who has the students participate in this year's competition has the opportunity to share portion of an additional $50,000. the competition deadline is friday, january 19. for information, visit our website at studentcam.org. announcer: friday nights, watch c-span's 2024 campaign trail, a weekly round of providing a one-stop shop to discover where the country and what they are saying to voters. this along with first-hand accounts from political reporters, updated poll numbers, fundraising data and campaign ads. watch 2024 campaign trail friday nights at 7 p.m. eastern on c-span, online at c-span.org, or download as a podcast on c-span now, our free mobile app, or wherever you get your podcasts. c-span, your unfiltered view of politics. >> "washington journal" host:

election integrity is our topic now and david becker is error guest. he is the founder of the center for election and innovation research. remind viewers what your mission is at the center. guest: i founded the center for election innovation and research in 2016, a nonpartisan, nonprofit and we work with election officials all over the country. we help them put on elections that voters shld trust and do trust so all voters can vote in a process that has integrity. host: our viewers so this story yesterday. it was from the washington tis. we will get to the article but

how would you describe the state of election integrity as we ste into 2024? guest: there's been a lot of misinformation over the last few years about how our elections are done. they're more verified than we've ever had in election history. we have more paper ballots than ever before, 95% of all ballots were paper including all the ballots and all the battleground states. it's important because you can audit paper and recount paper and make sure the counts the machines might have done were accurate and that was done in 2020. 43 states conducted audits of those paper ballots including the battleground states. we've had more cybersecurity training and cooperation between the federal and state and local governments than ever before. we alsonow that the 2020 election was the most scrutinized election in american history. more pre-election litigation

that clarified the rules. seven out of eight cases filed in anticipation of the election were one by republicans. more postelection litigation with dozens challenging the results. the courts review the evidence that was presented to them and confirmed what was originally determined by ection officials all over the country who run our elections. we sit here over three you sent the 2020 election there hasn't been a sgle piece of evidence presented to any court anywhere in the united states that would cast any doubt on the outcome of the 2020 election. host: why do you think there is still so much controversy about the 2020 election? why is there a lack of trust and callers call in and say they don't trust the results. is that still out there? guest: there are individuals who profit a great deal spreading lies about the elections from

targeting the disappointed supporters of the losing presidential candidate. it's completely normal and understandable to vote for someonwho has lost and be disappointed. to then be targeted repeatedly with disinformatn over social media and media and in other ways, to get people angry and divided and deluded about what actually happens so they keep donating. people are getting rich off of this and taking $25 from social security checks because they are telling them that someone stole their election which is absolute false. host:his is from that op-ed in the washington times yesterday and it brings up a couple of issues --

your thoughts on some of those issues? guest: most of that is completely false. there were some accommodatns made because of covid in every state, red and blue states. it was all done in advance of the eltion. if people did not like those rules that were adopted, they could bring a challenge in court ea we hadore pre-election litigation than ever before. most of it was wony republicans and by the time election day came, they knew the rules at b not all of them like them. most people don't like the electoral college and that's a rule. many people did not like the rules in texas and ohio that limitedropbox one per county.

those we the rules, at was what the courtdecided and they were upheld. this disinformation we continue to see about how the 2020 election was conducted is really unrtunate. the mail-in ballot anguish was necessary due to the pandemic, that was an innovation that brought out from hourly by red states. just brought out primarily from red states. it's been proven to be sece those ballots were revied in every case to see if they were accurate and we know the results were. host: three years later, will there be more or les ality to use a mail-in ballothis year? guest: it's abt the same. maybe a little wound down from cod. putting ourselves back in november of 2020, we didn't fully understand how covid was spre.

