UDY WOODRUFF: Good evening.

I'm Judy Woodruff.

On the "NewsHour" tonight: a troubling surge.

The world marks its highest single-day total of new coronavirus infections yet, as the president walks back remarks about slowing down testing.

Then: jailed for journalism.

We discuss the crackdown on press freedom in the Philippines with a journalist targeted by her country's government.

Plus: warning signs.

Problems with voting machines and vulnerabilities to hackers in the state of Georgia undercut trust in the democratic process.

MARILYN MARKS, Coalition For Good Governance: We don't necessarily have fair and secure elections across the United States.

And Georgia is the epitome of problem elections.

JUDY WOODRUFF: All that and more on tonight's "PBS NewsHour."

(BREAK) JUDY WOODRUFF: The COVID-19 pandemic has infected more than nine million people worldwide as of tonight.

and deaths in the United States have topped 120,000.

All of this as the pace of the pandemic gains new momentum.

Amna Nawaz begins our coverage.

AMNA NAWAZ: In Geneva today, a grim new record confirmed.

TEDROS ADHANOM GHEBREYESUS, WHO Director General: Yesterday, more than 183,000 new cases of COVID were reported to WHO.

AMNA NAWAZ: That represents the biggest daily surge in new COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic, all logged by the World Health Organization within 24 hours this weekend.

In Brazil, the world's highest spike, a startling 54,000 new cases, almost a third of all new infections, in India, more than 15,000 new cases.

And hospitals, already under strain, are now turning away patients.

Meanwhile, here in the U.S., more than 36,000 new cases, roughly one-fifth of the global surge.

Some states that had already moved to ease restrictions are now seeing new cases rise.

A dozen states across the South and Southwest reported record increases this past week.

Oklahoma, where, on Saturday, President Trump held his first indoor rally since March, is also reporting new highs.

Blaming the spikes on increased testing, the president told supporters he'd instructed his team to scale it back.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: When you do testing to that extent, you are going to find more people.

You are going to find more cases.

So, I said to my people, slow the testing down, please.

AMNA NAWAZ: White House trade adviser Peter Navarro later told CNN's Jake Tapper, Mr. Trump was joking.

PETER NAVARRO, Director, White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy: Come on now, Jake.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN: Did the president -- did the president... PETER NAVARRO: You know that was tongue in cheek.

Come on now.

Come on now.

That was tongue in cheek, please.

AMNA NAWAZ: But asked about his rally remarks in an interview with Scripps Networks today, President Trump dodged answering directly, instead pivoting to how much testing has been done.

QUESTION: But did you ask to slow it down?

DONALD TRUMP: If it did slow down, frankly, I think we're way ahead of ourselves, if you want to know the truth.

We have done too good a job.

AMNA NAWAZ: His White House press secretary later denied any efforts to curtail testing.

Meanwhile, the Trump campaign confirmed that eight staffers who were in Tulsa for the president's rally have now tested positive for the virus.

Health experts, including from the World Health Organization, say scaled-up testing is not the only driver behind the latest spike in infections.

DR. MICHAEL J. RYAN, World Health Organization: We do not believe that this is a testing phenomenon.

Clearly, when you look at the -- hospital admissions are also rising in a number of countries.

Deaths are also rising.

And they're not due to increased testing, per se.

AMNA NAWAZ: In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said testing is what allowed the city, once the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, to move into its next phase of reopening today.

BILL DE BLASIO (D), Mayor of New York: This is a game-changer.

Remember, we didn't use to have this on a massive scale, nor did other cities and states around the country.

Now we're doing the thing that's worked so well across the world.

We're proactively reaching people who test positive or people who are symptomatic and need help.

AMNA NAWAZ: More than 300,000 New Yorkers were allowed back into businesses and offices today, while barbershops and hair salons welcomed customers inside for the first time in more than 100 days.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Amna Nawaz.

The surge in cases in India, Brazil, and other countries is especially concerning.

It also bears repeating that, even though the number of deaths have dropped in the U.S. from the initial peak this spring, more than 600 people a day are still dying in the U.S. from COVID.

Some perspective on all this now from an expert who watches the global transmission of the disease.

Stephen Morrison is senior vice president and director of global health policy at CSIS.

That's the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

And he joins me now.

Stephen Morrison, welcome back to the "NewsHour."

Let's start overseas now, where we are seeing some of these enormous surges, specifically in Brazil, 54,000 new cases.

Why is there such an alarming surge happening right now?

STEPHEN MORRISON, Global Health Policy Center director, Center for Strategic and International Studies: Well, it's a number of factors.

I mean, testing has expanded a bit, but that's not the main factor we're looking at here.

There was a lockdown for a period, but it was very flawed, it was very fragmented.

There has been a reopening.

People have become complacent.

I think probably the dominant factor is simply wretched national leadership in the form of President Bolsonaro, who has had open scorn for science and for this virus, has embraced hydroxychloroquine, has had contempt for his governors who have attempted to put in place quarantines, has called for mass rallies, has done pretty much everything possibly wrong.

And his support and legitimacy has collapsed.

And so we -- and the epidemic is concentrated in large urban centers, where there is high slums.

