Screening and Live Filming of PBS’ Firing Line with Firing Line Host Margaret Hoover; GOP Election Attorney Benjamin Ginsberg; Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D); Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer (R) / with <em>Firing Line</em> Host Margaret Hoover; GOP Election Attorney Benjamin Ginsberg; Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D); Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer (R) - The 92nd Street Y, New York
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92NY Center for Culture & Arts
Recanati-Kaplan Talks

Screening and Live Filming of PBS’ Firing Line

with Firing Line Host Margaret Hoover; GOP Election Attorney Benjamin Ginsberg; Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D); Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer (R)
PBS’ Firing Line: Counting the Vote

Join host of PBS’ Firing Line, Margaret Hoover, for a conversation with Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D), GOP election attorney Benjamin Ginsberg, and Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer (R) about the sanctity and security of our elections — and a screening of the new one-hour Firing Line documentary, Counting the Vote, directed by award-winning producer Alyssa Litoff.

Across the political spectrum, experts agree that the 2024 election is going to be incredibly close — so close that even the officials who count our votes have been thrust into the spotlight. But how does vote counting work? And why, in this election cycle, has it become so politicized? In Counting the Vote, Firing Line’s Margaret Hoover travels across the US to speak with former and current election officials from both parties — including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), Benson, Ginsberg, and Richer — uncovering the disturbing efforts to use the vote-counting process to challenge election results.

Following this screening, hear Hoover, Benson, Ginsberg, and Richer dispel myths about vote counting and explain how this bedrock principle of our democracy truly works in a special filming of Firing Line to premiere on Friday, October 25 at 8:30 PM ET.

Firing Line with Margaret Hoover airs nationwide on PBS (check local listings) and is co-produced by The WNET Group.

Watch the trailer.

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Margaret Hoover

Margaret Hoover

Margaret Hoover is the host of PBS’s Firing Line with Margaret Hoover, a refreshing revival of the iconic television series …

Margaret Hoover

Margaret Hoover

Margaret Hoover is the host of PBS’s Firing Line with Margaret Hoover, a refreshing revival of the iconic television series hosted by William F. Buckley Jr. for 33 years. A CNN political commentator, Ms. Hoover has served in The White House under President George W. Bush, in the Department of Homeland Security, on Capitol Hill and on two presidential campaigns. She is the President of American Unity Fund, a political organization focused on achieving full freedom and equality for LGBT Americans as well as the bestselling author of American Individualism: How a New Generation of Conservatives Can Save the Republican Party in 2011. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Daily News, The Daily Beast, CNN.com and FoxNews.com. Margaret serves on the boards of Stanford University's Hoover Institution, the Hoover Presidential Foundation, and the Belgian American Educational Foundation. Raised in Colorado, Margaret has lived in China, Mexico, Bolivia and Taiwan. She speaks fluent Spanish and has studied Mandarin Chinese.

Ben Ginsberg

Ben Ginsberg

Ben Ginsberg is the Volker Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a nationally known political law advocate …

Ben Ginsberg

Ben Ginsberg

Ben Ginsberg is the Volker Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a nationally known political law advocate representing participants in the political process. His clients have included political parties, political campaigns, candidates, members of Congress and state legislatures, governors, corporations, trade associations, political action committees (PACs), vendors, donors, and individuals. He represented four of the last six Republican presidential nominees.

Ginsberg’s representations have ranged across a variety of election law and regulatory issues, including voting issues and elections, federal and state campaign finance laws, recounts and contests, government investigations, election administration, and redistricting. He served as cochair of the bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration, which produced a much-lauded report on best practices and recommendations for state and local officials to make US elections run better.

His academic background includes being a lecturer in law at Stanford Law School, an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, and a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics. He appears frequently on television as an on-air commentator about politics and the law and has written numerous articles on US politics.

He served as national counsel to the 2000 and 2004 Bush-Cheney presidential campaigns and played a central role in the 2000 Florida recount. In 2012 and 2008, he served as national counsel to the Romney for President campaign. He has represented the campaigns and leadership PACs of numerous members of the Senate and House as well as national party committees, governors, and state officials. He was a partner at Jones Day from 2014 to 2020 and, before that, at Patton Boggs for 23 years.

Jocelyn Benson

Jocelyn Benson

Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson has become one of the nation’s most prominent leaders in ensuring elections are secure and accessible …

Jocelyn Benson

Jocelyn Benson

Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson has become one of the nation’s most prominent leaders in ensuring elections are secure and accessible. Benson’s work overseeing Michigan’s 2020 and 2022 general elections, both of which drew record-breaking turnout and were more secure than any prior election in state history, earned her national recognition, including the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award and the Presidential Citizens Medal. She also implemented new voting rights for all eligible Michiganders prior to the 2020 election, including the right to vote absentee, and oversaw more than 250 audits after the election, all of which affirmed its integrity and accuracy.

A graduate of Harvard Law School and expert on civil rights law, education law and election law, Benson served as dean of Wayne State University Law School in Detroit. When she was appointed dean at age 36, she became the youngest woman in U.S. history to lead a top-100, accredited law school. She continues to serve as vice chair of the advisory board for the Levin Center at Wayne Law, which she founded with former U.S. Sen. Carl Levin. Previously, Benson was an associate professor and associate director of Wayne Law’s Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights.

Benson is the author of State Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process, the first major book on the role of the secretary of state in enforcing election and campaign finance laws. She is also a co-founder and former president of Military Spouses of Michigan, a network dedicated to providing support and services to military spouses and their children. In 2015, she was inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame and in 2016, she became one of a handful of women to have completed the Boston marathon while 8 months pregnant.

Stephen Richer

Stephen Richer

Stephen Richer is the 30th Recorder of Maricopa County. He was elected in November 2020 and took office in January 2021 …

Stephen Richer

Stephen Richer

Stephen Richer is the 30th Recorder of Maricopa County. He was elected in November 2020 and took office in January 2021. His office of approximately 150 employees records hundreds of thousands of public documents every year, maintains a voter registration database of 2.4 million voters — the second largest voting jurisdiction in the United States — and administers the mail voting component of all elections in Maricopa County. Prior to his time as Recorder, Stephen worked in various business sectors and, later, as an attorney at the law firms Steptoe & Johnson LLP and Lewis Roca LLP. He holds a J.D. and M.A. from The University of Chicago and a B.A. from Tulane University. He is completing his PhD at Arizona State University.

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