there were thousands of people dying per day and there was concern amongst voters about going into a place, maybe a crowded polling placend being around other people. elecon officials were trying to accommote that in red and blue states. ohio had as much mail-in voting as states like georgia and the tcome was different but the rulewere largely the same. i think we will see mail-in voting, the demand go back to a somewhat normalized level in 2024. the access to mail-in voting is the same as it wasn 2020 and that is almost every state allows voters to request a mail-in ballot even if they don't have an excuse. it's available to voterin almost every state and that's good. host: explain with the term ballot harvesting is guest: it's a term that haseen

appld to thprocess by which someone might return ballot other than their own. it is often used as pejorative term to make it seem as if something nefarious is going on. in actuality, a wife returning her husband's ballot to a dropbox or someone taking their older parents'ballot to a drbox in nsing homes, older residents who he less ability perhaps toave ballots taken to a dropbox. the important ing to remember is male in ballots are verified where a voter request a ballot may have to be on the voter registtion rolls. you cannot get on the voter rolls unless you show an id then they get verified when they come in again usually bite matching theignature or sometimes matching a drivers license. they are verified twice and confirmed in those ballots are

kept for 22 months mimum soap anyone wants to challenge them they can there was no challenge brought. host: how oen generally are voter registration rolls updated to ensure that the people who are living in an area are the voters in that area? guest: it's really important. americans are highly mobile,ne in three americans move in any given four years and many of thospeople move multiple times like younger people who might move to several different residences between presidential elections. it's hard to keep up with that mobility. it was hardbout 15 years ago when we didn't have access the ki of technology we have now. voter rolls todaare more accurate than they've ever been. states regularly keep their voter rolls up to date and using datahey have bailable just they have available under federal law and there is a tool available now that -- that i lped develop whi is

nonpartisan collective of states in the states run at themselves and they shared data to y to idtify people who may move between those states. it's been highly succsful in half the states are using it and they find it helps them reduce the potential r fraud. host: david becker is our guest at the center for election innovation and research. you can check amount online. it's a good time to call in with your questions about election integrity for campaign 2024. democrats, (202) 748-8000 republicans (202) 748-8001, independents (202) 748-8002. as folks are calling in, i'm sure you so the associated press poll on voter confidence in the election of this year. it came out at the end of december. about one third of republicans say they have quite a bit of confidence that votes in the reblican primary election and caucuses will become t correctly.

three in 1republicans say they have a moderate amountf confidence in 32% so they only have little or none at all. 72% of democrats have high confidence. guest: ts shows you how intensive is disinformation campaign has been and how partisan it has been. it doesn't really relate to realitbut more on whether your candidate won or los that is not the definition of a secure electiothat your candidate won, it's whether we process theseallots and we confirm the results. today, we have the processes in place better than we've ever had in american story. does that mean they can't improve? they are constantly improving. we are getting more accurate votelists and we have a few places where paper ballots don't exist and we are getting better at auditing. those things are happening so 2024 will be more secure but the resience of the disinformation and the belief th people who supported the losing candidate

and only by people who supported the losing candidate that the elections aren't secure is troubling we will have to keep telling them that this is a public service. we have 100,000 public servants around the country who have devoted themselves to giving voters their vce. they are trustworthy and if you doubt it, go and visit them and talk to them and volunteered to be with them. there's reason you need hours of training and you show up hours before the polls open and stay after the polls close because there is so many checks and balances in the process to make sure every eligible voter who chooses to vote can cast only one ballot in that ballot counts. host: we would be glad to invite poll workers to call in. this is john in tennessee, republican line up first. caller: yes

host: what's your question or comment? caller: i was watching the news the night of the election. they started jerking boxes out underneath a table. this is why we feel we got cheated because trump was way up ahead until they did that. why did they run them out? n you explain that? host: some of the videos and stories we hear? guest: quite frankly, there is a lot ofideo clips that have been mischaracterized in the media. it wasne particularly but he might have been referring to fulton county, geoia where there is video of ll workers who were staying in the polling place in the main polling county just taking out anher box of

