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>> the house will be in order. >> this year, c-span celebrates 45 years of covering congress like no other. since 1979, we have been your primary source for capital health. providing balanced unfiltered knowledge of government. take anywhere the polities debate and decided all with the support of america's cable companies. c-span, 45 years and counting. powered by cable. have a conversation on election integrity and voter confidence, mac warner is west virginia's 30th secretary of state. how confident are you that the 2020 four elections will be secure and accurate, both in the

mountaineer state and also in states across this country? guest: that is the question of the day. i am very confident in the state of west virginia peered we have had some extremely secure elections and confidence is high in west virginia. i'm not able to comment on the nationwide, and not there and i am not as sure in of the states as i am in west virginia. host: what specific steps have you taken in west virginia to ensure elections are secure in your state? guest: it begins with maintenance of the voter registration process and making sure those registering are citizens of west virginia and 18 years old and meet the minimum requirements. that is the beginning.

most people focus on election day and in west virginia we have for voting, both absentee and early voting for 10 days prior to the actual elections. to give people a number of options as to how they choose to vote. if we want to make sure especially on election day the machine seven tested for logic and accuracy in that all 55 counties are using the express vote system that produces a paper trail. all of the basics are covered with regards to elections in west virginia. there is also the tabulation and that is very important because that is where the final results occur and that is six days after the election when any ballots that have come in through mail, provisional ballots are

determined by the canvassing board and that is when you get the final results. the three main components come registration, voting and tabulation. you have to have all three of those. when you do that, if you let the voters know about the steps accurate and in the confidence shanked up and that is what we have seen in west virginia. we are impacting all three areas of that. and i can get more about security. every voter who has an iphone can take a picture and send i

>> and that is why confidence is high in west virginia with regards to the actual voting. it is going to be done by people who properly register, meet the qualifications, and become absentee. they have a reason to do so.

>> there are some states in this country who have all mail-in voting. >> it shouldn't be. the carter baker commission was not after the 2000 election. they will put the elections all over the world. that report said vote by mail is means by which, if there is going to be fraud, fraud is going to occur -- the further you get away from a precinct, where you are voting under the proper supervision of trained observers from both parties. the further you get away from it, the more opportunity there is for something to happen. it goes to an address and the wife and a husband picks it up. what keeps them from voting for their spouse or for a son who is often college somewhere, that sort of thing. that is why they recommended to get away from it as much as

possible and move closer to election day. moving closer to the election date provides more confidence that election is being done properly. i will refer back to the 2016 election. with hillary clinton and how the fbi went back and forth as to whether the emails she had done and they first were saying -- were talking against it, for it. that was occurring up to four days prior to the election. in the 2020 election. the situation of the debate and hunter biden laptop that was mentioned by president biden when he was vice president in the debate. there is a very close to the election. if you are already casting your vote prior to that, you may want to change your vote after that. that is why i am at advocate for the closer to the election, voting on election date, with a paper back up under the watchful eyes of trained observers of

both parties, that will provide the most secure results. >> i should note for viewers, we scheduled another secretary of state to appear later in our program, jenna griswold of colorado. one of the states with all mail-in voting. she will not appear today, had to cancel her appearance. we are working getting her reschedule. you will be able to hear from her in the coming days or week or so. we are with max warner from the state of west virginia. the mountaineer state. the 30th secretary of state of that state. if you have questions or comments, now is the time to call in. (202) 748-8001 for republicans. (202) 748-8002 for democrats. if you would go to your secretary of state, they will find this letter. secretaries of state rally would want to highlight the need for

election security and prevent federal overreach in state elections. what is the federal overreach you are concerned about? >> that specifically is dealing with executive order 14019. that was put out by the biden administration early on in that administration. they pushed for all of the federal agencies to submit plans as to how they can assist in the voter registration process. that is a federal overreach because it is something specifically in the u.s. constitution a power that is left to the states, article one, section four of the u.s. constitution. the time and place of elections shall be left to state legislatures, not the federal government or the president. that is where i think the executive order is a federal overreach. what was a particular concern for so many of the secretaries of state was there was a lack of

transparency. there wasn't a guideline to share that with election officials. had they done so -- what i want to emphasize is if the states had asked for assistance by these federal agencies, that is appropriate. or what happened in 19 93 with the national voter registration act. congress, a legislative body gave authority to certain agencies, such as recruiting centers to help military people register. specific authorization by a legislature, that is one thing. but here, it is one agency, one of three branches of government, the executive reaching down and saying i want all 600 federal agencies, all the different agencies, department of agriculture, education, student loans, housing, any of those.