And it's very hard to social distance.

Access to water is oftentimes quite problematic.

And so we're seeing a surge in these large urban concentrations, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and the Northeast.

So it's really quite a dangerous city, over 50,000 dead, a million cases.

They could quickly over -- they could, the course of this summer, overtake the United States in terms of the numbers that have died.

AMNA NAWAZ: Let me ask you about India as well, which has also caught a lot of people's attention.

Now, Prime Minister Modi there did lock down the entire country back in March for weeks.

You're talking about over a billion people across the country.

So why are we seeing this spike now all these weeks later?

STEPHEN MORRISON: Well, again, you had a 77-day lockdown in India.

And that had some impact in dampening the curve, but it was unsustainable.

You had over 100 million migrants who were impoverished informal sector workers who were let loose and migrated back across the country to their homes, carrying the virus with them oftentimes.

And he had to relent.

So that -- there was finally a lifting of this.

But they did not have the systems in place in their health system.

Their health system in the public sector is woeful.

Testing has been terrible and remains terrible.

And so you're seeing a surge.

Again, not unlike Brazil, you're seeing it in Mumbai in New Delhi.

These huge urban concentrations is where we're seeing the hot spots right now.

AMNA NAWAZ: So, what about here in the U.S.?

As we reported earlier, dozens of states are now seeing an increase.

Is the increase in infections that we're seeing just due to an increase in testing here?

STEPHEN MORRISON: No, I think what we're seeing in the United States is a surge, an acceleration of community transmission.

There's no question testing has increased.

Our peak testing was just under 600,000 per day, but, on an average day, it's about half that much.

So testing has not increased all that much in terms of actual testing.

But what we are seeing here is a new normal.

I mean, yesterday, we had 37,000 cases.

That's an astronomical number.

And, again, it gets back to, we had a lockdown that had an impact.

It was lifted prematurely.

People have reverted to complacency.

They have not continued in terms of social distancing and use of masks and handwashing.

And we're seeing a surge of cases, particularly in the West and the South, and increasingly in parts of the Midwest.

AMNA NAWAZ: You also heard us report that President Trump had mentioned over the weekend that he'd asked his team to slow down testing, the rationale being, if you don't test, then the number of confirmed cases doesn't go up.

What do you make of that reasoning?

STEPHEN MORRISON: It's dangerous.

The notion that you would deny testing because you simply didn't want to acknowledge the reality of what is around you is reckless and irresponsible.

And it speaks to this idea that your electoral calculations are what should drive your decision-making, not your concern for the health and well-being of your population.

So, if you're one of those who has died of one of those 120,000, or a family member of one of those 120,000, to hear the idea that you would deliberately minimize testing, which is so vitally important to understanding the transmission of this disease, is so vitally important to being able to contain new outbreaks after you lift and reopen, you have to have capacities in place, starting with testing, to be able to chase down those cases and contain them.

If you minimize testing and you slow testing, you're undermining your own ability to cope with this.

I want to make one other important point here about the surge that we're seeing.

The surge across the board in Brazil, in India, in the United States does get back to what Fauci has termed the worst nightmare, which is the nature of this virus.

This virus is incredibly fast.

It's pernicious.

A third to a half of the transmission is asymptomatic, so it is invisible.

It kills people, as we're seeing, 420,000 deaths, but it doesn't kill at such a high rate that it snuffs itself out.

So it continues to circle the globe.

And that is the relentless reality, that you can have poor leadership, wretched leadership, poor systems and the like, but it does not slow this virus.

AMNA NAWAZ: And we should not forget, of course, hundreds of people still dying here in the United States every day as a result.

Stephen Morrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, thank you for being with us.

STEPHEN MORRISON: Thank you, Amna.

JUDY WOODRUFF: In the day's other news: A judge in South Florida announced the pandemic has forced an indefinite delay in the trial of Nikolas Cruz for the Parkland school shootings.

The judge said it remains unclear when courts can reopen for jury selection.

Cruz is charged with killing 17 people on Valentine's Day, 2018.

A noose at a NASCAR speedway in Talladega, Alabama, led to an outpouring of racial solidarity today.

The noose was found Sunday in the garage space of Bubba Wallace, NASCAR's sole black driver.

He had successfully pushed to ban Confederate Flags from racing sites.

All 39 other drivers rallied around Wallace today, pushing his car down pit row before the rain-delayed race began.

He climbed from the car and wept.

The White House confirms that President Trump approved the weekend firing of U.S. attorney Geoffrey Berman in Manhattan -- excuse me - - in Manhattan.

The president initially indicated he played no role.

But, today, his press secretary said that Attorney General William Barr spoke to Mr. Trump after Berman refused to resign.

KAYLEIGH MCENANY, White House Press Secretary: Barr was working on a smooth transition.

And when Berman chose to respond in the way that he did, he came to the president, and the president agreed and fired this individual, Mr. Berman.

No investigation will be affected by this, as was made clear by Attorney General Barr.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Berman's office is looking into whether Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal attorney, broke federal lobbying laws.

Workers at a major U.S. Navy shipbuilder have gone on strike for the first time in 20 years.

