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democracy. this is nick pennimam issue one. what is the organization's purpose? guest: it is a bipartisan organization in washington, d.c. it is about election security, social media reform and information, and congressional reform. we have three primary programs. a lot of people say nonpartisan when they talk about organizations. we are not weathered to any party but we are bipartisan because we work with both parties on trying to improve democracy. host: when it comes to funding and sourcing, where does it come from? guest: mostly foundations. the packard foundation. large american foundations. some individual donors, republicans and democrats.

a variety of people are interested in improving democracy. host: election security. what got you interested in that as a group? guest: we were deeply concerned about five years ago about the incredible doubt that people started having in the outcomes of our elections. it is something i had never seen before. i am 53 years old. like you, for most of my life, we would have elections, they would go well enough and people would accept the results. a lot of attention started getting focused on the nitty-gritty aspects of elections and conspiracy theories starting emerging that created doubt in elections and tension too. we feel that in a democracy the most

>> we have this remarkable sprawling election infrastructure in marker. we have 8,000 jurisdictions in america. highly decentralized. every state has its own rules. the rules differ state buy state. and each precinct has its own processes. the system runs well. it runs securely. here's the problem. the problem is, number one, it's held together by duct tape because it's underfunded. we undertpud funded our elections in america and we need to do a better job of creating great infrastructure. first class infrastructure.

and number two, the people who do the work are unincredible stress and pressure. this is not a five day 9-5 job for most. it's a seven day job for most of them. and because of the conspiracy theories that have emerged around elections, they under death threats. they are -- they've got threats to their families. kinds of stuff that your average election administrator in a county in america shouldn't have. we got to get more funding into elections in this country. create first class election infrastructure in america. and then we got to respect and take care of the people who do the work. host: the recent spending package that was approved by congress, $55 million in grants to states for election security. what do you think of the figure? what does that money actually do? guest: it's not enough at all. we worked with a lot of secretaries of state to come up with a number that they thought would be reasonable for this year. it was $400 million.

let's just say half a billion dollars is what was actually needed just for this year to improve election security. $55 million is not adequate. listen, at some point the congress has got to wake up and realize that this is their elections, too. they are elected on these same ballots. and what we need them to do is realize that they can play a critical role in improving this critical infrastructure in this country. half a billion dollars sounds like a lot. to the average viewer. it sounds like a lot to me. in the context of a $4.7 trillion annual budget is not a lot of money. nasa's budget is $25 billion. even half a billion that's one 1/50th what we do for nasa. an f-35 costs about $100 million to manufacturer. it's five of them. not a lot of money in the

context of our federal budget. it would mean a world to the folks who actually minister our elections. host: our guest on election electionsecurity. 202-748-8001 for republicans. 202-748-8000, for democrats. independents, 202-748-8002. if you are an election worker on any front, 202-748-8003. give us your thoughts. as you see it right now, what -- when it comes to overall security, where are the deficiencies? guest: cyber is our number one concern because we have adversaries in russia and china and iran? who have a significant interest in trying to hack in to the infrastructure. and disrupt it. and listen, you know as well as anyone in america, that a single failure of machinery and single precinct could create a national panic. even one successful hack or breach would -- could disrupt

the entire constitutional process. and we've got election administrators around the country who said to us we need to improve our cyber. but we don't have the money to do it. cyber for me is number one. number two, i would love to see paper trail for every vote in america. and right now about 80% has paper trails. we should have paper trails for every vote in america. number three, i think especially for people who are inclined to believe in conspiracies, we heard from our election administrators in every precinct, they would love to install live streams and security cameras, not just in the voting places but the warehouses where the votes and voting equipment are kept. that would be great. just a great piece of transparency that would, i think, calm a lot of nerves. host: go back to the election from five years ago that you talked about initially. would you say now that there were -- would you say overall was the election administrated fairly? were there issues or concerns

