trillion. why did you say it then? are you encouraged by anything that happened in the last three and a half years? >> would you say it again? >> well, thank you, bill, for doing this and pete and you and your organization. i think what you're doing is critical. i would say that it's good you're young. it's a long haul. [laughter] it isn't going to happen quickly, but please persist. i'm delighted to be able to spend some time with you. the storm issue is a terrific issue. the seat does afford me an opportunity despite the fact there's no snow to watch my car get towed away. it's in a snow emergency route, i'm sure. [laughter] it really is -- i was telling bill earlier. i can't actually remember the forum, if you will, that was

there a reporter asked me that question. i have given it quite a bit of thought from a very strategic level, i believe the military is part of the solution to better outcomes around the world, but at the higher level it's really about economies. so i focus a lot of my time on relationships with countries who were key economic engines in the world. whether it was brazil or china or europe or the middle east or india, i try to spend some of my time in that regard. i really just believe that if you can create some stability in a peaceful environment, peoples' standards of living will get improved as economies start to thrive. i put quite a bit of thought in to that. i really believed it as the debt ticker just kept going on exponentially. in the last year or so, i mean, everybody is doing hand stands because the deficit has gone

down. it's as if the problem went away. the problem is it hasn't effected the ticker at all. t above $17 trillion. it was $16 trillion a year ago. we can't be the country that we are capable of at the time in the world where we're needed as much as we've ever been needed if we just keep spending our way -- spending ourself in to oblivion. we won't be able to make the investments. we'll continue to lose what i consider to be a credit, if you will, on the international stage. t something that has got to turn around. going take sacrifice, quite frankly, on the part of everybody. the pentagon gets a lot of money. as i understand it. it's 50% of the discretionary spending roughly every year in the government. you can take the whole pentagon budget, pour it to the debt, and it would have an issue. it would have a minimum impact. it's got to be the entitlement piece we all know about. we've been talking about it for years, we're going have to

figure out how to get it at. i believe we have to sacrifice. i mean, very specifically from a retirement standpoint. it goes to a hot issue as well. the coal issue. i'm happy to be means tested for my health care payments, our copay. i'm happy to be means test ited for other quote, unquote, entitlement, if you will. i don't want to hurt the 20-year star sergeant who is just bumping along don't touch individuals like that. but those who can afford a little more need to pay a little more as far as i'm concerned. we have to figure out. it's not just a single answer here. i get asked when i speak publicly. what keep me awaking at night. number one is still the debt. i don't think we have done much about it. >> i think the reason, you know, the paul ryan and patty murray budget deal which had a

reduction in the coal increase for 20-year retiree. reaction to that based on legitimate concern, partly on a little bit of misunderstanding of what the actual proposal was. does show how hard it is to reform entitlement. it might be better off. do you think better off doing it by means testing as opposed to across the board. >> i would like to see them means tested. secondly, i'm conflicted about that. because particularly when i was asked the kinds of questions on active duty. we look at retirement for the military, for example, all the chiefs myself and the vice chairman lined up in a position that we supported that long-term, but with we wanted to grandfather to anybody that had come in and had basically an implied or actual contract for careers. so starting at the 5, 6, 7, 8, 9-year level those who clearly

indicated they may stay for 20. we should grandfather any kind of change like that. that said, if you do that it doesn't produce any money in '15 or '16. it doesn't get the issue in the significant amount of retirement pension for the military. i guess i get back to i really believe we need to means test it and everybody is going to have to pitch in. we talk about entitlements in so many different -- it has the specific meeting of you owe me this. thing is a broader discussion to be had about entitlements in terms of people at ever level. people that are actually doing very well in the sort of heart of the eni envelope of their income that they feel entitled to is whether they need it or not. i think we need to broaden the discussion about entitlements and to some degree come off of you owe me this.

i'm entitled to it even if i don't need it. >> i suppose you could argue since you made the statement in 2010 we haven't as made as much many people hoped. but spending was has leveled off in the last two or three years. the deficit is $500 billion instead of a trillion which was is a lot of money but it's been halved. on the whole, do you think half empty or half full glass. do you think the political elite as well as the public as a whole are sufficiently alarmed about the consequences, as you said $17 trillion of debt to finally move on it? >> i think they're much better informed because the debate. i worry, i mean, i was delighted with the budget agreement that it took place. i worry that sends the signal it's over. i mean, the short term focus that is out there in so many ways throughout the country and certainly in this town. there's a lot more work to do. i would hope it's a laferger of

steps to be taken in the future. i'm a glass half full guy in general. i'm hoping the beginning of being ability to turn it around. >>let hope so. i have the same instinct. i think your comment there was startling enough to people it did have a good effect. and let's hope both parties get more serious perhaps make some sacrifices. what about the other things that keep you awaking at night? >> actually, i list five. one is the debt. two is our k through 12 education system. because certainly in my life, we've been talking about fixing that for problems or problems with it for a good 20 or 30 years. there have been some significant efforts undertaken in term of in particular charter schools, et. cetera, and education reform. but buy and large, it's still in bad shape. it's almost like, i mean, there

is an parallel to the debt issue in the sense you have to have resources to invest for the future. if you don't have them, you're not going have much for the future. we have to have an education system which is functioning at the very, very junior -- at the beginning, if you will. i think the competitive advantage that america has is right here. and if we invest in that, we'll be okay. if it continues to erode, we're not going have -- we're not going to be competitive. and you can't -- at least i think -- sometime in the education sector. you can't scale charter psychologicals too the public school system in the country. i don't know the an. i'm one that believe juice to do it through teachers. they were the most impactive people in my life as a kid. among coaches and parents and pastors, et. cetera. and i think somehow we have to channel that. we don't pay them very well. i taught for a year up at prints

ton. i didn't run in to princeton graduate that was going to teach, quite frankly. that doesn't mean there aren't any. it's not the path that so many choose because it's not valued in the country. i think we need to turn that around or, again, this very slow erosion will wake up one day and we'll wonder what happened. third thing is the political paralysis here. i've been in washington mostly since the mid '90s. i asked friends, historians will -- who -- some say we have been through it before. about a year ago, two years ago i asked the question and said when? 1938 or 1939. that wasn't, you know, overly uplifting in that cfght. a year ago i asked the same question of another historian. he said, we have. i said when was the last time? the civil war. [laughter] so the point is, this is really

tough, and i think everybody knows that. how i don't know how it gets broken. i worry that we will continue to dig the hole, if you will, i hope that somehow, you know, the leadership in the country at large can figure out a way to get us moving in a much more positive direction before we have some catastrophic event. that piece concerns me a great deal. the fourth is cyber. i won't talk much about cyber. it scarce me to death. i have fought that when i was chairman. i understand how capable it is. how lethal the potential is, not just from a security -- from a pentagon perspective, but literally from a national perspective. it's capable of shutting down our grid, our financial system, impacting significantly our logistic. it almost has no bound. i thought actually the target

incident over christmas, which initial reports were $40 million. a couple days later 70 million. it speaks to the scale of capability in the cyber world. that many that quickly. i talk about in term of lying leaders need to understand this. not the tech types. you have to have them because line leaders make decisions on people and investments and policies. so that is of huge concern. the last one is just veterans. we're not doing very well for our veterans who fought the wars. just because i was chairman in the iraq and afghanistan war, i focused not exclusively but heavily on iraq and afghanistan vets. they are coming back to a very, very tough employment numbers. the economy is -- while pumping along and getting a little better. hiring them throughout the country is very difficult. their unemployment numbers are about 18 to 24-year-old are about twice the national

average. half of them are married. they need to put food on the table. i'm not convinced you do it from washington, frankly. there are a lot of host of issues associated with that. what i try to do is engage local leaders in communities throughout the country. someone has to lead in an urban community or rural community to economize the support for veterans focusing on health, education, and employment. and remember that these spouses have been extraordinary as well in these wars. typically they are two-income families. they have huge capabilities they can offer. i find this, quote, unquote sea of good will on the part of the american people. you need local leaders to galvanize that. we have seen significant progress in certain part of the cunl. i worry they are coming here. they are leaving the military about 1,000 a day, which is normal, and we're hiring about 100 a day. it's better than it was in vafm and --