they want to make them a voter registration center. and the number of applications that would come in through those verses other motor vehicles, versus people coming into the county clerk or the county clerks, election boards are overworked, undermanned and overworked. we don't need the additional burden applications coming in that they have to sort through. that is why so many states are pushing back against that executive order. >> when you say duplicity, you are talking duplication or something nefarious you think will happen? >> the main thing is looking at applications. the book -- the department of motor vehicles. one person comes in and registers as john smith, they are applying for a student loan, and get an application and put jonathan smith. now the clerk, in one case, their home address, whether in college or whatever.

then the same person, different people now they have to sort that out. that is why i think the state legislatures are in the best position to set the rules and regulations for how somebody registers to vote in that states election. >> i have plenty for you from across the country. but we will start next door to you in kentucky, in harrisburg. good morning. >> good morning. thanks a lot. the topic. i would say it is a great topic. but for the fact i think it continues the myth that the united states of america electoral process is somehow insect -- inherently for a lot. you can draw a straight line to the big lie. we all know who the big liar is. does the secretary of state have

anything to say about the fact that this amounts to dock sing the electoral system where we are doing countless investigations, whether it is viable or not. and looking as if this is a huge issue. and it quite simply is not. i think that the secretary of state, your guest, does a disservice to the electoral process and the faith the people have in the electoral system of the united states. that is my point. >> secretary warner -- >> i appreciate that comment. what it brings to mind is a couple of things. the first is we need to have people confident in the election process.

i will point back to the 2020 election, the hunter biden laptop that is one i'm particularly aggrieved by. tony blinken with the biden campaign is the one who planted this idea that the hunter biden laptop was russian disinformation, when he knew it wasn't. and mike morel, the format and director of the cia, ran with it and got the so-called 51 experts all using the color of their authority, former cia directors and intelligence experts to sign onto this false document. that was put out to the american people. that was a big lie purposefully done. it is not just my opinion, it is sworn testimony under jim jordan's house judiciary committee where mike morel admitted to that. he said he did it for the purpose of helping biden get elected. that was a purposeful lie in military terms, a psychological

operation. and it was successful. biden used it in the debate prior to the 2020 election. it was never covered by the mass media to address that, that they were the ones lying, not the russians and the hunter biden laptop. >> that his confidence in voting systems in this country. >> we shouldn't be lying to the american people. we need to have american voters doing critical thinking. now we are dealing with generative ai, deepfakes, that sort of thing. that is my message to the american people getting ready for the 2024 election. watch out for that. don't just watch one news source, watch as many as you can. use your critical judgment. make sure before you cast your vote that we are not just buying one or the other, we are doing critical thinking before we cast our vote. >> hollywood, florida. this is nelson.

>> good morning. mr. warner, thank you for being on and discussing this. i'm 75 years old and have been voting since 1972. i don't think i've ever missed an election. i've always had a pretty good confidence in the elections and the results of the elections, except for 2020. that is because of the fact several states changed their laws midstream. and i think a couple violated their own state constitutions. and this led to my questioning the integrity of the results of that particular test. i'm curious, and i understand you only want to speak regarding your expertise with your state, but since you are an expert and involved in this, what is your

opinion as to the possibility of a repetition of 2020, and i believe donald trump still has a valid argument. thank you, sir. >> thank you for that question. if there is one message i want people to take away from today's conversation, this will probably be the main one. that is concern over votes outside the law. i'm not saying illegal or fraudulent votes, but a vote outside the law. when you ask that question, i have many concerns about the 2024 election with regards to vote outside the law. that was with happened in 2020. a vote outside the law is when state legislature says the ballot has to be in by the close of polls on election day. but if state decides we are going to accept ballots three days after the election. that happened in pennsylvania. those votes that came in after i

would say are outside the law. they might be legitimate votes, they may have have all the standards of being a citizen, 18 years old and a resident of the state. but it came in outside the law. that is what states have not addressed. that is the main lesson we should learn from 2020. very few states have done it. wisconsin tried to address it with drop boxes. they used them in 2020, it was outside the law -- and the supreme court went back to those drop boxes are ok. the legislature still has not addressed that. that is what we should be doing across the u.s. with lessons we learned from 2020, the mass mailing of votes, ballots, so

on. votes outside the law would be someone who doesn't sign about it. now we have a situation if you cure the ballot, call the person , that should be addressed by legislature if it is authorized or not. you have at least one situation i'm aware of where some counties allow it, and other counties in the same state did not allow the curing of ballots. you have an inconsistency. you don't have a fair election. how fair is it when one candidate might be strongly with one party, and a county strongly with another, and they have different rules by which they go by depending on what the county clerk feels like? my major concern is votes cast outside the law. those are the gaps we should be closing to provide confidence throughout america are elections are free and fair. >> you have been secretary of state since 2015. you were there in 2015.