about how some states administer? a lot were changing their laws because of covid at the time. guest: which is part of what germinated a lot of the conspiracies, of course. people said, wait, all of a sudden they are allowing mail-in votes to come in longer. and that created some level of concern and paranoia, which bread these -- bred these conspiracy theories. there were 60 lawsuits. 60 lawsuits filed by the trump campaign against the outcomes of the 2020 election. all of those 60 lawsuits never even made it to trial for lack of credible evidence. and a bunch of those were heard by judges who were appointed by trump himself. the only one thing that occurred in the 2020 election is that -- at one point the state of pennsylvania put aside some of the mail-in votes that had come

in late with the notion that if the vote was close enough that those votes that were put aside would make a difference, we would figure out how to add 1kwr50ud kate them or -- adjudicate them. but those votes were not necessary. in this country we've got -- we have incredible institutions that figure out how to sort through facts. the courts are one of our best. and evidence is what everything pivots on in the koert of law -- court of law. the fact that 60 lawsuits were filed and there wasn't even enough evidence, credible evidence to go to trial with any of those says a lot. host: do you think early voting and mail-in voting other than showing up on election have improved? guest: yes. host: what do you base that on? guest: more voter i.d. out there than ever. 36 states does voter i.d. i would love every state. there is bert cyber in someplaces -- better signer in

someplaces. there are a lot of states lagging behind a lot of states are improving or implementing additional audits. what an audit is after the voting occurs they then take a random sampling of votes. they make sure that those sport with what the -- comport with what the machine says they were. there are a lot of things that occurred since 2020 that have further improved our election infrastructure. host: the organization is issue one. nick penniman is next. ian joins us from orlando, florida, independent line. are you on. go ahead. caller: hi. good morning. i just wanted to first of all thank c-span for their hard work and for having me on the air. i just had one quick question. i remember when conspiracy theories used to be a fun thing ramble with friends. like as catch -- as skwaufp or big foot. not a central selling point of one of our largest political

parties. i'm wondering why it got to this point and how it happened. thank you. guest: yeah. listen, i don't agree with your last point, which is i don't think it's a central selling point of one of our political parties. there are groups of people in this country, right and left, who are inclined to believe in conspiracies about the government. when it comes to elections in this country, listen, the environment in america, the information environment in america has been deeply radicalized by social media. we have handed everyone in the world who can own a cell phone the ain't to become -- the ability to become their own broadcaster, their own publisher. and when you do that, you create a chaos of noise. and you also enable people who want to believe conspiratorial

things the ability to find each other and connect with each other and bolster each other. and grab little pieces of information that they believe supports their conspiracy, their idea. and then they get fired up about it. i think, listen, in a wormed when i grew up in where we had a handful of newspapers and their job was to actually sort back from fiction and print fact, and also take opinions and print responsible opinions that were fact checked. that weren't defamatory, we had a much saner conversation in this country. we have now totally radicalized the conversation in this country and we have to bring it back at some point. and center it around facts and civility. host: bernadette is in new jersey. republican line. go ahead. caller: yes, hi. aid like to ask -- i'd like to ask a question. what he thinks about what happened in georgia, the presidential election. and when the light suddenly went

out. suspiciously. everybody -- all the ladies came in with suitcases. i imagine they were filled with votes for biden. want to know what his comment on that is. thank you. guest: yeah. again like this is a piece of information that has not been verified by the election officials themselves. but these little pieces of information they get picked up on social media and they get spun into larger theories or ideas or stories. then people get it in their head. you've got, in georgia, brad raffensberg, conservative republican. head of elections in georgia. next person down is also a conservative republican. both of them voted for trump. they oversee the elections in that state. there were plenty of audits done in georgia because it was such a contentious state in 2020. none of those audits came up

negative, meaning gone none came up there was fraud in the election. host: richard in georgia. augusta, georgia. democrats line. caller: good morning. i am a poll worker. i can tell you i have seen how the dominion machines work. i process them in. i process them out. and all of votes are koufrpbted -- counted with a paeurp ballot -- paper ballot as backup. my thought is the story of voter fraud is, they need to look at places like what happened in north carolina where there was voter fraud. ok. and also that the state of colorado has one of the best absentee ballot rates of counted votes legally in the country. so why is it that people still want to keep believing that the election was stolen, which it was not. all their votes was counted.