vietnam and in the past in many ways. we're just beginning. i think as we come out of the afghanistan, america didn't have to buy in to the wars. america doesn't have a stake in the wars, so combat troops are out in a few months. and america will accelerate away from our veterans response giving visibility to this and making sure this young group and it was 2.2 million men and women. it was the best i've ever seen. i did it for a few decades, hands down, they're the best. they're going make a difference in the future. i see them by the thousand they're going to make a huge difference investing in them is great investment. that's where i'm -- that's where i spend 0 a lot of my free time. thank you for spending your time on that. it's important. one of the distractions there are is some people who served 20 years and are bouncing along. but actually the people i think the most who need the most help getting out after 4, 6, 7, 12

years. they don't have the retirement. maybe if they are enlisted and don't have a college degree i don't know we're set up well in the business world to help them as well as we can. the officers do, you know, pretty well, they have college degrees. they have -- work to help them find things. but i worry more -- >> i love my offers but that's no my focus. when you look at the pyramid it's the sergeants, it's the second class officers. that's the bulk, and, i mean, we have seen certainly in our lives ceos who, you know, from vietnam, from korea, world war ii. that's where they started. an extraordinary strong group of talented individuals it's that investment. they don't want a handout. they just -- we need to just guide them to the opportunities. once they get in, they'll knock it out of the park. i believe that. it's getting them to the

opportunity and translating their skill. medic or corp. men have to go state x, y, or z. they have been almost surgeon on the battle field. they have to do the whole recertification process to become a paramedic in given states throughout the country. there are a lot of examples of those. we're actually making some progress there. and the fact is, back to 1,000 a day getting out and 100 or so that are getting hired, all of this is for about 17% of those who join the military that stay in. that stay in for 20 years. it's been that way for a long time. so there is a significant effort. i hope that is underway to really look at should we reform the whole retirement. and i applaud that. that doesn't mean -- i haven't answered a take away the 20 year retirement. we did that once. it didn't go very well.

but young people a lot earlier is the question. in, for example, so there's a lot of work that needs to be done here. the retirement system is very generous. i mean, the benefits for the military right now compared to the mid '90s and this is a bipartisan tsh has been a bipartisan issue are much better shape than we were back then. >> when you're downsizing and pushing people out, really. there's something little weird about the system which so valued the 20 year service and event almost no value. but no retirement value on 12 or 14 years. that is an interesting rei teem. let me ask you cyber. i hadn't planned to talk about it it . you won't talk about anything. classified you shouldn't talk about. but the controversy about the nsa. you obviously dealt with the matters with the highest level. basically would you want to reassure americans that the nsa is doing the job they're supposed to be doing or who is alarmed by these stories i spend

a lot of time at nsa they are an extraordinary group of professionals. to the best of my understanding with i do not claim to be inside all the time. what i do, from what i knew, they are -- were charged with. there were two aspects. one, they were complying with the law. they have the interest of the united states of america at the top of the list. in many cases, it was very beneficial undertaking in terms of figuring out the threat. i have said far long time, i think the debate -- i hate what snowden did. i actually think snowden is traitor. that said, i think that the base that ensued is an important debate. the debate about the balance between privacy and security. it was long coming. i was worried, quite frankly, we get through a cyber 9/11 before

we had it where the law changed immediately and as the pendulum swings too far. i think the healthy debate, i think it was two congressional cycles ago or two budgets ago that lieberman and colins were putting forward the first hope land security discussion of these kinds of things. it didn't go very far. i think we need to continue that. now there's more life and oxygen in that approach. i think that's a very healthy debate for us as country. i hope we don't have that. the threat is not going away. the danger is out there. how do we balance that? >> afghanistan, you mentioned, you were chairman obviously during the surge and paid very close attention to that. that, i think accomplished a lot within the limit of what it could do in the year or two. how worried are you about what happens this year. what do you think should happen? should we leave the force there? how stable can the situation.

be? i tried to stay out of the policy world. i was talking to bill earlier today. i have appreciation for how hard these issue and these jobs are. i'm -- i worry a great deal about the renal. said when i was chairman and i repeat that in the -- repeat this in the sense that everybody would like and pakistan -- [inaudible] much about it in order to go away. i don't think they're going to go away soon, and that the challenges that exist there from a terror standpoint, instability standpoint,th are going to continue. the question is how do we -- the world. quite frankly, are at large. and what is the united's position in that in terms of longer term outcomes.

as important as the security forces have been in afghanistan, train the security forces. the issues larger issues from my perspective that we struggle to deal with is the government sees the corruption piece and there's not an afghan citizens. very few that don't look at us backing up corrupt government that undermines our particular possession, if you will, even though we're there to help, quote, unquote. that's not a military piece. that's the political piece the govern mans piece. i think that addressing that in a much more aggressive way in the long-term we're going have -- have to figure out how to do that. one of the things these wars did teach or maybe remind me. i think we have to figure out in the future how do we corrupt people. how do we deal with corrupt

governments? different from how we vetted in the past. it's too transparent. there's too much information out there. we know they're too corrupt, and we get undermined. and in a time that is generally pretty chaotic, i sort of fall back on the values that are true us as a country. sort of that kind of framework when we don't know exactly what to do. but make sure that the kinds of things the freedom of democracy that human right, the lack of corruption, and i'm not saying we need go anywhere and totally eliminate corruption throughout. that's not the idea. but different kinds. how do you address it from a policy standpoint. how do you lead in that space in the long run? i think the an is problematic. i'm certainly the whole issue which is the discussion force. i think that's a smart move from

a stand point of create some kind of continued relationship in longer term stability. i don't know what the outcome is. i think understanding what the president karzai find is very, very -- >> i'll let pete come up. you mentioned iraq i think you -- hoped to leave residual force in iraq. how much do you regret that didn't -- how much of a price you're paying it wasn't able to be done? >> well, i watch iraq like everybody else and i'm extremely disappointed. i worry a great deal about the politics there. that's what the prime minister is going through i'm not shocked. i wouldn't want to overstate the

quote, unquote impact of a residual force, if you will. what is going on there. it was certainly -- it was all generally presyria which has been such an igniter for the whole resurgence of al qaeda including al qaeda in iraq. so i actually believe, this goes back to how the military fit in. how does force fit in. i would like it to fit in as part of an overall strategy. there are political endeavors to create an outcome and you figure out how to use military force. i feel that way about syria as well. the political structure diplomatic structure needs to be there it's not perfect. at least needs to be there that is committed to stopping the killing, and getting those -- the camps of all of those who

are out of the country getting the people back to their homes. then if the military need to be a part of that. that's okay. i worry about it's too easy to pick up a stick and do something and figure out what happens after the case. i feel that way. iraqi saw the other day discussions now about giving them tan. i think that's a good opening. and we know a lot of their leaders. so there's an opportunity to do that. and i certainly wouldn't want to see it fall apart. >> final question, i'll ask you were also chairman when president obama announced secretary clinton announced the pivot to asia. i was in asia myself a couple of month ago. i would say talking to friendly leaders there they welcome the idea and not getting in to that much reality behind it. i would say i was struck, hoppestly, how nerve use they were made as what they see as fairly or unfairly aceps of

retreat elsewhere. it reminded me what happens in the middle east doesn't happen in the middle east. so i'm curious what you spent a lot of time on asia and china, obviously. your general sense is what is happening there. >> i visit there had last fall and had the same reaction from our friends in japan and in south korea in particular. that there was -- first of all, the tension was much higher than i expected it to be particularly between japan and china. i've been to japan a lot. and i just -- i heard nothing more. i didn't hear about anything else except china. and back to what i said earlier about focusing on the economies. that's an economic zone that feeds the world. it needs to be stable. we've got obviously the second biggest economy in the world in china. i think it's the fourth in