Some 4,300 machinists union members walked out overnight at Bath Iron Works in Maine over subcontracting and work rules.

The strike could disrupt delivery of guided missile destroyers to the Navy.

A dust cloud out of Africa blanketed much of the Eastern Caribbean today, and headed for the United States.

Air quality fell to hazardous across much of the region from Puerto Rico to Antigua to Trinidad and Tobago.

The cloud is the largest and most concentrated in 50 years.

In Britain, archaeologists using remote sensing have made a startling discovery near Stonehenge.

This animation, from the University of Bradford, shows a circle of underground pits more than a mile in diameter.

It's just two miles from the Stonehenge monument.

The pits also appear to date from the same era, about 4,500 years ago.

And on Wall Street today, stocks advanced, and as oil closed above $40 a barrel for the first time since early March.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 153 points to close at 26025.

The Nasdaq rose 110 points, and the S&P 500 added 20.

Still to come on the "NewsHour": crisis management - - the governor of Arkansas on the pandemic spikes and the president's response; a journalist targeted in the Philippines discusses the crackdown on press freedom; problems with voting in Georgia undercut trust in the democratic process; and much more.

As states continue to reopen their economies, a number are seeing new surges in coronavirus cases.

In Arkansas, there have been more than 3,500 infections since they began phase two reopening just last week.

Governor Asa Hutchinson is back on "NewsHour" for an update.

Governor Hutchinson, welcome back.

We thank you for joining us.

So, this spike in cases, what do you attribute it to, and do you have any question that there's some connection to the reopening?

GOV.

ASA HUTCHINSON (R-AR): We actually measure it every week, Judy, in terms of, the new cases that we have, are they related to the fact that we opened up, lifted some of the restrictions?

And the answer is that we have not seen a correlation between lifting restrictions and the new cases that we have.

The new cases actually are coming out of some of the essential industries that are open regardless.

It is our food supply.

And so that is what we are targeting in terms of our strategy.

We have increased testing dramatically in Arkansas.

This month, we are testing 4 percent of our population, over 120,000 tests, which is a dramatic increase, really doubling from last month.

Whenever you look at our contact tracing, trying to break those transmissions of the virus within the community, and so that's the strategy.

We have 75 counties in Arkansas.

Today, 72 of them had an increase of less than 20 cases, but we had three counties that had a larger amount.

And that's where our focus is.

You have got to have two messages, keep your economy moving, keep it growing, but at the same time, this is a deadly virus you have got to take seriously, and you have to manage the risk.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You do have those outbreaks at the poultry plant in Northwest, Arkansas, also in prison facilities around the state.

But I have also seen specialists quoted as saying -- in the state of Arkansas, saying, they don't think it's connected just to more testing.

And one in particular, an epidemiologist with the state's Health Department, said she had -- she said it is probably connected to a loosening of restrictions.

So, you are saying you disagree with that?

GOV.

ASA HUTCHINSON: Well, I think that epidemiologist was misquoted.

But I certainly agree that, whenever you see the increase in testing -- excuse me -- the increase in cases, it's more than just increasing the testing.

That's part of it, but it is more than that.

And we certainly acknowledge that we have an increase in concern in a couple of our counties in Northwest Arkansas.

That's why we are devoting more resources to it.

We are going to continue to do more testing, because you follow that up with isolating, quarantining, and trying to stop that transmission.

And so, yes, we have had some outbreak, but we measure it as to whether it's related to those lifting of restrictions.

There's not an indication of that.

We will continue to monitor that.

And if we need to make adjustments, we will.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Governor, speaking of testing, I did watch your news conference this afternoon.

And you mentioned problems with, I guess, some 90,000 testing kits that were sent to Arkansas by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

How much does that set back the state's efforts to keep a record, to keep track of what is going on?

GOV.

ASA HUTCHINSON: Well, I mean, any time you disrupt the supply chain with a faulty product, that's a problem.

And we had not distributed that widely.

We are trying to trace it down.

But we can overcome that.

But it is a gap in our supply chain.

And here you have got many Southern states that have an upsurge in our number of cases, we're testing more, and so that puts a strain on the supply chain.

And so our national message needs to be, let's continue that investment in testing.

Let's make sure that we do our social distancing.

Let's take this seriously.

Do what you can from an individual discipline standpoint.

And we have got to build the infrastructure for this fall.

We don't know whether it's going to be another resurgence in the fall, or whether this is going to be a constant flow that -- and the epidemiologists were cited both ways.

So, we have to be prepared regardless and build that national infrastructure, because the need will continue.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And just quickly, Governor, we know the neighboring state of Oklahoma, President Trump had a big campaign rally there in Tulsa on Saturday night.

It is understood that a number of Arkansans crossed the state line to go over to attend the rally.

How much concern do you have about people coming back, because it was indoors and people were not required to wear masks?

GOV.

ASA HUTCHINSON: Well, I would say that, if someone was socially distancing up on the third tier or the second tier by themselves, they're OK.

But if you are in the middle of that crowd without a mask on, and you are from Arkansas, I hope that you will be tested when you come back.

We certainly don't want any of the virus to be attributed to your attendance there.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Have you put that word out in the state of Arkansas?