ballots, literally tens of ousands of times during election night all over the country. they are getting the next best to count and then it was mischaracterized in the pres it's important for everyone listening to uerstand that there were lies spad about those two women who were doing their duty as poll workers that night. as a result of those lies, there was a nearly $150 million verdict of defamation that was stood against rudy giuliani. it's really disturbing tsee our feow americans, people who volunteer to serve on election date being defamed like this. in every single pollincenter around the country whe they were counting ballots, tre were multiple observerfrom both parties in the room. we all remember the video from the detroit counting center on ection night in 2020 when a near riot started outside by people supporting former

president trump, claiming they couldn't get inside to reserve. on the other cited those doors were 200 observers from both parties watchg the counting being done in aeaceful and orderly way under the law of the state of michigan. i just hope people of both parties ross the spectrum ll be highly skeptical o narratives that seek to tell them their fellow americans are their enemies and they are lying to them and they are somehow stealing elections. host: there is an article in usa today from k bloch. who is he? host: guest: hes a former state candidate in rhode island, a republican who has alleged the tential for voter fraud in the state of rhode island and elsewhere for some time and has worked on voter fraud. it's not surprising to trump campaign would go to him and ask him to assess how much fraud there was whher there was

fraud at all. it was right after the 2020 electi and he was a paid consultant of thtrump campaign. he found there was no fraud he could measure that would affect the outcome the election. this is what we've seen time and time again. wead that partisan review in arizona in maricopa count that said they found fraud but actuly biden one that county. there had been assessments in wisconsin and other places. there are well over 60 court cases that looked at front and there has been no fraud. host: we found no evidence that voter fraud tainted the election. this was his study of election 2020. he said what they don't take to account is that voter fraud is detectable and quantifiable and i get to see anyone offer up evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 election that provides

these three things. those are his words. doug, silver spring, maryland, independent. caller: hi, what i'm hearing by a lot of people who complain about the 2020 election is it seems like they a not concerned about the validity of their vote. they are just angry about the results. i challenge the people who were angry about the results of the 2020 election. if you thi your vote did not count, that it was stolen from you, then don't vote. why would you waste your time voting if you think iwon't matter? i'm saying that but i think these people will go out and vote because it's not the validity of the vote they care about, it's the fact that they di't win. host: i think that's a good point.

if you ask republicans in georgia about why they lost the senate races in the runoffs of 2021 and 2023, there is a strong feeling support by evidence that the constant narrative that elections are rigged to press their own turnout. it's a really dangerous narrative. by any measure, the 2020 election w more secure than the 2016 election which was also sick there. 2016 had fewer paper ballots and fewe audits but i said at the time that there is no evidence donald trump legitimately won the 2016 election. if you believe the 2016 election was secure, y have to believe the 2020 election was secure. they were better processes in place and more paper ballots, mo audits and more judicial review and scrutiny of that election. it's important that regardless of which candidate you support, there were 74 million people who supported donald trump in the 2020 election. they are not bad americans. they ved for the candidate who happens to lose.

81 million people voted for the winner in that election. they are also good americans who happen to vote for the candidate one. we have process in place with where we know that's true in the correct response when you lose an election as we saw with mitt romney in 2012 and john mccain in 2008, john kerry in 2004 and al gore in 2000 going back to richard nixon in 60, the correct responses to concede to accept the will of the voters and go on and try to win the next campaign. host: conrad, florida good morning. caller: i'm calling about the voter districting. boys is that so difficult every 10 years to be consistent? ho: redistricting is ally difficult, the way we assign house districts f instance in

the united states house of representatives and state legislator districts across the country. we carve up the states by geogray. there is a variety of ways to do that, not to some easyay to do it. you can't do it by counties because they are not the same population. you might have a county like los angeles county that has dozens of districts in other couies are less than one. it is a very challenging circumstance to do that. to ensure political fairne and ensure racial fairness and ensure communities of interest, geographies are pt together. i used to be a department of justice attorney and ligate some of these cases. it's a very chalnging situation given how the laware applied. i have a lot of empathfor those who are trying to do it fairly. there are also times when both

