Meet the Press interviews during 2018: on Government Reform

Lauren Underwood: Free and fair elections are a critical pillar of democracy

REP.-ELECT LAUREN UNDERWOOD: Well, protecting democracy is critically important. In article one of the constitution, the Congress is designed to a coequal branch of government. And so oversight is critically important. And in the 115th Congress, the Congressional Republicans essentially refused to do so. And so I think that there's certainly an interest to make sure that our critical pillars of democracy like free and fair elections can occur. But that it's not our primary and chief priority.

Stacey Abrams: Sued in 2016 to stop "exact match" on voter registration

STACEY ABRAMS: Absolutely. I was part of a coalition that sued him in 2016 to force him to stop using this process. And a federal judge agreed with us, said that he had unlawfully canceled more than 33,000 registrations. And they forced him to restore those registrations. In response, the Republicans passed a law in the 2017 legislative session to allow him to do it again. And so the challenge is twofold. One is that we know this is a flawed system that has a disproportionate effect on people of color. But it also has the ability to erode trust in our system.

Andrew Gillum: Campaign funded by many small donors plus two billionaires

ANDREW GILLUM: Well, I'll tell you, I'm obviously deeply appreciative of Mr. Soros & Mr. Steyer, both men whom I've known for some time. But the truth is, our campaign was really propped up by a lot of small contributions, including my mother, who was on auto-deduct of $20 a month into our campaign. In the first two days of this general election, our campaign has been buoyed this first week, raising over $2 million--not by big contributions--but by everyday folks sowing a seed into our race. And I honestly think that that is what is going to help us win on November 6th is these everyday folks deciding to sow a seed into this race.

Lindsey Graham: Overwhelming evidence that Russians stole emails from DNC

[TAPE] GRAHAM: If after having been briefed by our intelligence leaders, Donald Trump is still unsure as to what the Russians did, that would be incredibly unnerving to me because the evidence is overwhelming.

[END TAPE] Just yesterday the president referred to the Russia investigation as a hoax. Are you unnerved?

GRAHAM: The president does now finally believe that the Russians stole the emails from the DNC [the Democratic National Committee]. But he believes that collusion is a hoax. All I can say is that it's not a hoax. The Russians stole the emails. They did interfere in our elections. We now know that Trump Junior met with the Russians in Trump Tower & that Bob Mueller is the right guy at the right time. He needs to be allowed to do his job. And whether or not there's collusion--Bob Mueller will tell us. The idea of Jeff Sessions being able to investigate the campaign he was on is unacceptable. Jeff Sessions did the right thing [by recusing himself].