japan. so we need to be engaged there. i was supportive of the rebalance, if you will. that said, middle east isn't going go away. i think we're in for a -- i don't know how long. 30, 0-year run here. i think one of the things that we americans don't understand well enough is what it is like to grow up in the middle east and think about a single thing every day when you wake up which is surviving. whether you're in the village or you're in the palace. what that means and when we have these leadership changes that occur in these countries whether it's libya, iraq, or yemen or in syria that turns out. we just sort of expect another leadership to show up. they're not there. because those leaders that are currently there have killed them all or jailed them all or are out of the country. the long-standing investment that is required to create leaders and create institutions. i think we need to be modest in

terms what we mean by democracy and taking steps toward democracy in term of our expectations. when changes like this occur. so the mightd east suspect going go away. the rebalancing -- i think it is very important. i don't think we can do it and not focus -- don't focus on the middle east from a security standpoint. pentagon standpoint it's my belief it's probably all the resources we're going have. certainly in this downturn. it'll turn -- we can look at budget through decades. it'll turn around at some point. but i don't -- we're not going have a lot of ability to if cons the continent of africa or latin america or other things in the next few years. we're on about year three, i think, of a ten-year sickle. we're the budget eventually comes baseball. we should stay engage as best we can. the impact is important.

our relationship with our friends in particular in the asia-pacific. our relationship with india. can we emerge in the future in a constructive way with china? i just did a completed a commission on energy security. having an energy security policy with den any blair and mike, bob, john hannah, and we haven't we have an opportunity, i think, in the energy world to work with china as they become the biggest consumer in the world. we have found resources. the right word is energy biewns in the united states not energy independence. because we don't have enough to control the price of a barrel of oil. that's the middle east. that's going to be saudi arabia and/or iran and/or iraq depending on what happens in those country in the future and what happens with things like sanctions. but we need to have a policy

that -- and a strategy that recognizes that. i think there's a great opportunity to help china in that regard in the long run. the economic relationship with china, et, we don't need to get to a fight with china. it doesn't mean it won't happen. that shouldn't be the objective. i think the focus there is really important. brand new leader in china and south korea. brand new leader or second time around leader in japan, and it's very, very ten. it's a very worrisome. it's worry hadsome. we need to stay engaged. as we isolate out of war. which is normal for us as a country, i think we need to be very careful about what we isolate ourself from. there's an expectations out there that the united states lead and weather someone loves us or hates us. they have that expectations. if we're not meeting that, things are changing.

i don't know that we can predict what the outcome will be except generally worse than it's been depending on what region of the world we're talking about. >> i think that's an important message. there's a sort of -- washington think tank and such places that we get to sort of choose where we would like to focus and not focus. the middle east is a kind difficult part of the world. why don't we just kind of liberate ourselves in that and as tom donnelly, a friend of ours wrote in the weekly standards, we may lose interest in the middle east or the middle east is now losing interest in us. it's an awfully -- people don't want to hear it sometimes. it has implications about difficult things and keeping defense budgets higher than people would like. even deploy troops abroad in difficult situations abroad. i think it's an important message for the country. pete, do you want to repeat a couple of questions and take some questions from --

pete has some questions from virtual watchers around the country. then we'll take some questions from real people here. all right. [laughter] >> we promised them they would. >> only a couple of then open it up for sure. the first is from robert from texas. he's active military down in texas. he said we've got an issue when the congress continues to buy tanks that the army doesn't want, or c28j cargo plane that the air force sends immediately to the bone yard. can congress police the situation or is there a way for the armed forces assert themselves on what is needed and spending reform. >> as i listen to your agenda, pete, one of the things i heard you talk about was acquisition reform. i could fill this room with studies on acquisition reform. literally. >> you could empty the room quickly by talking about it for two or three hours. [laughter] it's a lot of money, and i don't have any answers. i spent a lot of my life in the

money and program world. it's incredibly difficult. i think it has to be done in congress. i think -- obviously the services have a great critical part with respect to that as well. my own view is that we make things much more expensive because requirements creep over time. i think just on the taste of it, saying let's detach a congressman or congresswoman from their constituent in a certain program is a pipe dream. it's not happening overnight. i have seen it with persistent pressure over time. those would argue there would be those that argue it takes too long and it does. but i've seen programs in. i think show to keep that pressure on in terms of m1 tanks or cargo plane or c17 is another example where we had great argument a debate about how many do we need, et. cetera. i think if we can accelerate that process it would be good. i think make everybody put

everybody in a better place. but you can't disregard who we are as a country, which that elected representative represents their people in their district ingoing to represent them. >> absolutely. senator mccain called military industrial congressional complex. in many ways it can be. to that point on reform, if acquisition reform is difficult. as an organization, we obviously talk about defense spending reform. it's something we understand more intuitively entitlement and others being a preface to a lot of that. our belief is you better be willing to police your own backyard before you go to others and say clean up yours. ..

we need to reduce that. it's too easy and so that's where people end up going. so we need to be i think getting at the overhead peace is very hard. there are twice as many civilians working in the pentagon has there were ten or 20 years ago and so what happens if you can't get at that is we cut the size of the force and 40 are tied up in the hour people so if you are going to make changes you have to go where the

money is so my view is it is going to get a little smaller. i don't know how small and i hope it isn't just across-the-board to take the same cut because we need to customize for the world we're living in. we need to be careful about that and learn the lesson of the war and not just incorporate them into the future and we have a bad history in this country of ignoring the lessons and just moving forward and starting all over again so what translates to the future and what doesn't? how much technology, how many people, what are the capabilities etc., does it have relevance? we thought it didn't until it went downtown baghdad and then it was pretty irrelevant. so there is no easy answer here. but i start with the overhead. bob gates and i and the theater's worked on the

efficiency. i tell a story i was the budget officer of the program and he said okay we are going to cut 10,000 civilians out of the navy. i took the money out and three years later we were down one civilian, so because there are senior civilians who worked their whole life and understand the system and they are great people but it's how do you get at solving that problem and it's very tough. questions? yes, sir. wait for the microphone. >> good morning. my question is about there's been much written about the coming war between the active force and the national guard in

the reserves and i know i've seen a statistic about 27% of the budget, 40% roughly of the deployment. what do you think is ahead in the battle in the reserve force and the active duty with fewer resources and how do you think the reserve forces are going to fare? >> you might think i had no preparation for dealing with the national guard and reserve and active forces of having handled the marine corps money in aviation, my whole life in the budget is all about money in the end. i actually had some background in this and i worked hard to bring the groups together and the leaders together routinely. i was really disturbed in the story that i think i saw in the post on december 17th talking about airplanes, not surprisingly.

i think leaders and all organizations have to figure out what does the future hold and i worry a great deal holding on to the past because eventually you are going to do yourself in. as money gets tighter i worry a great deal about that fight separating the services and then it gets solved in congress and if you want -- and back to my nietzsche and marine corps peace i didn't want that congress solving that problem for me i wanted to solve it as the head of the needy or budget officer and as the head of the navy with jim conaway, who worked for. the of the thing is when we do that constantly we are just training our kids so when they grow what they don't know any other be of use of a just perpetuates itself. there's a rich history here. i think the answer that is more efficient and doesn't cost as much as overstated --