parties try to maximize their political power by drawing the districts in such a way they will get more districts than maybe their share of the population in any gin state. host: it's an older story from 2019 but has good examples showing some of the dirty dozen of the most gerrymandered districts that end up looking like a duck or pinwheels, fingers that reach different eas. white isn't there one standard for redistricting or a fairer way to do redistricting so we don't have districts that in the looking like a duck? host: don't judge a district taste on what looks like. what it looks like month -- might not take into accou parts of the land that are not occupied or take into account how population centers are linked by highways and schools and other infrastructure. the shape itself, a square isn't

necessarily the best shape for a district. that being said, redistricting, the united states supreme court has declined to apply strict standards on those states with regard to how politics can come into play in gerrymandering and whether they should be limited in partisan gerrymandering to pick a state that might be 60/40 and turned into a state that's 80/20. until those kind of things happen, at the federal level, we will see the disparity in how the states do it. those disparities lead to legal challenges that are going on even now as wspeak four years after 2020 after the census numbers came out. host: patty, line from democrats, go ahead. caller: good morning, thank you for taking my call. thank you so much for your work. it's great to see you.

we appreciate it. i've gone two different polling places in different capacities and i'm really grateful. i have your website to go to for a resource because one of the problems we have is the misinformation. and how to talk to ople about that and i appreciate the way you are speaking to address those issues. that brings me to one thing i want to throw in here. thank you for responding to the op-ed in the washington times. i felt it was extraordinarily irresponsible for pedro to read that yesterday. it just reiterates the same kind of disinformation we are fighting daily. it would be great if c-span

could read those off as when there was someone on there who could address th factually. host: i was the one hosting yesterday and i read that and i wanted to bring him on today to address that. we appreciate your thoughts on that. you said you been a longtime volunteer at polling facilities. why did you get started doing that? caller: i had a fantastic government teacher and civics teacher in high school. mr.harkness, and was always interested in the process in elections and straight out of school, i was always gistered as an independent. pennsylvania, you have to be registered with the party to vote in the primaries. i did eventually register as a democrat. yeah, right out of high school because of interest in the process and he had encouraged us

to do that. am 60 years old. i've been doing it since 1981. host: thank you for doing that. guest: thank you so much. our system of governanceelies on about one million volunteers. one million pastts all over the country. they might get paid a small stipend that doesn't even cover their time they go through hours of training and wake up at three or four in the morning on election day. ey state until 10 or midnight on election night and they follow all of these intricate processes, the checks and balances to make sure every ballot is counted accurately and no fraud occurs. ey do a rarkable job. our elections are a miracle a our elections are a miracle thanks to people like patty out there and thankso her government teacher and nice to people who have gone out and talked about their civic duty. they are not our enemies and

their nuts tryinto steal elections. i don't care whether they are republicans or democrats, all of them are doing such important jobs in the most important thing any citizen can do is they wond about the securitof our elections, join them and find the county election office and lunteered to be a poll worker and see firsthand all of th protections in place to ensure every ballot is counted accurately. host: you talked about the observers. his -- does every state allow observers in the polling facility? what are the general rules host: to my knowledge, every state allows the observers and some have to be preregisted. they are always bipartisan. at's absolutely essential. they are an important part of the processhen they do their duty correctly. they can communicate with their campaigns to tell them what's gog on and transparency is very important to this process.

