strikes. the report comes days before next weeks the story election and the key federal reserve meeting. the unemployment rate remained at 4.1% according to the labor department. , upcoming democratic vice presidential nominee tim walz is holding an event in detroit. the candidates from both democratic and republican presidential tickets are making stops in michigan today. it has been a key battleground state in the last two presidential elections in the sight of dozens of visits by both campaigns of this year. in michigan with four days until the election the presidential race remains a tossup. live coverage of governor walz wind event gets underway here on c-span2. david becker the foundr and executive director of the founder -- center for work the been around for about

eight years to support elections that voters should and do trust. i work with the democratic secretaries, local election officials to put out research that shows it is easier to register the vote than ever before, more availability of online registration, same-day registration. and it's easier to vote than ever before. 97% of all voters could vote early in the united states. 45 states are offering early voting. 36 states in d.c. offer no excuse mail-in voting. then we also run the legal defense network, which over the last several years, election officials haven't targeted for threats and harassment, sometimes even by the former president of the united states, and they often need a lawyer for advice and assistance, and we have recruited a network of lawyers all across the country who are willing to be paired with them regardless of party

and work for them for free to assist. how is it funded, and doesn't have a partisan leaning one way or the other? guest: we get funded primarily by major foundations as well as individuals who choose to donate u.s.. all of our funding and everything else is publicly available. host: millions of americans have voted early either via absentee ballot or in person early voting. what do you make of that? guest: it's going to hit 50 million today. first of all, it's very good news. the more people who vote early means more people are taking advantage of the convenience of early voting and it is actually an important security measure, how important it is to spread voting out over a series of days and modes.

that way if there is any kind of event, intentional like ransomware or unintentional like the crowd flare situation this summer that caused some delays in arizona during their primary day, or just the weather, which we seen, it spreads that out to make it easier to mitigate any possible challenges that you have. especially with this information. if voters choose to vote early to make themselves a moving target for disinformation they could try to confuse them on how to vote. it's really good news. i caution people not to take any partisan message from the early voting. we just don't know what this early vote is, it's coming from all over. it seems to be skewing slightly more women, but also slightly older, so that can mean a variety of different things. host: when are we going to know

the result? guest: it depends. first of all we should mention that it has always taken us days if not weeks to count all the ballots. there is a misconception that to get the margin used to be much wider, that states were counting ballots fast, but that's not true. they were discounting enough ballots that the media could call the race. california will have counted a very tiny percentage of its votes, but it's pretty obvious which way california is very likely to go in the presidential race whereas george is going to count ballots very fast at the margin could be very narrow so we are going to need a lot more votes before we can understand who won georgia. it's always taken that long, that's why electors don't meet until six weeks after the election, so states can actually figure out who is going to win and get their electoral vote. so understanding that, it all depends on the margin.

the margin is the biggest variable. if it is very close, then by all accounts it will be close. everyone rationally should be able to process the idea that their candidate won or lost. we will likely need a couple of days in some states, particularly pennsylvania, wisconsin, and possibly arizona and nevada. in pennsylvania and wisconsin they can begin processing mail in pennsylvania early until election day, meaning they can look at the envelope, confirm the information, take the ballot out and put it the scanner. arizona and nevada can preprocess but they've got a lot of mail votes on election day. they are going to have to take some time to do that. that can mean we are going into later in the week thursday or perhaps even friday. if i were to guess, we will probably no earlier than we did in 2020 just because we are not in covid and that means we have more people working, and a lot

of technology has been improved. philadelphia has greatly improved its processing ability to get those mail ballots counted. i think we are probably looking at thursday or friday before we know. host: phone numbers for viewers to come in as usual split by political party. republicans, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independents, (202) 748-8002. as folks are calling and i will share this headline. it is from the wall street journal today. voting battles begin to hit supreme court. i want you to just kind of walk through what is going on. here is the graph that describes it from the wall street journal. republican national committee and election officials in pennsylvania asked supreme court justices to block authorities recounting provisional ballots cast by voters who previously sent mail-in ballots that were invalidated because of errors such as assembling the return envelope incorrectly. guest: it's a complicated issue

that is probably not going to affect many votes, but when the ballots come in, they have to be inside an inner secrecy sleeve, a second envelope that is sealed to preserve the secrecy. it doesn't need to be there but that is what pennsylvania law says. what election officials can do in some counties, is they count by the weight of the ballot whether or not certain ones have the secrecy sleeve or not because the scales are that precise. and if they don't, in some counties they rejected those voters and say if you want to come down you can cast a provisional ballot, and if your ballot doesn't have a secrecy sleeve, that will count. what the pennsylvania supreme court has held is under state law, that is a fine thing to do, and now the republicans have taken the u.s. supreme court. but this is a very state law issue. it is highly unlikely the united states supreme court is even going to take the case. the pennsylvania supreme court has refused to stay the order pending the appeal, and the

appeal relies a lot on this idea that state legislatures have complete power to do whatever they want without regard to the state constitutions or the state judiciary. this has largely been rejected in a case from about a year ago that came out of north carolina by the supreme court. so i think the supreme court is going to stay out of this. the supreme court in general doesn't want to get involved in these election disputes. i think we are going to see that repeatedly through this process for the u.s. supreme court allows the states to continue to run elections as they see fit. host: not as much of a swing state, but virginia's republic attorney general asked to revise the state voter purge with some 1600 alleged noncitizens from the roles after lower courts found that canceling voter registration so close to the election violates federal law. host: there's those co-big problems with what virginia was trying to do.