>> [inaudible] we are grateful for the opportunity to talk about. what we are going to do is run through the documentation that is available here and in download form from the web site www.supportthevoter.gov. [inaudible] and the voting technology these tools are meant to be usable in

managing their resources allocations and managing to avoid long lines, so let me begin with you the preliminary remarks about the recommendations and then i will turn it over for the balance of the discussion to my hand co-chair outside of the operation. [laughter] we are fortunate some of the commissioners were in town earlier today. [inaudible] very briefly at the outset of the report he tried to set the context for the recommendation and what i think we want to

recognize first is that we are calling for the administration to be treated as a matter of the public administration. there are issues that are going to divide the party and the divide people from different points of view, but there is a realm in the administration that need to be addressed and the guidance, the benchmark have to be the interest and expectations of the voters that are addressed in a professional way coming and we make that plea and we have used that as our guide. the competition reflects this objective. the commission has other than those that co-chair the commissioners who have been for years involved in the administration both democratic

and republican and senior executives in the business community who have pretended to question the customer service as a key part of the responsibility for the corporations that they have served. and that body then took it upon itself to look at the data, assemble the data in some cases where it wasn't available, look at the best social science, talk to experts, listen closely to the people that run the elections at the state and local level with particular attention to the administrators and take from that the material that we used to fashion our recommendations. in the introduction to that report, we talk about a few issues that don't necessarily lead to specific recommendations that there are background considerations in the united states. one has to do with the view that is often expressed that one side

of the reform doesn't necessarily fit all jurisdictions that we have the widely varying jurisdictions around the country, urban, rural, large, small and jurisdictions and we can't really generalize about all of those jurisdictions. that is true of to a point, but there is enough common activity among the jurisdictions to the way the elections are administered that we believe would be accessible across the country and would improve the voting experience wherever they might be casting their ballots. likewise we heard a good bit about resources and there is no question on the testimony that we hear the budget for the administration's are not necessarily adequate but viewed by the administration is not adequate to the task and not the highest priority for legislators who are constantly faced with

balancing the committees at hand. the objective is not to make recommendations about the resources level but we had to raise the issue because it's what we heard in the developing testimony looking at this data. ferre, there are statutes that we have in place that are designed to serve populations of the voters face a particular challenge like minority voters, disabled voters, military voters coming and the experience is mixed but we point out in the report that there's much to be done to improve the level of compliance. improvement to the markets in some areas like military boaters and serving the body compliance in meeting the requirement in section 203 or 208 of the voting act and continued problems in

achieving the full measure of accountability for accessibility for disabled voters. and then professionalism. we make an appeal for professionalism in the administration of which is to say we understand we are not expecting an opinion of what was their view about this. we have a structure in the united states that is characterized by the appointment or the election of people who are ultimately responsible for the administration through the process and people can take the view that is normal and perfectly acceptable and others take the view that's quite critical. what ever view you take we need continuity of professionalism within the offices responsible for the administration and appeal for that to be both taught and mastered and then

offered professionally like any other unit in the public administration. last but not least let me say something before i turn this over to ben. the issue associated with the commission are long lines, and we have a report that ranges well beyond and talks about other matters that we were asked to look at in the terms of the executive order establishing the commission. on the question, however, there are two points to be made. number one, the result of the variety of the factors. the polling place management issues, inaccurate voter rolls. there's any number of reasons why you can wind up with the long lines and find a number of key issues that we come to address in this report. as i mentioned, we try to come up with online tools that came to us by the testimony that we

are actively promoting in an open source that we think will make a difference to those that are struggling with the line issues but we also believe that a combination with of this and other recommendations to enhance the efficiency of the management of the polling place, it is identifiable so you can understand it and come to terms with it and because we believe that, we unanimously concluded and the recommendations of the report that no voter in the united states should have to wait more than 30 minutes to cast his or her vote. if it's more than that than if the polling places running into difficulties ought to have contingency plans they can put into effect to immediately shrink the wait time backed to the desired minimum. but that for 30 minutes we

believe after hearing the testimony and looking at the data and thinking about the solutions available as an appropriate standard. so that's the background and a little bit on line about how of report begins and for the balance of the key recommendations and some of the practices in the preliminary discussions let me turn this over to the co-chair. >> thank you. it's been a pleasure working with you on this. let me start with a couple things. first, the alumni society, rebecca for putting this together for us which we very much appreciate, and second come to think and also to tell you who they were, the commissioners and personally the research director. the other commissioners were made up of the professionals and

three members of the private sector and private industry. chris thomas is the servicer in the state of michigan and began work for the texas secretary of state and ram but he elections down in texas for 16 years. trey grayson was the secretary of kentucky for two years and is now in the institute of politics at harvard and tammie patrick is the federal compliance officer in maricopa county. dave who i mentioned is the excellence -- at stanford university. we also had three folks from the private sector with us.

the show was the ceo of north america and michele coleman is the general counsel at the new york city public library yen has been all stated general counsel and a number of other fortune 500 companies for a number of years. and brian bruseghin, who when he started on the commission was -- and going to get the title from that he ran theme-park spurred disney because if you're going to mess around with lines you ought to have someone from disney. i should say that his best line of the whole commission was after we were talking about long lines of the polling places and he just kind of shakes his head and says you don't even have a concession stand when you're done. [laughter] so we sort of have to mix those professional expertise and a bit of humor. so where we can at the commission from is we have a

somewhat checkered history for a line of years beating each other at the head and shoulders from opposite sides of the political war not least among them recounts that are particularly instructive to me because you see that the system has some flaws beneath what we like to think of our whole task and so being able to fix those where you don't have to come at it from a democratic or republican perspective is what animated this commission. the whole agenda of what is known as a voting in the voting rights is far broader than the commission was charged with doing that in sticking with our

charge, we've been able to come up with a series of recommendations and best practices that are going to make the voting experience better for the voters and on a bipartisan basis. and both republicans and democrats agree that every and legally qualified who should be able to cast her is a and her ballot without the obstacles. now we get into disagreements on some other things. but on that score fundamental principle, there is an agreement and that is what animated us. bob mentioned the one size does not fit all which we take is a truism. the reality looking at a report like this is that they are administered by 8,000 separate jurisdictions around the country and that is an overwhelming number of the jurisdictions who put on the elections with volunteers who by and large have not received a whole lot of training and expect uniformity

and that is a sort of built in a contradiction in what we do and how and a lot of the report's recommendations and best practices are aimed at that. so let me go through a few of the top wines and then turn it over for some others. one thing that we saw across the political spectrum is that people on the left and the right believe that there should be accurate voter registration. from the right hand point of view it's important because that makes sure that only if a legally qualified voters get to vote and go into the polling places and on the left point of the few it's important because it helps find out who the potentially registered voters are not registered and if you don't you have a clean list and the lines of polling places are likely to occur. on both sides that is the goal

so there are a couple specific recommendations to help realize that. one is that we urge the adoption and states that don't have it now of online registration. it is a system that provides increased accuracy because the votaress filling out the forms without having the government punching in information. it's a much more efficient system and tammie can tell you how much the state of arizona has saved by giving the on-line registration and how it's efficiency is much more accurate overall in terms of what the list ends up looking like so that is a laudable goal and a recommendation that we adopt. second, there are a couple of national programs out there in which some states are participating to help clean up their voter list and help compare the list between states and so we do endorse the interstate voter cross check

program as well as the electronic registration and information center. both of these groups allow the state to compare their list so that in their own initiative they can prepare better and more accurate lists. we do get the military and overseas voting particularly military members serving overseas. they're then improvements in that area in the last few years, but certainly more seems to be done. there's a number of recommendations about what states can do primarily with their web sites to reduce the barriers to voting for military and overseas voters and a lot of web site improvements and reforms and a gathering of best practices. on that score there are also simple fixes with the federal registration forms that will make things more uniform and clear to the states.

another subject in which the commission felt the need to shine a bright spotlight is the state of voting technology in this country. the reality is virtually all of the machines in the country were purchased in 2003 as a result of the florida recount i would add. and those machines are about to wear out. simply put, their shelf life is about to expire. so there's not federal money, there's not $3 billion federal appropriation on the horizon, and we heard again and again from state and local administrators that the jurisdiction cannot start budgeting to fill that gap, so that is going to be a problem every bit as great as what meese for after floor of the was never going to happen again. it's just sort of an hon

discussed subject now. so we hope that we can get the conversation going. part of the crisis is that they do not need a single state or local administrator that says i love my voting machines i only wish we could keep them forever. in fact we did not run into a state or local administrator who liked his or her voting machines and thought they were good. the reality is there is a huge gap and lack of development in the new voting equipment that boating equipment simply has not kept up with a technology that we could come to rely on in our everyday life. there are any number of reasons for that but primary among them as the standards and certification process is completely broken down. they are using the standards set in 2005 and 2007.