the rules require they essentiay beef flies on the wall. i was a justice department attorney a i used to observe election polling places around the country. i've been thousands of polling places observing elections. host for what purpose? guest: to sure the voting rights act was being followed. i rarely saw any fraud. the civic responsibility americans feel about their elections is remarkable. ev at the justice deparent with the authority i had under fedel law, my job was to be a fly on the wall. i sat back and didn't interfere or talk to voters or talk to poll workers and if i saw a problem, i would call the election officials charged with it and inform them so they could take care of it. observers and polling places, their job is not to interfere. onof the things we started to see is tre are people who are trained to do -- to interfere in

the process, potentially making these volunteer poll workers and election officls who are doing their duty and working long hours feel somewhat unsafe. this is something we've seen across the country in the last several years, they have been threatened, abused and harassed. it's happing as much today as it did three years ago. my organizion runs the election official leave and -- election official legal defense fund. it's nessary to provide election officls with prbono legal assistance and guidance they feel they are being harassed or abused or not say. as we sit here today, the election official legal defense network is getting as many requests from election officials as it was when it first started in 2021. host: this is mark, line for republicans, good morning. caller: good morning.

i think the problem witthe 2020 collection and the reason so many people don't respect it is that there is shenanigans gog on. in the 2016 election, all we heard from the democratic party was that that election was rigged. i don't remember one democrat being called a election the mayor even though hillary clinton quentin wrote a bk on it. you also had stacey abrams in georgia who lost her bid for governor who never conceded that election. she claimed it was racism or something. i think the problem is that when republicans were trying to change voting was in georgia, but we heard it was jim crow. the democratic party is lying by omission because the democratic

party omit the fact that it was their party that tried to keep the black vote down for like 120 years or something like that. it wasn't republicans the did that. that was all democrats. the other thing i wanted to mention is that on shows like ese, you guys are subtly trying to move the window. i heard the word misinformation and disinformation since you been on in this segment. i have to remind the listeners out there, ask yourself how many times that word comes up in our common dialogue. until joe biden got in office, you never heard those words, the only time you would hear those words is if you were sting in a book club discussing 1984, the book. it's a way of implying that anybody who thinks the 2020 election was rigged must be a crazy conspiracy theorist area we were told to sit down and

shut up when this was going on and stay in our houses unless we wanted to protest social justice. after the 2016 eleion with the russia folks and everything, it's a little puzzling. host: those terms have meaning. i use them because they have meeting in the discourse but we couluse other terms like lies and defamation. that's what rudy giuliani was found guilty oby a court in order to pay o to $48 milli to these two volunteer poll workers who were lying consistently for years and are still lying. the bigger point that mark raises his good which is that anyone who is claiming without evidence that elections have been stolen that will make claims on social media or in books or anywhere else that election has been stolenithout putting that evidence up in couris wrong. we should not be delegitimizing

accurate, cure verified elections in this country. anyone of any party. host: the caller's question was was there as much outrage after 2016 wn democra were doing that as therwas in 2020? host: there is no question what happened in the aftermath of 2016 and 2020 was different. we did not have the losing candidate started campaign in 2016 and try to use the levers of the federal government to interfere with an election and threaten state election officers as was donwith secretary of state bread raffensperger in georgia. there was limited objection by some in congress because she did concede. it d not lead to a violent attack on the capital that day. therhave been instances where democrats have failed to concede and have claimed without evidence that elecons were stolen. that is just as bad as when republicans do it.

20/20 was a slightly different character. we are now sitting here almost exactly three years from january 6, 2021 and it seems like many of us have forgotten what it's like to watch the events of that day and see from where you and i sit now. i remember it intensely and i remember the statements from members of both republican and democratic party. i remember statements from people like senate leader mitch mcconnell. he was right, we should remember that in the aftermath of those events in 202, a majority of the united states house of representatives including 10 republican members voted to impeach president trump or former president trump are having insight and insurrection. that was the language of the articles of impeachment. 57 members of the u.s. senate voted to convict him. that was 10 short of the two-thirds majority necessary.