first, there is a very well-known federal law that is called the national voter registration act passed in 1993 which says that allstate are covered which includes virginia cannot conduct large-scale systematic removal within 90 days of the election. that is in there because sometimes states get it wrong. people are coming in with like that, they're doing the best that they can, but if they do that in 2023 there is still plenty of time for that person to get the register. 90 days before the election, they might not even know there is a problem. that's why that law is in place. it's been around for 30 years. the second big problem is they made a lot of mistakes. there are a lot of identified citizens on this noncitizens list when they went to court and proof were shown at court. so they kinda show through their actions how important this 90 day quiet period is.

again, i expect the u.s. supreme court not to weigh in on this. i think this is pretty clearly the fourth circuit confirmed the district court opinion. it is likely the supreme court is going to stay out of these very state-specific, although this one does involve federal law. host: how concerned are you about non-us citizens voting a week from today? guest: i'm not very concerned and that is because of the documentation and work that frankly republican election officials have done to show how extremely rare the problem of noncitizen voting is. the reason is extremely rare, one it is illegal and has been for 30 years under very specific statutes that say it is a crime with jail time and a fine if he noncitizen votes. also they are going to get deported if they vote as noncitizens. a lot of people don't necessarily realize this, in

2002 there was a law in the u.s. that requires every single voter who registers to provide id when they register. most always a driver license which is checked against data. you have to show proof of legal presence. if you show a green card that will be flagged. a u.s. birth certificate or passport, it won't be flagged. that is really important. three single voter has a flat id will be registered to vote. and then lastly as i mentioned, these republicans documented how rare it is. just last week, ohio had alleged that there were about 499 citizens registered to vote. the attorney general found only 6 people he could charge with noncitizen voting dating back to 2014. you are more likely as an ohioan to get hit by lightning than to find a noncitizen voter.

i believe they found nine people dating back to 2008, so over 15 years, who were noncitizens who voted. it does happen, extremely rarely, almost always because of some confusion what they are supposed to do because no one would legally -- rationally put their legal status at risk to cast one ballot in an election which 116 million ballads are going to be cast. host: let me start in delaware, georgetown, line for democrats. caller: good morning. in 2020 and again this year, they were assuring everybody that these voter boxes where you could drop off your balance in these boxes. if i'm not wrong, i saw on the

news the other day that three, may be more of those boxes have been set on fire and all the envelopes in it were burned. i don't know with donald trump is going to make of that, so what you think about, or am i wrong? guest: there have been three instances over the last several weeks. one was a postal box in arizona and i believe over the last few days there was a valid dropbox, one in portland and one in vancouver, washington. only a very small number of ballots were destroyed. the rest were salvageable. in the washington case, it looks like there might have been hundreds of ballots. they also have good ballot tracking in the states. they can tell whether or not

they've got those ballots. they are protections to make sure that no one votes twice, but they can go get a replacement valid. if the ballot comes in, only the first will count. the second won't count. that's really important. we are seven days out from the election at this point, and there are tens of millions of ballots that still haven't been voted that are likely coming in. and if you are still holding onto your mail ballot, i would at this point put it in a dropbox. most are monitored, verified, cleaned out every day so it is very likely that is going to be safe but if you have any doubt that all you can take it right to an election office, handed to an election worker. it will be logged and at that point stored securely and safely the entire time. another option, you can bring your mail ballot to an early voting site, and they will give

you the most of a regular ballot. that will only count if they don't receive your mail ballot and use protections to make sure that each voter only vote once. host: i was talking to a longtime firefighter yesterday and he was talking about the training that he was going through that they have this year. they just got on how to deal with dropbox fires. to use chemical sites, election officials can be on site. in all his years of firefighting training, he doesn't remember getting that kind of training before an election before. what do you make of that story? guest: it's incredible that we live in a country like that right now where there are people who are intentionally -- and by the way, they might be the same

individuals who firebombed both the oregon and washington drop boxes. that person is going to because it is going to be prosecuted and spent several years in jail, so people should know that. but how sad a commentary on our country that there are people out here trying to destroy ballots. maybe they are doing it for partisan reasons, maybe they are doing it to serve chaos. i guarantee what they are doing is sowing a goal that is clearly trying to interfere in our election. what does it say about our country that a nonprofit like mine needs to run the defense network for election officials who are facing abuse, threats and harassment for well over four years now, and are still anticipating even more in the aftermath of the election? i'm very proud to provide that service but i can't wait to restore sanity and i can sunset that and we don't have to offer it anymore. host: line for republicans, good