GOV.

ASA HUTCHINSON: Actually, I have said that publicly.

It's just common sense that I would want people, if I was going there, to socially distance, wear a mask.

If you are not going to do that, engage in that disciplined behavior, then make sure you be responsible and have a test when you come back to make sure that are you not positive.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Was it a mistake, do you think, for them not to require masks?

GOV.

ASA HUTCHINSON: Well, it is my understanding that they expected people to either socially distance and follow the CDC guidelines.

Any rally, any event like that in a public nature with a crowd of people needs to follow commonsense public health guidelines.

That is obviously something that's important.

JUDY WOODRUFF: A different subject, Governor, and that is the focus on Confederate symbols across the country in recent days.

I see that Arkansas has 34 Civil War properties.

According to a report I was looking at, the vast majority of them represent the Confederacy.

One particular symbol was taken down over the last few days.

Should all of them come down, in your opinion?

GOV.

ASA HUTCHINSON: Well, it all depends upon the local municipality, where it's located, where is the proper way to -- place for that to be located.

No one wants to erase history.

We do want to learn from it.

These are discussions that will be ongoing.

We have had the city of Little Rock remove one Confederate statue.

We hope that that will be moved to a location that is consistent with its history.

There will be discussion about other venues as well.

And so, in Arkansas, we did have protests.

They were largely peaceful.

And we have set up a task force to discuss the future of law enforcement with protest leaders, as well as the community and law enforcement all together.

And I think that is going to produce some very good things for the future and build and strengthen harmony in our communities.

And the discussion about some of these statues that are really reminiscent of an oppressive time for our African-American population has to be a part of that discussion as well.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But, just very quickly, are you not weighing in with your view one way or another on whether those Confederate symbols should come down?

GOV.

ASA HUTCHINSON: Well, I think there should be a discussion, and decisions made.

I understand that -- what that means to those that were oppressed, their ancestors, in that form of slavery.

And that's what the Civil War was about.

So, it's not a pleasant memory and a reminder for them.

And it should be a lesson in history, not a haunting memory of history.

And so there are some that should be moved, but those are many local decisions.

The General Assembly will have to be a part of that discussion.

So, to me, the priority should be that Arkansas needs a hate crime law.

We're one of the four states that does not have that.

That is something I'm pushing for.

And I think that is a priority that will address real problems.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas.

Governor, thank you.

GOV.

ASA HUTCHINSON: Thank you, Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: One week ago, a court in the Philippines convicted one of the country's most prominent journalists of cyber-libel.

Press freedom advocates quickly called the trial unfair and part of a larger crackdown by Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte on critical media, and his political opponents.

Nick Schifrin picks up the story of Maria Ressa.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Maria Ressa is a Filipina-American journalist who was once "TIME" magazine's person of the year and used to be CNN's Manila bureau chief.

She founded Rappler, an independent news site that investigates Duterte without fear or favor.

In 2012, Rappler published an article linking a businessman connected to Duterte with illegal drugs and human trafficking.

Since then, Ressa has been charged with multiple crimes that her lawyers call politically motivated.

All of those charges add up to as much as 100 years in prison.

And Maria Ressa now joins me from Manila.

Maria Ressa, what's the state of press freedom in the Philippines?

MARIA RESSA, CEO, Rappler: It's death by 1,000 cuts, not just of press freedom, but essentially over the last four years of our democracy.

But, certainly, what we have seen just in the last two months, the largest broadcaster - - imagine, if CBS or CNN were shut down by decree, right?

So, the largest broadcaster here, ABS-CBN, is shut down.

The last time that happened was when martial law was declared in the '70s, and it was shut down for 14 years.

They're still trying to fight it.

And then less -- a little over a month later, here's my conviction.

It is the first of eight criminal cases that I face for being a journalist.

NICK SCHIFRIN: We haven't only seen attacks on journalists.

We have seen attacks on the Supreme Court chief justice, on prominent legislatures, and, of course, the war on drugs, which the U.N. calls a murderous crackdown that's killed more than tens of thousands.

Is this part of a trend in the Philippines?

MARIA RESSA: Absolutely.

And it's two.

The first is really, when we saw in 2016, the weaponization of social media.

So the attacks are coming exponentially bottom up.

And then it comes top down by weaponizing the law.

The law is the tip of the arrow that is used to attack perceived critics.

I'm not a critical journalist, in the sense that I didn't set out to criticize President Duterte.

I just set out to do my job, to hold power to account.

NICK SCHIFRIN: And what the president says is that there's a lot of crime that he needs to crack down on, and that's his defense.

And the president's allies also point out that there is a commission now to investigate some of the murders against journalists.

MARIA RESSA: Of the tens of thousands -- this is the U.N.'s estimate -- of people killed in the drug war, there's only been one conviction of a case that's been brought to court of police.

It is impunity.

And then on the second front, in terms of journalists, we have seen exponential lies, just my case alone.

I don't have to go very far.

All I have done is to do my job.

This case should have been thrown out of court, because the law we allegedly violated wasn't even in effect at the time that that story was published.

The kind of legal acrobatics to bring this to court and to have a conviction are mind-boggling.

