How is it possible that the current president, the former president and the former vice president all be tripped up by the same federal document control system, ostensibly designed to keep America’s most vital secrets safe? And what does that have to do with the strength of American democracy?

Leadership Now Project CEO Daniella Ballou-Aares took on this question in a recent appearance on MSNBC, joining American Voices with Alicia Menendez to share her perspective on the burgeoning controversies over improper possession of classified documents by some of America’s most prominent and powerful public officials.

“One of the really worrying things about this whole scandal is that [it] further erodes American trust and democracy,” she told viewers. “We need to look at the system and make something that actually works.” She emphasized the need to modernize the system and also ensure we “find the real instances of threats to national security and intent to undermine it,” rather than simply that documents marked classified were retained after officials left office.

While the complications associated with classification are a serious challenge to public trust, they may also present an opportunity for reform —and for taking a robust look at how the U.S. government strategically uses information and keeps it secure. In 2010, President Obama passed The Reducing Over-Classification Act in response to findings by the 9/11 Commission that overclassification had undermined national security. In 2023, we again find the system – replete with overclassification and confounded by a lack of clarity around what should be classified – posing a risk to national security by undermining Americans’ faith in the system and creating a weakness our adversaries will see as an opportunity.