.

And Juliette Kayyem is a former assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, currently at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Thank you both.

For being with us.

Rick, we will start with you.

The Justice Department has filed lawsuit after lawsuit challenging election procedures, and courts have repeatedly rejected the DOJ's arguments.

Is this a serious legal strategy, in your view, or a political strategy dressed up as litigation?

RICK HASEN, UCLA School of Law: Well, I do think that this was a way of testing the waters.

If, in fact, the federal courts had allowed the federal government to dictate which ballots California has to set aside or to allow the federal government to block certification of the U.S.

Senate race in Alaska, then that would be an indication, a kind of green light, that they could try that in other places where there might be close races as the ballots get tabulated.

But the fact that they have been rejected, including a rejection from the Supreme Court in a very unusual way yesterday, where the court did not even ask for a response before they rejected the appeal related to setting aside those 20,000 ballots in California, I think the courts are sending a big signal that this is not going to work.

And so, if it continues, it's probably more of a political strategy than a legal strategy.

GEOFF BENNETT: And, Juliette, from a national security perspective, is the fact that the legal system is largely holding the line, is that reassuring, or are we missing the bigger threat here?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, Former U.S.

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary: I think it's reassuring and we are missing a bigger threat.

I mean, let's just start from the baseline.

We are supposed to have the peaceful transfer of power with no suggestion of the kinds of activity that the Trump administration is arguing in court.

And I think Rick really sort of perfectly does the sort the legal forms of intimidation or narrative that the Trump White House is pursuing, but there are others.

First of all, that narrative that is promoted not just by Trump, but you're hearing even today Republican politicians who could lose talking about fraud, talking about allegations of fraud.

That undermines our democracy, because a certain number of supporters are going to believe that the vote is not fair.

But, secondly and as importantly, it is a radicalizing event.

I'm not saying everyone who believes it will turn to violence, but if you just look at the narrative from November of the election to January 6, that narrative begins with fraud allegations.

People are not voting.

I just want to add one other thing.

We shouldn't think that this is just like, oh, they're filing in court.

Two other things the Trump administration is doing, the threat of ICE deployment, we have not seen it yet, but we don't know if that threat suppressed Hispanic votes.

And the other is, this morning, they just decide they're going to send 1,000 election watchers to major urban cities with no interaction, no notice for the people who are actually running that election.

So this is part of a soup of attempt to game whatever is going to happen with the results.

GEOFF BENNETT: And let's talk more about that, the DOJ announcing that they're sending 1,000 election monitors and observers to all 50 states in what it called the largest Election Day monitoring effort in history.

As you both know, federal election monitoring is nothing new.

But, Rick, in your view, apart from the scale here, beyond the scale, what what's different about this operation?

RICK HASEN: Well, as I understand it, they're not just sending DOJ election lawyers.

They're going to send, at least one report, potentially agents from ATF,people who are not really associated with monitoring elections.

I think the bigger threat that came out today is not the monitors, and they did announce earlier that there were going to be some monitors being sent, but it was the reporting that, in the Alaska case involving the two Dan Sullivans, that some criminal target letters have been sent to Democratic lawyers and to the parts of the Democratic Party.

That suggests that, even if there's not an attempt to interfere with actually how the election is run, there could be further potential criminal liability or at least attempted criminal liability down the line, and that itself is dangerous to democracy.

GEOFF BENNETT: And a question about what could happen after the polls close.

What could the federal government actually do, Juliette, to interfere with counting or certification or in some other way disrupt the process, especially if it's a close race?

JULIETTE KAYYEM: So it depends on what happens overnight.

I think one of the big gaps or worrisome aspects from state officials that I have been hearing is, of course, if overnight or in the course of this evening, there -- the votes are not counted, but the FBI comes in with, again, a lawful warrant or some sort of document that allows them to take the ballots or election instruments before the count.

Because then you lose what's called the chain of custody.

You lose that ability to say, look, the votes came in, we counted them, here's the number, which is -- generally resides in -- or always resides in the state.

So I think that's something that we worried about.

We don't know what's going to happen overnight.

And then, of course, as Rick said, we -- you have a lot of states that might play with the idea of lawful certification.

Then you have another series of cases.

And then, from my perspective, not only is that a reflection to the world that we essentially do not have the -- a calm transfer of power.

The other is that that -- these are radicalization moments, and we have never had leadership sort of push the envelope sort of in terms of what that can mean.

Again, this does not mean the party is advocating violence.

But, in this moment, the longer we go, the more you can have very nefarious narratives pop up, pushed by foreign enemies and intelligence agencies that then begin to make things look a little bit more nerve-racking, honestly.

GEOFF BENNETT: And, Rick, in those scenarios that Juliette has just laid out there, are the courts equipped to step in and stop that kind of interference quickly enough?

RICK HASEN: Well, certainly, many groups, including my own Safeguarding Democracy Project, have been getting the word out to judges that you shouldn't just be a rubber stamp if there's a search warrant that's issued for ballots or for voting machines, that there are other ways to deal with law enforcement legitimate investigatory purposes without breaking the electoral chain of custody.

I really do think that what the last few months have shown us is that the courts across the political spectrum -- this is not a Democratic appointee versus Republican appointee thing.

We're seeing courts hold the line on free and fair elections.

I think the courts, as well as the fact that we have power diffused to the states, we don't have the executive branch of the federal government able to dictate how elections are being run, that really -- the center so far has held.

And I think, unless we have a very close election for control of the House or the Senate, we're likely to squeak through because of a lot of hard work of thousands of people.

GEOFF BENNETT: Rick Hasen and Juliette Kayyem, thank you both for your insights, of course, over the last few weeks and months leading up to this moment, and, of course, on this Election Day.

We're most appreciative.

RICK HASEN: Thank you.

JULIETTE KAYYEM: Thank you.