it included seven republicans. that conviction would have led to his disqualification for inciting insurrection. this is something we had not seen before, it was a different character but i definitely agree with the caller. we should not be delegitimizing elections because we are happy -- because we are unhappy th the outcome. we should require the candidates brg evidence to court to support their claim and if they can't, they should concede and cooperate in the peaceful transfer of power. host: mar michigan, independent. caller: hi, john. i have a couple of questions and then a statement. i am sitting in the state of michigan which was recounted by our republicanun cgress three times and they ha counted one time. joe biden was shown to have one bite 155,000 votes. more than three years later, the head of the republican party in the state of michigan has torn

that party to shreds basically. it's because of the big lie. they have come to blows at a few of their meetings. i hear this almost daily in the state of michigan. people will actually say that there should only be one day of voting in this country in 2024, one election day and you should have to show up at the polls, they should be paper ballots and they should be counted by hand. how people think this would be possible -- we wouldn't know the winter for months. there would be chaos in the streets. i hear this daily and i heard i on c-span the other day. host: i thinkhere was a caller that said there should no ch thing as computerized ballots. that was earlier this week. caer: it's impossible. i wanted to ask about the lawsuit bthe machine company,

the lawsuit by the different news outlets and how those are going. that's the same boat as dominion. their business was ruined and people's lives were ruined over the big lie. host: thank you for those estions. guest: that's a great set of questions. this is quite accurate that michigan was decided by nearly 100 55,000 votes, all paper ballots and elections in miigan are run bylerks who are republicans and democrats. the electionsre run by a bipartisan center and work with them all the time and they are incredibly profeional across the spectrum. the ballots were recaed and audited in the margin was almost 15 times theargin of 2016 when donald trump won the sta of michigan. yet we still see this disinformation, one of the leaders in the senate, a

republican did a complete assessment and looked at all of the aspects of the 2020 election and determine the election was decided accurately and correctly based on the laws of t state. ere has been bipartisan coopation in michigan yet we still see a lot of the lies persist about what's going on. these descriptions we he from some who start their analysis ying i don't like the outcome of the 2020 election, things like having all voting happened on o day. that's a really bad idea for an election security perspectiv you have a single point of failureoncentrating 150r 160 million voi -- votes into 12 hours. if there had been fraud or malfeasance or malfunction, it uld decimate the election system if it happened on eltion day. if you want a secure system, you want to spread voting out over

various modes over time. the best system which almost every stateas to make it easy to request a male in ballot yo can vote by mail make it easy to vote early in person if that's what you choose, i choose personally to vote that way and make it easier to vote on election day. they are all secure methods spreading voting out over days makes it the most secure. with regard to the hand counts, that's somethinge've heard in several states. if y want an accurate, costly unts of ballots, you should have humans do it. humans are very bad at repetitiveunctions of counting ballots. american ballots are among the most complex in the world. there's is not one race on the ballot, there are multiple pages and dozens of races in places like nevada and whenhey tri it, they foundt would take months to count all the ballots.

even then, you'll probably get an inaccurate account and you will have to do it over. host: we've been looking domestically so how much do you focus on foreign interference in the elections? host: i'm very concerned about foign interference and we focus on that to some degree. we've seen that ramp up and it occurred in 2016 and 2020. it even occurs in the midterm elections. some agencies found that autocratic nations like russia and iran andhina are actively seeking spread lies and yes that word disinformation 2022 and they are likel to do it again in 2024. they have a great deal of incentive not just to try to elect a particular candite but even more so to spur the kind of divisions we currently see that these lies lead to. these are lies about our elections andies about whether elections work and democracy.

it helps dictatorships. they want americans to be divided. they want americans to be unsure whether the rson who took office actually one and it helps them a great deal. the people who are profiting off of tse lies, the people telling peop they cannot trust elections and getting rich off of it, whether they do it intentionally or unintentionally are doing the work of dictatorships overseas. host: hagerstown, maryland, ken, fortet -- rt smith, arkansas, you are on. go ahead. caller: my deal is that the 2020 election was fine. with all the lies going arou, i'm wondering if donald trump will somehow try t steal the election. he is the liar in chief, over 100 thousand lies at least by now. i've got a short story.