it's currently housed in the eac and there is a broad prospect for the eac to be resurrected anytime soon. we disagree some about the truism of that statement and the method for it, but in reality, it has become a political quagmire not to be fixed. whatever political solution there is, get rid of the eac, something has to be done about the certification process and standards process, and those machines are going to wear out most likely before there is any solution to the more global question of the eac. with that i would like to turn it over to other highlights on the report. >> that executive order, one thing he said it does is it

doesn't just described the problems but also the specific populations that are affected by the difficulties in voting. the military voters with disabilities with respect to the military voters, we looked at the web site and through research was done by some of the outside groups to show to the military voters to assist them in voting and there's a lot on the military voting with respect to the way they move the other piece of the legislation. second, with respect to voters with disabilities and limited proficiency voters the commission endorses having an advisory groups for local jurisdictions to get these groups in the process to meet

the needs of the communities as well as the polling places to make sure that they are accessible and the commission's report is making sure that each part of the process is accessible and i should say that based on the testimony we heard from the disabilities here is what we have we took the approach in the report not just singling out although there are some special recommendations for the disabilities and limited english proficiency that the recommendations, whether talking about the recommendations or the other ones on technology, we look at them that from the perspective of the general population and also how it is going to affect specific populations of take the recommendations that we have in the polling places so that the voters if they are waiting in line don't have to stand up and also have a particular aspect for voters with disabilities so it's with regards to the specific populations.

one other aspect particular to the voters with disabilities but have a greater effect nationwide is the disappearance of schools with polling places and ben mengin of the crisis with response to the technology there is a looming crisis with the decline in the number of schools serving in the polling places and that is because in the wake of the sandy hook massacre schools are closing themselves from outsiders with a are not safe for the students and teachers and it's having an effect on the elections and the schools are the most accessible polling places out there and if you lose the schools, you lose a huge number of the polling places and that is something that we try to draw attention to. the schools that are concerned about security issues we have the states and localities conducting so that there isn't a

security trade-off. finally the commission endorses opportunities to vote before election day. whether that is no excuse absentee voting or in person early voting in this unanimous among those who testified whether democrat or republican that channelling all of the elections in to one day just magnifies the potential for the administrative disaster. so while there are good ways and bad ways to do early voting and absentee voting and there are cautions in their report about things that local administrators have to pay attention to, it was clear regardless of the party affiliation that they were endorsing early and absentee voting. let me conclude by saying that there is more in the report that bob mentioned there are on-line tools in the project. some of these will allow local

officials to manage their resources and to combat the problem. others popularized by rock the vote and the online voter registration tools that are open source and downloadable so that the officials can use them. there are 26 appendices online at www.supportthevoter.gov and one of them includes a survey of local officials that performed to the commission over 3,000 local officials that we could see what their concerns were so this was more than just a reported project, it will have a life beyond this commission and we look forward to going out into the field and advocating for that. >> it might be helpful to have the commissioners do it as you

wish and the opportunity to comment on what was said and then open it up. do you have any initial thoughts klaxon >> i guess just to say that this whole process has been a privilege and an honor to serve with my colleagues on the commission and what was critical to me is mature the voice of the local administrator was heard and in the context of how they are administered, with those administrative decisions are as an impact on the voting population and one of the things we talked about throughout the course of the last six months although it seems much longer and much shorter than six months is that when you have a usable system that takes the of devotee into account tall levels whether it is access to registration, the ability to obtain a valid, that you can understand, it

really raises the tide with it so it was important for us to make sure that we include -- if you are not familiar with the administration it's going to sound like we are so far down in the weeds and we are that there are also big picture ideas in here as well and so we are just very hopeful as i believe it has already been mentioned that some of these recommendations can be put in place and they are already put in place in some areas of the country and so we know that they can work when applied correctly. >> i would second what she has said. almost everything we have been here has been implemented somewhere and it is any good working order. it does have the applicability to other jurisdictions around the country. i'm one of the commission who does believe that there is more commonality than differences between the jurisdictions.

election day as the report indicates, we are down looking at the polling place coming into the voting machine with a good accurate list and everything that goes along with it. this whole effort has been enhancing the experience of the voter and that's where it begins. there is a lot behind it and i very strongly endorsed a professional as asian of the administration. it is a profession even though the politicians that we answer to it needs to find its way into the public administration. it's not just learning on the job, but there's actually much that can be brought from the academic community. so it's been a great experience. i've been around a number of years, the director since 1981 and it's amazing you learn so

much when you see what's going on around the country and every year i learn something new so it is a great field and there's lots there. >> thanks very much for having us. i don't have much to add. i guess one comment i would make is that this is not intended to be filed in the bill necessarily. it may result in legislation that it's intended for the voters to read as well so there are a lot of great ideas and we would hope that you ask your officials and hold them accountable to some of the benchmarks that are in this support. >> i will conclude by saying a lot of times we see media reports and here officials and politicians -- and i used to be one and i still do a lot of politics and we fight a lot about how the elections should be run and to me one of the most important ways is we had a mission of ten people who vote differently who had different

ideological views but found common ground on a bunch of ideas that i guarantee you will make the voting system work a lot better if they are implemented across the country in local districts. my take away is a state doesn't gather dust and the recommendations are adopted, that those who care about the elections, regular citizens will ask their officials and administrators to adopt these and let's stop fighting the partisan political gains and let's look at making these work better and this is a good manual to help us do just that. >> before we turn this over i want to conclude with by saying because you ended on a note about partisanship, as i said we looked at the public administration and expectations of the voters across the political spectrum as if we keep

our eye on the standards that need to be worried about, but as a was said at the outset, i don't see us ever voting the same way. maybe if you sort of turn to the dark side. [laughter] [inaudible] we are going to go off and fight each other some more. it's just kind of what we do. we fight each other all the time we are going to be fighting continuously. [laughter] but we were able -- and i cannot thank him enough, we were able to acknowledge a disagreement but keeping in mind if the standards that got in the report we were able life to get something done. last but not least i see some

representatives here on the national association who provided extraordinary cooperation and information and venues for the discussions and bringing together the stakeholders and interested groups. with that i think we can open it up. >> we can open up for questions and discussions. >> you're talking about having recommendations that you hope the officials will read and take to heart and implement. where necessary some of these things involve legislative changes and i wondered if there would be any not reached the state legislatures and county legislature's for the implementation of some of these recommendations and what format out reach that would take.

>> in general, everyone on this commission -- we want to go become evangelists for this project so in general -- we did in the process. i don't know if you have a meeting organized specifically with them yet but that is our goal going forward is to go to the same groups and parties decision makers? so when they have their big meeting this year, we would love to be on the agenda to talk about that and with respect to the states, we want to engage our local legislative leaders on that. >> we have an invitation that we will be testifying on next month but we certainly would welcome the upper tennessee to engage with legislatures which is the one that is documented for example of the availability of the polling places and the role that the schools play. it's very controversial in some

respects but it needs to be fought through and we would be happy to engage with the ultimate decision makers. >> we will be visiting with the association of the secretaries of state and the national association of the state election directors when they have their washington meeting. that is another example of that. i thought people used to have meetings and apparently now they have convenience. >> you brought up the issue with of the eac and i was wondering whether you found any of the problems as a result of [inaudible] did any of the problems result from that? >> you can take the first shot. >> the situation has a sort of function as you look at the report take for example the best

practice. we found them extraordinarily helpful. we read through them and we included them in the appendices in every part, so the e ac has done some very good work. the conflict about which we are not expected to express an opinion that have left them currently without the ability to function. you have to take it is any given when we look at something like the crisis in the technology so you can have the view that he wanted the ec or amend it all together but you have to accept as a given that in the meantime while that issue is played out we are falling further and further behind the curb if you will and what we need in a way of the technology to that minister that he elections. the commission at any given