NICK SCHIFRIN: What the government says is that the article was edited after the law came into effect, and that the cyber-crime law specifically has no statute of limitations, and that's what you were convicted of.

MARIA RESSA: Both are wrong, essentially, because, in 2014, someone in Rappler fixed a typographical error.

They fixed one letter of one word.

It's a typo.

And, for that, myself, I and one of my former colleagues can go to jail for six years.

That's the first.

The second is the statute of limitations for libel -- the Constitution is very clear on this -- it's one year.

Our laws are clear.

And yet, to convict us, it was changed.

The judge, Judge Montesa's court says, it's now 12 years.

NICK SCHIFRIN: The issues of press freedom in Asia are larger than in the Philippines.

The day that you were convicted, I talked to Steven Butler, the Committee to Protect Journalists' Asia coordinator.

And this is what he said.

STEVEN BUTLER, Committee to Protect Journalists: You have seen it across the board, in Cambodia, in Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand.

India has been terrible.

So this is part of a broad trend that -- and that has forced press freedom further into retreat from what we have seen in recent years.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Why is that retreat happening, do you think?

MARIA RESSA: I think of two reasons.

The first is that our information ecosystem has fundamentally changed with the power of technology.

So, starting in 2016, we pointed out that these cheap armies on social media are literally changing the facts, right?

And it's not just in the Philippines.

It's in the United States.

What we -- what has happened here is happening to you.

So, when facts are debatable, then you have no integrity of anything.

The second reason is because there's almost like a dictator's playbook that we're seeing all around the world.

They're using the vulnerability of the information ecosystem, social media, and they -- what we thought would be an enabling and empowering tool has now turned into a despot's tool.

NICK SCHIFRIN: You mentioned the United States.

The U.S. State Department did release a statement the day after you were convicted decrying the case.

Has the U.S. done enough?

MARIA RESSA: We would like to see more of the ideals of the United States.

The rest of the world has felt a little bit of its absence in terms of press freedom issues.

Having said that, no matter what the U.S. or any other country says, this is a Filipino problem.

And Filipinos must step up and demand their rights.

Otherwise, we're going to lose it.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Maria Ressa, thank you very much.

JUDY WOODRUFF: New York state and Kentucky have their presidential primaries tomorrow.

In Kentucky, there are concerns about whether voters could be facing major delays, long lines, and other problems if turnout is high.

Fewer than 200 polling places will be open because of COVID.

That's compared to 3,700 in a typical year.

Earlier this month, Georgia served as the latest example of serious voting problems that could affect elections this fall.

Miles O'Brien has the story.

MILES O'BRIEN: It was no walk in the park when Georgians cast their ballots on June 9.

Many voters, disproportionately Democrats and African-Americans, spent six to eight hours in line, patient, yet piqued.

At the Central Park Rec Center in Atlanta, I met Amelia Dobbs four hours into a grueling vote-a-thon.

AMELIA DOBBS, Georgia Voter: So, I'm very disappointed after being a voter for over 50 years.

It's getting worse, worse, and worse.

It can't get any worse than this.

MILES O'BRIEN: John Dodson and his partner Yolanda Borras were just ahead of Ms. Dobbs in a line that encircled the park.

They were livid.

JOHN DODSON, Georgia Voter: It is 9:56.

There are now eight, eight, ballots counted.

WOMAN: Eight ballots scanned.

Eight.

JOHN DODSON: This is exercise and patience, but, also, it's an exercise in will.

And if the intention is to break the will, this will, those people are not leaving.

MILES O'BRIEN: Inside, beleaguered poll workers struggled with a new, complex voting system that they hadn't even seen before the election.

In-person training was deemed unsafe in the midst of a pandemic.

Among other things, the passwords to log on to the machines, in plain view on the tables, didn't work.

Marilyn Marks is executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, an organization focused on election transparency and verifiability.

MARILYN MARKS, Coalition For Good Governance: We don't necessarily have fair and secure elections across the United States.

And Georgia is the epitome of problem elections.

Georgia becomes really the example at almost every level of what is wrong.

MILES O'BRIEN: Marks helped lead the charge to usher in a new era of voting in Georgia last year.

For 18 years, the state used electronic voting machines made by Diebold election systems.

The machines were widely used across the nation, even though experts proved they were easy for hackers to attack without leaving a trace.

WOMAN: A federal judge is ordering Georgia to stop using its outdated voting machines.

MILES O'BRIEN: In August of 2019, a federal judge ordered the state to scrap the flawed machines for something more secure and verifiable.

So, the state spent more than $100 million to supply every county with so-called ImageCast machines made by a Canadian company, Dominion Voting Systems.

They are ballot marking devices, meaning voters make selections on a touch screen, and ballots are printed with choices embedded in a Q.R.

code and listed in plain English.

The paper ballot is then scanned and counted.

Brad Raffensperger is Georgia's secretary of state.

BRAD RAFFENSPERGER, Georgia Secretary of State: When you have a paper ballot, no matter how that when it comes about, at the end of the day, you have the paper that you can do the audit from.

And then you can audit the election.

That's something I think is more secure, because then we really capture voter intent.