when was 15, iot arrested for petty theft. that was 1 $20. i went to jail on a friday and saw the judge on a monday and he gave me 22 more days, court costs and two years probation. i'm wondering which of these judges will have thecojones to lock this guy up finally. host: think it'sangerous whenever we talk about elections ere candidates don't have control over electio. former president trump is no longer in control of the federal government which doesn't run elections anyway. i have absolute confidence that the 2020 for election will be as secure as any election we've ever held. we've got all of the protections in place and these public servants, the people we rely upon tgive us our voice will do an amazing job as they have

in 2023 and 2022 and 2021 and 2020 during a global pandemic. they will do their job even with the threats and harassment and even the attrition because of the threats d harament. they will do their job. the question is whether leaders of botharties are going to stand up to perhapmembers of their own party a speak the truth. right now, the republican national committ is encouraging their voters to vot by mail. this is not unusual. it's something they have done many times before. it makes sense for campaigns to want to bank as many of the votes for their candidate as th can. they have less to do on election day and they don't have to knock on his many doors. ansmart campaign does that and they are pushi that it's a good thing and it's something the democratic party likely does as well but they are having trouble because they are still getting disinformation from se of their own candidates about secuty of mail-in voting. that only hurts them when they

take an option away from one of their own candidates. it's incumbent on both parties to speak the truth to their n voters and tell them we can trust elections and if we lose, we lost legitimately and we will come out fighting to win the next campaign. host: last call from maryland, republican, good morning. caller: here's my question for you and it parlays off of what mary said. no one is asng that week not count the paper ballots but in maryland, we do paper ballots and we put them through machine that counts them automatically. i've got no problem with that because now you've got a paper ballot as a backup my problem is that in 2020, we had the greatest change in election history of all time. it was the greatest change ever. because of covid, we went across the states to this mail-in ballot thing. i've been in business, i'm a

churcheader and i work with the republican party wh the campaign. none of these datases are accurate. they're all maybe 95% of people moving or dyg or whatever. i know they try to keep it -to-date. i've tried it in church and business and our voter rolls and so forth but they are never 100% accurate, they can't be, it's impossible. as y know, the electionsre won by a very few pcentage of voters in three or foustates. in georgia come i think it was 12,000 voters o wanted for biden. when i'm saying is i have no trust that now have an election season. i want one day voting with absentee balloting. i want people verified. i tst tho pple aradding

up the ballo correct but t ballots cing to them, how do we know these ballots, how do we know they are accurate i don't know the source for this. there was a survey donen a survey of people who did mail-in baot thing. it ce back that one in five filled out a ballot for someone besides themselves. host: let me have david becker take up those issues. guest: first of all, not as many laws were changed in 20 in regard to mail-in llot things. certain states allowed more in states like georgia, it was the same law they had had since before covid. pennlvania passed their law in 2019 before covid. arizona have t same mail-in ballot and laws it always had for two decas. nevada, the same. these were very common laws for

everyone every male ballot in the country is verified when it gets sent out and verified when it comes back in. it's usuay by signature matching and sometimes like in georgia and mnesota, by matching drivers license numbs. that idone every time. we could discove fraud if it occurred and that's true. people were submitting hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of male in balloting falsy for voters who had not requested then or had nosent them back in. one of those voters, 50% or more of them would show up and try to te in person and they doded in the poll book as havin already requested a mail-in ballot. if that happens, th to bring in the black -- the blank ballot and surrender it. what we might have done is discer the potential fraud which is rare but it sometimes

haens. when it happens, it's tectab en very easily found and prosecuted. there is so many protections about this. mail-in ballot's beenround since the civil war in many states have been doing this for decades. theyave secure elections. donald trump one me states with high percenges of mail-in ballots then hillary clinton and 2016. that's consistent across elections. male invalidating -- male in balloting does notrend one way or the other. host: for more election, innovation.org. david becker, we appreciate your time. coming up in about 30 minutes, we will be joined by the semaphore editor at large. we will talk about global stories to watch in 2024. until then, its open form,

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