point is going to set the issues up but it doesn't mean any of us share the same view on whether or not eac as a federal commission and is properly structured. we don't need to express the view on that if there is a question that simply has to be addressed recognizing that there needs to potentially be an alternative for the purpose of the standard setting certification. >> i basically agree with that. it has become a problem and fixing the problem is beyond what we can do as a commission. as i said before, the machines are going to run out of time to operate eac gets fixed so you have to do something else to be able to move the technology

forward. yes? >> [inaudible] can telling the congress what it should and should not do [inaudible] i think they made more this morning we will leave it there. >> there are 8,000 jurisdictions that administer elections and this is historically a state and local function and most virtually everything we are talking about implementing here has to be done at the state and local level i think. a cynic on that very point do you think the recommendation such as providing the polling

place resource formula should be taken because it has 67 different counties and i think you so much for your recommendation but should it be at the state will to have a bigger impact? >> [inaudible] the wave these formulas work -- and there are three different ones and we are not putting our finger on one in particular is that you have to assess how long it takes to vote. you have to have estimates of the number of machines and an idea of the number of people. of those variables will depend

on the state but often be contingent on the county so the formula that they use actually just depends on for example of voting technology that you are using so for the state to mandate one might end up being counterproductive because if it isn't sensitive to the differences in the counties. in other states where they have more uniform architecture but one of the things as you play around with them on line you will see they do different things. i would encourage you to look at the first one on the tools which will predict how long the lines will be if you only put the two machines in the polling place and expect as many people to come throughout the day and it

really does depend on a lot of the other aspects of the ecosystem as to what is going to happen, and we put these out there for them to be improved. we have six months to do this, and different states are going to take the software and try to improve upon it. florida we hope would do that as well. >> we are repeating something that happened that one of the hearings in miami and in june. we had the county officials in charge that had the major lines, and one of them that have long lines said i guess the turnout was exactly on the nose lines at your polling places? but it wasn't just that the

polling places. in fact the counties in florida where there were long lines a was a very small percentage, less than 1% of the actual polling places in the county that had lines but 100% of reporters saw not 100% by any stretch of the voters. so that is a question on having individual polling places where the resources were not allocated properly in the county or not having a big enough facility to handle things. but if you our iain election administrator on the county level, you are going to be closest to seeing how many registrations you have in the months before the election in and figure out how you are going to allocate your resources. you have 100 machines and say i'm going to put ten in each polling place, that's probably not a sound administrative decision because you have different numbers of voters in

each of those ten places. i'm not sure that a state can manage that function but to do it with a granularity of detail has to be folks on the ground in the location. >> thinking back to the training we did when i was the secretary for kentucky, i think if i were the secretary of state now, one of the tools i would want to train on devotees and expose the county clerk's to all three of these and feel that my former county clerks came to us and we talked about these and he was ecstatic to have these tools. he came up to me and said this is great i'm going to use this in the next election and kentucky is one of the state's protecting in each county and so they said there would be hard to mandate. the other part of this is for the voters to know that the tools are out there and readily accessible and if they are not being used in the county to

highlight maybe some of the administrators who are not taking advantage of the resources out there and to allocate the resources that they do have and there is a bit of a voter and advocate responsibility as well. some things we mandated and some will just be through the advocacy some of the recommendations will be implemented that we can't too. >> i think it will be crucial for the states to take the lead to make sure across the state, through training and what not and that isn't necessarily closing one tool or another. but if we are going to shoot for authority minute standard, there is a lot of work that is planned to have to get done to get there and as someone pointed out earlier today, they went around a lot of these places and as far as the other one having a problem of the person testifying, so there is sort of that sense that people accept what they are doing as okay and that isn't always the case so

there is a state role here but the bottom line is the local units are the ones that have to apply and use it. >> certain states like arizona and kansas were to enact more stringent on their requirements for the state elections and federal i was just wondering if that was an issue that you had looked at and if so if you drew any conclusions on matt. >> talking about the current issues and arizona? one. >> thank you for having us all here and noting that it is the least complied with the voting right statute and also room for

recommending that the new gse is unseemly incorporate the voter registration work in these other elements. i wonder why did you stop from also recognizing public-service agencies which of course do such an important job in transacting with possible eligible voters in the transition with information and also for example these other exchanges. >> i think there is reference in the public service agencies. mauney role on the commission was to make problems for the dmv. [laughter] >> do your job, it's real simple. and the same goes for the agency registration and i think there is a reference in there. we highlighted the dmv because

it crosses so many different populations within a state and its hit there in some form or another with the same thing holds true for the public service agency. the law needs to be implemented. there are organizations that do actively seek the implementation and other nefarious means such as the courts and state agencies that there is nobody out there doing it with regard to the dmv and you can look at the eac data and shows most states are not doing their job in that regard. a number of applications are well under 50% in most states and any state that is doing motor voter that would be active well above 50% so that is something that hits every population but in no way is meant to diminish the public agency.

>> you mentioned specific populations that have access issues like military voters and the english. i was wondering if you found any racial or socioeconomic disparities in the access and if you did, if you would consider any proposals to target those populations. >> the context in which we discuss enforcement of these particular statutes was in the context that we do have various support requirements for the protection of the population with the voters that simply need improved enforcement and compliance. beyond fact, our view is that for the populations that we were talking about and others across-the-board these recommendations would be highly beneficial. i think everybody is aware that the presidential election years

if you are going to find some of these breakdowns in jurisdictions where the voters in the socio-economic range that you are referring to freeze i did and what we are proposing is kind to make a significant difference for them to access. >> why does the commission not say anything about the variety and the voter i.d. law now? is it not recommended a word did you just not find that to be -- >> it's not part of the charge. there are certain legislative matters and also matters that we do not actively engaged in that were not in our charge to address so that and a few others like the voting rights act enforcement were not ones on which the commission expresses an opinion.

>> you say you want to be evangelists for this project which is great and you also say that you received unanimously i think advice from the election administrators at expanding early voting was a key way of reducing the lines the generally improving of the election experience. as you know there are efforts in states to reduce rather than expand early voting opportunities. by understand you don't want to get into the kind of political advocacy but given what you found in your report, can we count on you to condemn those efforts? [laughter] >> the report doesn't get into the business of the individual states in terms of what they may

choose or choose not to do. early voting is something that is prevalent in the majority of states. 32 states plus the district of columbia have early absentee voting. 25 of the state's you will no doubt be surprised to know have republican governors were secretaries of state chief election officials so there's pretty much bipartisan agreement in those states. another 32 states plus the district of columbia have early voting. i'm sorry, there's no excuse absentee voting in 27 states and 21 of those have republican governors or chief election officers. so the early voting is something that is taking flight in the country as a whole, but it is up to those individual states to decide the days and the times and allocate the resources as they see fit.

>> i would like to add the scope of that recommendation is also sort of setting the standards and expectations that the states like washington, oregon that's what they think is the best alternative for the election day voting process. it's a traditional election day model starting in the morning and ending at night for the entire country devotee and under a number of options the states have to provide the traditional opportunities to vote i think the voters expect them and there will be a significant accountability on the part of the officials to provide them and i think that is what we are trying to push for is this motion very strongly that there will be multiple opportunities available to vote before election day. >> if i could add to that one of the cautions that we have in the

report is that for jurisdictions that do shift some of the voting to that earlier period that they do not reduce the services that they are making available to the voters on the election de to dramatically. you can reduce that you don't want to do so in such a fashion that now you are creating a bottleneck on election de and still may be have long lines during the voting period so there is certainly some cautionary tales on how the early voting is done and how it affects the voting process on election de as well. >> one question [inaudible] any particular ideas that you hadn't heard about a year ago but like any new things the commission learned and as you expect to move across the country and a broad one is the

fact that we may be repeating some of the same and if you look at the 2012 election and think about it, ohio [inaudible] we quite likely would have had a similar and unsatisfying outcome so what do you think your recommending here that we will not be in a similar position like and for commissions and other smart groups that have been looking at this what are we not getting that you might be getting at today? ..