MILES O'BRIEN: But election security experts say that is not the case.

RICHARD DEMILLO, Georgia Institute of Technology: It's a computer, and you have no idea what's in the computer, and you have no idea what the computer is doing with the information that you give it.

MILES O'BRIEN: Rich DeMillo is a professor of computer science at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

He tried to stop Georgia from buying the Dominion system now used in 24 states.

RICHARD DEMILLO: A ballot marking device is, in the first place, an extremely expensive pencil that will make mistakes, that is prone to failure, that's prone to misuse.

And if it fails, if it's misused, you have no way of telling.

If you use a ballot marking device, you don't have the original record of voter intent.

MILES O'BRIEN: Are you concerned the system can be hacked?

BRAD RAFFENSPERGER: No.

We never take anything for granted.

We are very vigilant.

We understand that elections are tempting targets for hackers.

MILES O'BRIEN: Indeed.

At the hacker convention DEF CON, they have been making virtual mincemeat of electronic voting machines for years.

Legendary white hat hacker and election security consultant Harri Hursti was part of the exploits.

HARRI HURSTI, Nordic Innovation Labs: You can introduce races which don't appear as when they should be.

You can change the design on the screen to be misleading and confusing the voter.

When the voter is making the selections, are those selections recorded accurately?

MILES O'BRIEN: The new voting system also includes electronic poll books made by a Saint Louis company called KNOWiNK.

Election officials say the devices frequently shut down and showed polling information for the wrong election, creating more havoc.

But they also come with security concerns.

They are iPads that connect to the Internet to download the database of registered voters.

How big a concern is that?

RICHARD DEMILLO: It's a huge concern.

If you can deny someone access to the voting machine, then you move that person away from voting at that place at that time.

MILES O'BRIEN: It is a proven target.

In the run-up to the 2016 election, Russian hackers successfully broke into voter databases and software systems in 39 different states.

Rick Barron is the director of registration and elections in Fulton County.

Do you have any evidence that, in the midst of this chaotic election, hackers took advantage of those vulnerabilities and may have tampered with this election?

RICHARD BARRON, Director of Registration and Elections, Fulton County, Georgia: I have no evidence of that.

MILES O'BRIEN: You really don't have the bandwidth or the capability of looking?

RICHARD BARRON: No, I mean, we -- we're -- all that we can do is set up our own security around our equipment to mitigate the risks to it.

We have cameras on our building.

We have alarms on our building.

We have -- the server is locked away as well.

MILES O'BRIEN: The experts all agree, paper ballots marked by hand are the most secure, most verifiable way of voting.

More than a million Georgia voters chose to do this at home this election.

For those who didn't receive their ballots or chose to vote in person, the expensive, complicated, vulnerable machines created a huge bottleneck at polling sites, and there were many fewer of them.

In Fulton County, 34 sites opted out because of COVID-19 concerns.

With Democrats turning out 4-1 over Republicans, it was a recipe for scenes like this, long lines of African-American voters.

Corie Campbell waited four hours in South Fulton County.

CORIE CAMPBELL, Georgia Voter: I feel like they are just trying to discourage people of color or minority to not vote, because that's the agenda that we are trying to push, especially younger people of color and minority.

So -- and it's very important.

They know how important it is, so they will do anything to throw a rock in the process.

MILES O'BRIEN: With four to five million Georgians expected to vote in November, this primary election offers a stark warning of electoral chaos ahead.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Miles O'Brien in Atlanta.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Young voters under 25 are taking to the streets and to social media to oppose President Trump.

But will Generation Z's political energy translate into votes for former Vice President Joe Biden?

Yamiche Alcindor reports.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: On Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it was a disappointing turnout for President Trump's comeback rally.

Earlier in the week, the president said, for the event, the campaign had fielded one million sign-ups.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: We're either close to or over one million people wanting to go.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: But come Saturday, just 6,200 of the 19,000 seats were filled.

Teenagers on the social media app TikTok say they helped fuel false expectations.

They claim thousands registered for the rally as a prank on the Trump campaign.

YOUTH: I got two tickets, but I totally forgot I have to pick up every individual piece of lint off of my room Floor.

YOUTH: It would be such a shame if all of you did the same.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: As the 2020 campaign nears, America's youngest generation, known as Gen Z, is energized for political change.

WOMAN: If you're not registered, I need you to sign up, not now, but right now.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Young voters on average lean Democratic.

But, historically, they are less likely than other generations to vote.

And in this year's Democratic primaries, the majority of young voters rejected Joe Biden for progressives like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

In an appeal to young organizers this month, Biden's campaign released a digital ad promising to take action on structural racism... JOSEPH BIDEN (D), Presidential Candidate: We have got to now vow to make this at least an era of action and reverse the systemic racism.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: ... in an appeal not just to vote for Biden, but to address the ongoing lack of enthusiasm for the Democratic nominee among Democratic voters.

A recent FOX News poll showed 63 percent of Biden supporters said they were more driven by fear of President Trump's reelection than enthusiasm for Biden.

MARVELL REED, Voter: The Democratic best interests right now is Joe Biden.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: One such voter is 18-year-old Marvell Reed from Milwaukee.