70 something million for trump. 81 million for biden. the people got to realize des moineson machines and other company that's suing fox, their machines are secure. they are not tied to a modem. guest: i have no idea what you are talking about whether you say there was fraud in north carolina. i can tell you this. one of the big conspiracies around the 2020 election was that mail-in ballots were somehow be corrupted. there could be voter fraud. "the washington post" and independent analytic institute did a huge study of 14 million mail-in ballots in the 2020 election. they concluded that maybe 3 hundred -- maybe 372 could have been compromised in some way. 372 out of 14 million. listen, do some people try to vote fraudulently? yes. do some people try to mail in a ballot of a family member who had just passed away in the

state didn't have information yet they had just passed away? yes. but out of 14 million votes, if 400 of them, 370 were considered to be fraudulent, that's just not enough to swing an election. nor is it enough to justify the -- a lot of the massive conspiracies that float around our elections. thank you so much for being an election worker. you guys do god's work. you do the everyday work of american democracy. we so appreciate t. host: when you hear the term artificial intelligence, what's your largest concern when it comes to elections? guest: listen, there is going to be, and your voters need to be really aware of this, your viewers, there is going to be significant attempt by our adversaries to suppress and disrupt the voting in 24 country this -- in this country this year using artificial intelligence. what we expect to see, the main form in terms of voter suppression, will be robocalls.

they are not going to be the rollo calls we heard in new hampshire a couple months ago where biden was saying don't bother voting. it will be more sophisticated. here's what's going to happen. if you are, let's say a member of a methodist church in phoenix, the artificial intelligence will go into your social graph on facebook, see that you are a member of that church. see who your friends are and grab audio from the pastor of your church. it will then artificially generate the pastor's voice, and then you will get either a robocall or message on your facebook saying, hi, it's pastor john, everyone should know that state of arizona just done this wonderful thing and extended voting wednesday and thursday. if you are too busy on tuesday to vote, don't bother. you can still vote on wednesday and thursday. it's going to be that sophisticated. it's terrifying. we are going to see that. we are going to see a lot of attempts to just mislead people about time, place, and manner of voting.

again through robocalls. robotext messages. through instagram messages. even tiktok. you name it. it's going to be highly, highly personalized. host: if i may ask, what do you base it on? somebody at home will say doesn't that sound like a conspiracy theory, no offense. guest: it's not a conspiracy they'rery. it's a conspiracy by the russians and the chinese and the iranians to do this. the cybersecurity agency inside the department of homeland security has already sent out alerts about this. it is a conspiracy? yes. it is a conspiracy by foreign governments to try to disrupt this election and try to impugn it. and make it look like we live in a shaky democracy. host: let me follow up. it was the homeland security chief cyber guy recently at an event talking about concerns they have and they are watching for a.i. use. i want to play a little bit of his description of it. get your response.

>> we educate the poll workers and the election officials that one a a.a. is here. and that then give them a little framework of how we think these threats are going to potentially affect them. and then, three, provide mitigating guidance. and a lot of those at the end of the day end up being a mixture of educational and cybersecurity. making sure that your cyber and tkepblg tal doors are locked. that you are not making yourself vulnerable. your data is not out there to be other weissed exploited or -- otherwise exploited or targeted. we see this. we don't think it's necessarily a new one. but we need to be faster. so we'll take it from there. i think it's going to definitely be an interesting part of the election landscape coming in november. host: could you respond to the threat, but not necessarily a new one. guest: it's not a new threat. it's a threat that's been put on

turbo boost by generative a.i. have they been doing this in the past? of course. can they now do it better and smarter because of a.i.? absolutely. somebody mentioned is great and light, what he didn't mention also is the massive disinformation campaigns that that will be launched to get people not to vote or it was compromised. host: you talked about cisa, on jan of this year, a.i. capabilities impact the landscape, election officials are in position to mitigate these potential threats. they are already familiar with risks like phishing and foreign influence operation and disinformation that can be amplified by generative a.i. many of the best measures for generative a.i. and enhanced threats are the same cybersecurity, best practice that is have been recommended for years. and may be in place. what do you think? guest: true. that doesn't deal with the voter piece of it. meaning, if you