i should say both of those points are related to the early voting conversation. if you're looking machines and if you're losing polling places, you have to expand the amount of time people will have to vote. you can get them through the process before the election day. and so there is, this is an honest assessment, i hope you will agree, in that report about

the problems that people have been paying attention to and the problems on the horizon, it is possible these problems, unless we react upon them will get worse, not better. and then in thinking about the points, looking at the technology and look at the changes that are possible out there, we had a whole day of the hearing in cincinnati were look at the different types of voting chains which are possible and so the commission endorses the move to commercial off the shelf devices in order to facilitate. so long as you have a voter verified paper trail there's a reason you can't vote on the same types of technology we use for everything else in our lives. and so we are pushing in that direction in ways that maybe were not expected. >> so one of the things that's very exciting that experts in

the field of usability, accessibility, computer experts have been working on for the last couple of years is shifting where the ballot is cast or where it's marked, and then for instance, you can download a ballot onto any device. you market. it embeds your choices in your selection in a code. you go into a polling place. you were able to scan of that code in on the screen but it tells you what you've already selected. you can verify it so it's compliant. e-verify that's what you want. you cast the ballot printed out and taking over having to stand in, which cuts down the amount of time people are spinning in the polling place. this type of technology can be used by military and overseas voters. it can be used at home by voters that have their own accessibility software on their home pcs or smart devices. and it across the board would shift some of the voting but not

the actual passing of the ballot and the counting of the ballot away from the polling place would alleviate some of those security issues because the voter is verifying what's being done before it is printed and counted. with that said they're still going concerns about your code usage. so these are the sort of things that need to be completely flushed out that there's a lot of excitement there. when you talk about the communities that are perhaps underserved you don't want to get everything. not everyone has online resources so when you look at the research, the percentage of our population that have some service or device in their pocket is for ever increasing. it's what our younger voters are demanding of us, and yo think as election administrators we need to be thinking about how we are going to be marking ballots, passing our ballots and have our ballots be counted in the next 10 and 20 years. i think that's very exciting.

>> what i would say is, first everything that was said i agree with. i think about the opportunity we have, given the rise of technology, the processing speed, the cheapness of david. and also in defense of so many other commissions, after the 2000 election, most states didn't have a single state wide database. so out of the first commission came recommendation to unify that. i found it flabbergasting. i assumed everybody had that. it was a striking it didn't exist. the ability now with statewide web come with technology and speed now to do the eric like projects, to do online voter registry, kevin ipad, there's a real opportunity because the technology didn't exist before for carter, baker and carter-four after 2000 that we have now for voter registration modernization.

that's something i think my one hope a my toppled, i have lots f hopes but my toppled is we can really accelerate that because there's some momentum behind us. it's truly bipartisan and i think it will expand to more states. that couldn't have been that are recommended after the '04 or the 2000 election. >> something i had appreciation of, they help tutor is on was the lack of uniform data collection. you would think that that would not be difficult to collect and i would've assumed you could just figure out in sort of a uniform way all the various data points you need to casting and counting ballots. not true at all. one of the things we do, called for in the report is a much more uniform way to gather all the data to be able to really assess the problems. but it's in a really disorganized state.

>> two things, really. one, the number of young people who vote still lags behind most every other constituency, except me in presidential years. i'm wondering if any of the recommendations you look at tried to do with a question about how and where young people get their ideas and will vote? the other thing i want to pick up on was what was just said, with electronic database, did you look at the question of statewide portability as a way to sort of limit some of the election day problems? >> on the first part of your question i think the general modernization will go a long way to helping out young voters to also -- [inaudible] he argued that part of this legacy much lower young people turn out because of the data is so bad. that they don't vote that much less than other populations.

they are registered to vote but they aren't really there. they are somewhere else. it's a very mobile population anywhere. even if they are registered are not in the right spot. they use technology as a tammy talked about, using smartphone. to the extent we can make that better i think that will help. we will never get up to the point of equality but i think that will go a long way. the portability of data, i think other than the context of what eric -- [inaudible] >> yeah. i guess that would be the address to that, the second part of your question. >> one of the main reasons young people don't vote is because they are the most mobile population. in the u.s. we require that you reregister every time you move. they are moving every year or two. one-fourth of the u.s. population moves every two years. most mobile population in the world. because we require reregistration each time you

move, then the barrier of the registration process will affect some population more than others. the more you can get the registration problem solved, which is to say make it as easy as possible and merge with other databases and make sure that it is as fluid as possible in an online a comment like the one we discussed, the more likely it is that those populations will also register. other things that lead to lower turnout, beyond the scope of the commission the registration is a large part. >> one more quick point on that is we do the recommendations in regards to the recruitment poll workers. for jurisdictions that have the ability to recruit 16 and 17-year-olds as poll workers, which we've done in my home jurisdiction now for more than 10 years, so they are of the age of voters. so i have done some research looking to see, are they more likely to register at the point they turn 18, and when they register do they vote?

not only that but the frequency of the voting more than their counterparts who did not serve to work the polls? it's all very positive results. once you get them engaged and they understand what the process is, they have a vested interest in him we kind of continue to be current and recent voter. >> speaking of the younger voters, a lot of the nifty things we talked about, has it been discussed at all to have a guess and electronic polling ability where, if i'm in virginia i can still vote in my home state of michigan while i'm just your college? or are there still to me cybersecurity concerns that have people beaming their votes communism 800 miles over the internet? >> are you talking online voting? >> i guess i'm not voting but in an awful place. we take the qr code in an swipe driver's license and it was a michigan, 12th district and not virginia.

>> i don't think we got -- i think we talked about both centers but not that. that will be the next commission, right? [laughter] >> just to follow up on the early voting questions, not getting into details. is it fair to say the commission is encouraging those states that don't provide any form of no excuse absentee voting to do so without -- [inaudible] that those states should do it now? [inaudible] to consider and adopt the ones that we can agree on. >> it may not be no excuse. and maybe in person. >> it could be in person, it could be by mail. >> we mentioned a little bit about for those locations where they have expanded their early voting options do not reduce holding places to do on election day. we also include some

administrative procedures for jurisdictions that do vote by mail. to making sure the voter has the ability to track the ballot using united states postal service, tracking codes, in addition to their ability to go into a polling place and dropped off a ballot and there are a variety of very common sense approaches for both the voter to have power over watching where the ballot is in the system and then also for local election administrators to make sure they know, you need to be at the close of the deadline at the post office to pick up every single eligible ballot at the very last minute and then take it back to your office. so it's way down in the weeds. >> that point stands on its own. the more of the reforms that are provided, the better. right? again, there may be arguments for a variety of reasons, but as ben said, they may arrive to

different conclusions about how much or whether early interest building. we are saying to the voters as many opportunities to vote as possible. >> at any point did you identify a role in your ancillary work that the federal commission could play in advancing or directing these roles as you set out? particularly in the absence of a quorum on the eac? >> we did not address the federal election commission. i know there are current and former conditions in the audience you. all of them are distinguished public servants and have done a wonderful job. [laughter] >> at least in the aftermath of the last presidential election at least the perception was, i don't know if it did supported it or you look into it, certain areas that may be underserved in other areas of governance were

also underserved in the voting experience in certain populations were impacted more than of the population. is that something you looked into at all? if so, we are able to come down with reasons why certain areas have longer lines than others, certain populations might have been impacted more than others? >> i think i partly -- i may not have folded after the last time around looking at different reasons why, you might have long lines, there's no question that issues of resources very between jurisdictions have an impact. there's a variety of factors. you could have multiple factors that contribute to the long line problem. as i mentioned in response to an earlier question we are confident if we take these recommendations it will significantly collapse the different experience of voters have. regardless whether it's an urban location or rule location.

we think they will have an equalizing impact in achieving improvement across a wide swath of voters. >> i was one of them you mentioned several times, different outlooks, and i was wondering as individual commissions you at all during the process were limited, you came up with the unanimous bipartisan recommendations that really aren't political. i wonder if you felt limited as individuals that maybe you would've had maybe some recommendations, make different recommendations to think you could agree on and if that but limiting or by kind of narrowing your focus he felt like you could focus more and come up with better ideas?