MARVELL REED: He opened his eyes recently to more issues pertaining to younger people, and I feel wholeheartedly that I can support him.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Deana Ayers disagrees.

DEANA AYERS, Voter: There is like a slim-to-none chance that I would vote for him.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Ayers graduated college this year and backed Bernie Sanders in the primary.

For them, beating Trump isn't worth sacrificing their values.

DEANA AYERS: If he supported, you know, defunding the police, like, abolishing ICE, raising the minimum wage, things like that, but, like, really progressive young people are asking for, then those policies would sway me.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Still, a recent poll by the youth voter group NextGen America showed positive signs about Gen Z's turnout.

It showed 50 percent of voters aged 18-24 were definitely voting.

That's up 10 percent from a similar poll conducted at this time in 2016.

Those margins could mean young voters organizing on TikTok and in the streets could also propel Joe Biden to a win this November.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Yamiche Alcindor.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Let's pick up on this and more with our Monday regulars.

That's Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report and host of public radio's "Politics With Amy Walter" and Tamara Keith of NPR.

She also co-hosts the "NPR Politics Podcast."

Hello to both of you.

So, Tam, let's start with you.

Is there evidence that young people are going to turn out and vote this November?

TAMARA KEITH, National Public Radio: There certainly was evidence in 2018.

And, of course, midterms are not good indicators for presidential elections -- election years.

It is not an apples-to-apples comparison.

But young voters did turn out in 2018.

And there is some indication that that energy in the streets can translate to a wave of voting.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Amy, young voters turned out for Barack Obama, President Obama, when he first ran in 2008.

Anything like that level of enthusiasm this year?

AMY WALTER, The Cook Political Report: It's not likely, Judy.

And, you know, there was a lot of talk in 2016 about the drop-off in younger voters' enthusiasm for, say, Hillary Clinton.

The difference this year, Judy, is that while Joe Biden, at least in the polls right now, not doing any worse than Hillary Clinton did among younger voters, he is doing a lot better among older voters.

And older voters, as we know, are more consistent voters.

People over 45 years of age, about 60 -- make up about 60 percent of the electorate.

And, especially, we're talking about battleground states like Pennsylvania, Florida, older voters are going to be a really, really important constituency.

So, while we may see more younger voters out and protesting, taking their issues to TikTok, all that is very important.

When it comes right down to it, Joe Biden's success is probably going to be determined more by how well he does with older voters than how many more younger voters he gets to the polls.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, while we're talking about voting -- and we just saw Miles O'Brien's report, Tam, on problems in Georgia, problems with access to voting -- President Trump is again today calling out what he says are problems with mail-in voting.

He talked about the election being rigged, foreign countries get involved -- getting involved.

How much do we know about real problems in the past with mail-in voting?

TAMARA KEITH: Let's just be clear that we have no idea what President Trump was alleging.

There is no clarity on what he is saying about foreign involvement in mail-in voting.

And the reality is that mail-in voting is fairly secure.

There haven't been -- you know, there was an issue with ballot harvesting in a campaign in North Carolina.

And the Republican political consultant has been prosecuted in that case.

The president is doing what he has been doing.

He did it before the vote in 2016.

He did it after the vote in 2016, when he claimed there were millions of illegal votes, yet never was able to provide evidence of that.

And that term rigged, it is a term that he has used repeatedly.

It's a term that he wants to in the bloodstream.

And it's something that he is likely to continue to come back to in these all-caps tweets.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Amy, we have heard it from the president before, and, as Tam is saying, we are likely to keep on hearing it.

AMY WALTER: Yes.

I mean, it's hard to say that this is anything other than the president really trying to put doubt, sow doubt in the minds of voters about the election and this process.

Look, there are only five states right now that do all mail voting -- so -- mail ballot voting.

So, we don't know what this would look like if it were implemented nationwide.

What we do know, and the report from Miles indicated, it is going to take these states a while to kind of catch up with where voters are in terms of their interest in voting by mail.

They do not have the infrastructure to deal with this.

And so we're going to have to wait in many cases for days to get results.

There are going to be a lot of stories about people who didn't get their ballots, about overwhelmed postal workers or other folks involved in this process.

So it's going to be messy.

And what you need at this moment in time, of course, is for leaders to stand up and say, voting is very important.

Let's make sure that we do everything possible to make it work smoothly.

That's not... (CROSSTALK) TAMARA KEITH: And let's just be clear that it is normal with mail-in voting for it to take longer to get results.

There isn't -- there often isn't that instantaneous result.

Like, if you look at California with the congressional elections in 2018, it took a couple of weeks to find out that some of those candidates had actually -- some of those Democratic candidates had actually won, simply because the ballot processing, the provisional ballots, all these things just take longer.

And it's normal.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Good reminder.

Amy, just very quickly here at the end, tomorrow, two states hold presidential primaries.

We mentioned it a moment ago, New York and Kentucky.

What are you looking for?

AMY WALTER: Well, to start where we ended, what we're -- the irony is, we may not know who's going to win this election by Wednesday.

The county clerks there saying, because of these absentee ballots, so many people interested in these elections, they're probably not going to have results by Wednesday.