what happened in 2020 in west virginia where -- were there any legislative changes that changed the way people voted in 2020 due to covid? >> what happened in 2020, our governor moved the primary from one date in may to the first week in june. covid did cause changes in west virginia. one of the things i wanted to get back to a little bit from an earlier question, vote by mail. here in west virginia, since i have been secretary, we have taken off the voters lists almost 400,000 names. i did not say people, i said names. names of folks who are deceased, have moved outside the state, have duplicate registrations. the registration simply was not kept up-to-date. the maintenance was not done prior to my taking office. think of the small state of west virginia, 1.1 million registered voters.

take off 400,000 names. we have that at about 300,000 residence in that time. our numbers have not changed dramatically. but the thing is, you don't want to send ballots to those 400,000 people. in those peoples mailboxes that no longer lived there or are deceased. think of the opportunities for fraud. that paired with the votes outside the law are some of my major concerns when you start talking about what is happening to other states. as i mentioned earlier, we have addressed that by our state legislative process. you have a reason to get an absentee ballot that is why the vote of confidence in west virginia is extremely high. host: you described list maintenance. is that the terminology you prefer, and what you think of terms like voter purging or vote role scrubbing? >> list maintenance is required.

back to that 1993 nvra. it is required by law clerks will do the cleanup. but there was no enforcement mechanism to make people pay off the list. there were two parts of it. one was they made the dmv a voter registration system nationwide. so that was one aspect of it. the other aspect was they would do the maintenance at least every two years. but there is no enforcement mechanism. we need to have a local enforcement mechanism. what happens when someone cast a vote outside the law. should the penalty be that the vote doesn't count? in terms of criminal law, you have the miranda rights. if someone doesn't read a criminal suspect the miranda rights, you cannot use that confession in court. that would be the equivalent of saying we cannot count the ballot. but what if it is not that

voters fault read what if it is the clerk or they put it in a dropbox, did not sign it -- although those sorts of things. if the board of canvassers decides to count the vote, is it the voter, the person who accepted it, or the ones who counted the vote -- i would like state legislatures to address those, depending on how they have decided the votes will be registered, voters will be cast. >> matt warner taking your questions on the washington journal. this is alan, has been waiting in brooklyn. good morning. >> good morning. good to hear from you. glad to hear you are basically speaking rationally. whatever political point of view you have, doesn't seem to be clouding your ability to do your job properly. here's my question. you talked about votes outside the law. raising questions about what right people have if they are in public office to deny the

validity of a fact found by the last available court of appeals? it seems to me once all of the appeals, roughly 60 of them that trump brought in 2020, were completed, he had an obligation as a public figure to accept not only the law as written, but the facts as found by the court. spending four years discussing the results of those cases and stating facts that don't conform to the last ruling, to me proves to be far more dangerous. we saw what happened on january 6. he riled up enough people by telling them some facts are really a, and are really b, and they seem to have a justification in their mind to be violent. it was born from ms. stating the facts. should the president and candidates be allowed to openly misstate the facts as found by

the last available court to advance their political agenda? >> a humorous example is the inauguration crowd he misstated at the beginning of his term. now he's doing something like that again by denying the size of kamala harris' crowds at her rallies. seems to be preparing the public again to accept truth out of his mouth when those facts are simply not valid. >> you are asking some great questions. really appreciate it. let me begin by -- i appreciate you recognizing. when i come at this, it is not from a political agenda. i spent a career in the military. military officers are trained to leave the politics out. our job is to accomplish the mission the commander-in-chief gives us and to obey the orders as long as they are lawful orders. that is what happens every morning when i step on the courthouse or the statehouse

grounds. the politics goes away. it is my job to run fair and clean elections. that is the first part. i also happen to be a lawyer. i appreciate the point you are making, whoever that court of last resort is is hurting a particular case, we are object gated to follow that -- obligate it to follow that. i would argue sometimes courts get it wrong. we see it with the national debate onroe and dodds, even the supreme court changes its mind overtime. plessy and ferguson, there are a number that have changed dramatically the american landscape depending on what a particular court decides. i will point to one relevant to the conversation we are having now. i understand a court in california is -- has upheld a lower court's decision that voting by mail is proper in

california. but there decision i would disagree with where they said even though a vote may be invalid and is cast by mail, that does not dilute the voters that vote in person. i think that goes against common sense. there's a political agenda being decided by the courts, and i would hope it is appealed to the u.s. supreme court for the final arbitration or decision in that matter. if i were in california, the secretary of state, i would abide by the latest decision, even though i disagreed with it. that is not obligation as a lawyer to uphold the latest court decision until a higher court hears it. great question, and that is where i come down on that situation. >> are you term limited? >> i'm not. in west virginia, we have discussed it. i support term limits, but the secretary of state is not term limited in west virginia. >> are you running for secretary of state again?