>> i don't think our focus was narrow. i think there are millions of voters experience casting about in this country is even better if these recommendations are adopted. so i think the recommendations represent the hard thinking best way to do things but if the answer is, if the question you're asking is if i thought about all issues, in the united states and i was entirely in charge of them, it would go that -- [inaudible] >> i would be amused by it. >> you would be entertained. >> what i write a report? no. probably not. but i don't think because we can't agree on everything doesn't mean that by looking at issue a particular way and then what we can do to address that issue we have accomplished anything less. we still would be bringing --

there are five take a long alone. [inaudible] a host of issues we can talk about, machines networking. the best data suggest that our 10 million voters in the united states who waited in line either, five of them longer than half an hour. 5 million of them longer than an hour. we are trying to do something for those voters. we are trying to do something for english proficiency voters, long jurisdictions so that you don't have some jurisdictions that are just running smoothly and well resourced implementors and others that are crippled by resource issues and so forth. and so i think we were all really committed to voters and i don't think it means we can solve every problem in our electoral process, but the ones that we are defining,

fundamental public administration that affects millions of voters we were able to find common ground on. >> i would like to give the president credit for giving us a lot of issues to address, but leaving out a couple that we probably wouldn't have been able to agree and that might depend the story. rather than all these great recommendations that we have that can make a big difference for millions of voters. so i think that was great direction by narrowing -- i don't want to say narrow. but by defining in such a way we've got a great report that's full of a lot of ideas and a lot of detail that will make a big difference. >> not to assume the most controversial issues also the most consequential. because as bob said, these recommendations event that will affect millions, tens of much of voters. the registration system, you can

crack that code and get let down stream payoffs throughout the electoral system. obviously, dealing with long lines we have the data from last election. so bidded out or recommendations, getting more information about what is happening in the polling places and have huge payoffs so we get an accurate picture of the types of problems going forward that we can address. let alone the machine issues we talked about that are of real concern. so that the few wavy imports of an issue not by how much airtime is getting but how many voters it's going to be affecting come these are the issues that are going to have really a serious impact. >> i apologize for not -- [inaudible] did you or to what extent you look at the emergency planning? especially in the wake of -- [inaudible] >> we look at it carefully.

in fact what is actually already out there does a really good job of highlighting that issue. it's all contained in the appendix, the national association of savage's estate has a particularly good program. 's we did look at it. we were impressed by what others have done before, going to need to add to that. >> one thing, states need to start specify what the contingency plans are, so that for rescheduling elections in the event of a disaster. sometimes the ball is just going to drop and get don't have an answer. same as with having someone in charge who makes the call as to whether an election has to be rescheduled. but there's a national association of sector is states task force that we point people to. >> sandy hit certain parts of the country by of the country

but first response came from all over the coach. giving us firs first responderse flexibility and other states back home about them to vote absentee to give them the ability to do that if they're in a no excuse stay, that was something for us to rely on. saint kitts new jersey, whatever, but the folks in ohio became to help out, they need some help as well. >> that was critical. many states have in place where, if a natural disaster or the issue hits their own state, they have in place on what's going to happen just in their state. like an arizona we're sending people to the east coast. there was a real aha moment i think, and we talked about not only what has to happen on the date of the election is impacted but your infrastructure is impacted, and so it's really critical that it would have the contingency plan in place and then a plan b., f. and g. as well. >> recommendation for military

and overseas voters you mentioned earlier? >> first, we have made great strides as a nation -- [inaudible] there are still challenges. one of them is that if you're a military voter and you're trying to figure out how to register and vote, going through the states website will often be not availing to you. and so we go through in detail how, what these other states need to do in terms of improving the website to make it facilitate, voting by military and overseas voters. second, and this does get into the weeds but as you talk to military and overseas voters as we did, it is clear to them that different states are implementing it in different ways. so the federal right in absentee ballot and the federal application which is supposed to

be failed states are reading different things in different states. they have to get some uniformity in that regard in order to make sure that two soldiers similar situated at her not having different roles apply to them. than the are other aspects of the other recommendations that a disproportionate valley for military and overseas voters from something like online voter registration. obviously, it's better for those who are farther away from the polling place, et cetera. all of those are examples of the recommendations that we make with respect to military and overseas voters. again, there's many best practices and there. one thing we heard is that what is not as the assistance officers, uneven participation and so that you need to really integrate the voter registration process into the intake process for soldiers when they go to basis so that they can register as soon as possible.

>> i'm wondering if you could speak a little bit about some of the work that you did looking at poll workers? because they are a very important part of election day, and so far the only mention i've heard is the recruitment of 16 and 17-year-olds. i'm just wondering what research went into that aspect of the report and did it to any limitations being that it is so specific jurisdiction as your jurisdiction? >> so, we have a long list of recommendations in reference to the recruitment, training, retention of poll workers, and we defer a lot of it to the work of the election commission which has election management guidelines and quick start guidelines. but i do the things we highlighted had to do with recruitment of metal and 16 and 17-year-olds but also sponsorship of polling places, many times groups and organizations whether it's a business or a fraternal organization compliance club

will do and they will provide the poll workers for you. as well as recruiting from within our own counties and state governments. so allowing government imposed of the day off to work the polls. when we get into the training, making sure across the country there's some jurisdictions where the first time you work for both you receive training and you never have to be trained again. other jurisdictions on the other end of the spectrum is that you have to be trained for every election for which you were. there's the frequency of training, the quality of the training, the duration of the training. so we have tried to touch on all of those, and it's all going to be available in the appendices as well. to be able to look at and improve their training, and coupled with that we do recommend that states take a look at the training that's being done by the locality in their jurisdiction of the state. if they currently don't have

anything to do with the training, to ensure that there is some uniformity from one local jurisdiction to the next. because in a statewide recount that's what a discrepancy will certainly come to light. so it's best to the uniform training practices that are being implemented. >> a detail of the actual report, issued website going to have a place where people can send in comments and suggestions about your actual recommendations so that people can follow up with their thoughts about it and their experiences? it would seem to me to be a useful thing. >> obviously you can e-mail any one of us directly if you'd like but there is a comment on the website which will be, i think still running, a good month to go, maybe longer. >> it seems to me for people to use it, if your website is going to be a resource and you've got these various tools on there, it

seems to be the comment section should continue to be up there so people can continue to comment on it as the outfit try out some of your suggestions to see if they work in the real world. >> that's why they are hosted at the caltech, mit website. let's be clear about what these tools are and what we think the future is. they need to be perfected and tailored to jurisdictions. and so these are the first outlays of them. and yes, they are encouraging people to send their identifying information, comments, and so you will see that on the websi website. >> just going back to the early voting for a second. was there any suggestion as to what that would entail? or is just kind of a more of a blank a good idea to expand early voting? >> good idea to expand voting before election day. understand the voters don't want to be permitted to the 12 hour,

traditionally election day. without specifying, for example, early voting ought to be to a half weeks. it out to included two weekends. it out to be from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. as you know, there are wide differences of opinion. someone who's had a chance to litigate those issues, but as a part of the commission report, our main point is you can't administer elections -- [inaudible] by asking them all to vote on that one day. we need to provide multiple opportunities for voting. we've had voting in person as one of them and there are other forms of voting that could be provided as well. that's the approach we took. >> i think we wanted, the issues with the postal service, i mean, in the future of 16 week mail what that means for voting. we really didn't weigh in on

what that means other than it's a concern. some dates we talked about earlier, some said to have by now, all states allow some level of absentee balloting. there's leakage is right now. is really, really high. much higher, a lot of concern about residual votes in the 2000 election with voting systems. think about as we go through the challenges that will impact the election, not just in washingt washington. >> you mentioned that there's a lack of online resource for military and overseas voters. did you find a lack of online resources for the voting public as a whole and what kind of recommendation on state websites can put on their websites to make voting more accessible? >> that provide some of the co