The marquee race in Kentucky, Democratic primary there that, until a few weeks ago, didn't look very competitive, has now gotten extremely competitive.

The Democratic candidate who was recruited into this race, Amy McGrath, has raised $40 million, really because she's running against the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, a lot of Democrats around the country hoping to defeat Senator McConnell.

But she now has a very serious primary challenge from her left from an African-American candidate who has been running a very strong campaign.

The issues of protesting, especially in this moment in time in the state, have become sort of a central question.

And she did not go out and protest.

He did.

We're going to see whether or not that is going to be a factor.

But that's the race that we're all watching.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Unfair of me to ask you about, about 20 different congressional races in - - with 30 seconds to go.

(LAUGHTER) JUDY WOODRUFF: But we can always try.

Amy Walter, Tamara Keith, thank you both, Politics Monday.

TAMARA KEITH: You're welcome.

JUDY WOODRUFF: With COVID-19 cases on the rise in many parts of the country, it's easy to think that we are living in unprecedented times, but is that true?

Jeffrey Brown spoke with two historians about how pandemics have shaped societies in the past, and what those experiences can teach us about living with the coronavirus now.

It's part of our ongoing arts and culture series, Canvas.

JEFFREY BROWN: "The doctors were unable to cope, since they were treating the disease for the first time."

The images are contemporary, but the words ancient.

Greek historian Thucydides describes a 5th century B.C.

plague that devastated Athens as it warred with Sparta.

The epidemic contributed to Athens' defeat and helped bring an end to its experiment with democracy, just one example of how disease has shaped human history.

FRANK SNOWDEN, Yale University: Everything about us, our art, our culture, our religion, has been informed, inflected, should we say, with the passage of death and suffering in the form of disease.

JEFFREY BROWN: Frank Snowden, professor emeritus at Yale University, is author of "Epidemics and Society."

He now lives in Rome, a city reopening after imposing a strict lockdown.

It's also a city that has seen the impact of disease before.

Skeletal remains from the 5th century A.D. Show victims of a malaria outbreak, one that wreaked havoc on the Roman Empire's military and economic might.

Pandemics throughout history, often captured in the imaginations of artists, have hit in specific ways, with different impacts.

Beginning in the 14th century, Bubonic plague changed the course of Western civilization.

A third of Europe's population perished.

Historians see enormous political and economic impacts.

Worker shortages gave serfs more bargaining power and hastened the end of feudalism.

Snowden also cites a growing awareness of public health.

FRANK SNOWDEN: Doctors had personal protective equipment, that is, the plague costumes, the masks and a rod for social distancing.

JEFFREY BROWN: William Shakespeare experienced plague in 16th and 17 century England.

FRANK SNOWDEN: There's not a play directly about plague.

But if you want to shock your audience, you can mention the plague.

ACTOR: A plague on both your houses.

FRANK SNOWDEN: That would have had an extraordinary resonance in a Shakespearian play.

JEFFREY BROWN: But not all pandemics resonate in the cultural memory.

The so-called Spanish Flu of 1918 was different.

NANCY BRISTOW, University of Puget Sound: In an amazing way, almost immediately following the pandemic, it just disappears from the American public conversation.

JEFFREY BROWN: Nancy Bristow, a history professor at the University of Puget Sound, is author of "American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic."

Bristow's great-grandparents were two of the 675,000 Americans and up to 50 million people worldwide who died, numbers that far surpassed those killed in the World War raging at the same time.

In some smaller ways, the pandemic did alter American life.

NANCY BRISTOW: As a result of the pandemic, public spitting really was frowned upon.

Another thing that disappears for us is the public drinking cup.

JEFFREY BROWN: But, overall, Bristow says the pandemic reinforced the status quo.

NANCY BRISTOW: In the midst of the pandemic, people who were poor might suffer from cold and hunger and homelessness.

People of color would find themselves excluded from the emergency hospitals that were produced.

And yet, in the aftermath, there was no movement to repair those problems.

JEFFREY BROWN: So, a pandemic that didn't leave any trace, but you wish it had.

NANCY BRISTOW: That's exactly right.

I think there were lessons that could have been learned.

But, honestly, it's a somewhat human and certainly American tendency to put aside and eventually forget those things in our past that are unpleasant or that don't speak to who we want to be or imagine ourselves to be.

JEFFREY BROWN: As many have noted, the pandemic we're living through has exposed the continuing inequities in our time, with communities of color hit especially hard.

And in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, protesters across the nation, many wearing masks, decided to take their calls for a more just society to the streets, despite the health risks.

Frank Snowden says the history of pandemic and illness offers choices for us all.

FRANK SNOWDEN: It's a crisis because terrible things can happen.

But it's also a time of opportunity.

This is a time when we can reimagine our lives in ways that would make us safer than we were this time around, that could actually leave the world a safer, better place for our grandchildren.

JEFFREY BROWN: A hope for the future, with an eye on the past.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Jeffrey Brown.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And we can hope.

And that's the "NewsHour" for tonight.

I'm Judy Woodruff.

Thank you, please stay safe, and we'll see you soon.