morning. caller: my question has to do with the mail-in ballots. i guess you sign the back of it with your signature. my question is does every single mail-in ballots to check, compared with the signature that you signed and when you register to vote? guest: that's a great question. what happens in every single state is that signatures check. some states like georgia and minnesota, they actually check id numbers also, which can be very helpful, but in most states it is a signature match. and i can tell you in florida -- host: id numbers like drivers licenses? guest: numbers that are under the flap. they check the signatures. they are making sure that they match. i was just out in clark county, nevada and they use software to

do the initial check but that software is at so high a level that only about 20% of the signatures passed through because they are such exact matches for the signatures on file. the rest go to bipartisan, observed by bipartisan observers where they actually hold them side-by-side with the signature on file to make sure they match into it don't match, they contact voter, double check, asking them to commit or confirm that they had the mail ballot. i think there is another part of this question which is do they use the picture on file from the voter registration form, the answer is almost always yes but some also look at other signatures that might have been more up-to-date like at the dmv or motor vehicles agency or something else just to get the closest possible match you can, because signature matching, election officials error on the side of caution to make sure they are getting these ballots right. if someone sent someone else's mail ballot in two commit fraud,

there is almost no kind of level that it could affect the election. there is a certainty that some of those voters would track -- voters would try to vote and find that out. very small, local levels in places like bridgeport, connecticut. host: georgia, bill, independent. caller: good morning, john and david, my name is bill and i'm calling you from the atlanta georgia or suburban area. my question, and you may have touched on this, but my question is on mail-in ballots. i'm 80 years old. i can't even recall that my signature looked like two years ago when i got my license, but i'm just wondering, as a normal person my age, my signature varies from day to day, whether i'm tired or not. and i was just wondering how frigid are they in terms of

doing the signature verification? and i will take my answer offline. thank you very much. guest: i know quite a bit about georgia. georgia in particular and all the states have very rigid signature verification regimes. georgia, the election officials have one of the finest state investigative euros in the country to do this signature match. in every single state when you get invalid, election officials noted mail you a ballot. because they flagged that record, they will not give you another ballot. if someone tries to show up and impersonate you, they will know you've gotten the mail ballot, you will need to surrender that forecast a provisional ballot which will not count. georgia as most states, as voter id, for that would be pretty much impossible. there are so many protections in

place to make sure that the greater concern, though i think it be handled, is while it may be flagged as not matching because of the signature issues, signatures just changed so much over time. understandable where you're coming from. the county clerk and want to get a hold of him and say they are processing value right now in georgia. we don't have a signature match on you, can you confirm this issue ballot? they might ask you to come in. but in georgia, remember, georgia has this driver's license number on their ballots now. i would almost guarantee your signature is not going to matter much. it's going to domestic into the driver's file. host: this story that we've talked about for a week or so now, adelphia's district attorney now suing to stop the one million dollars daily giveaway from elon musk

pro-trump political group, saying content is indisputably an unlawful lottery that violates pennsylvania's consumer protection laws. what do you think about this? guest: i can't speak to the state laws in pennsylvania, but i can speak the federal laws against vote buying. a federal statute has been on the hook for decades because it is a crime for anyone to offer payment or receive payment in exchange for registering or voting a federal election. this is been applied to things like ben & jerry's offered to give free ice cream cones in 2008 to people who showed up with me i voted sticker. ben & jerry's was informed about this law and they immediately offered ice cream to everybody without the sticker which of course is totally fine. it's been applied to other promotions like starbucks, and these are obviously very innocuous. ben & jerry's wasn't trying to get people to vote for either candidate, and that is not with the lord wires.

this offer by mr. mosk was contingent upon being registered, and contingent upon being registered in one of only seven swing states which indicates a political motive behind it. he's offering the chance to one $1 million, which could be life-changing for a lot of people. the doj sent a letter to say this was illegal. what would normally happen is that rational people would see this is illegal and stop doing this. what he did as he started changing the rationale for this. the people who are getting $1 million and spokespeople for a super pac. i wonder how many of his employees such as businesses are hired by random lot. as an seem like that is very

rational information for what is going on and we should understand that doesn't mean he is going to take it away in handcuffs. but there is probably an investigation that is ongoing and he is potentially in some legal peril down the road. after this has included, there could be some fallout. host: you repeatedly challenged elon musk on x or his claims about the selection. have you had a chance to sit down with him and talk to him, what would you want to tell them? guest: a lot of what i was trying to do wasn't challenging, i was just trying to engage. i wanted to see if there was a good-faith opportunity to educate him about elections. i don't know why anyone would take advice on how elections work from someone who builds electric vehicles. i certainly hope no one to take advice on electric vehicles from someone like me. i think the best piece of advice i could give him, and i doubt very seriously he would take it

because he is very clearly invested in spreading the lies about the election, is to take up the offer of some like stephen richards, a republican recorder from arizona who has tried even harder to engage with him respectfully. he's offered him to have him visit maricopa county, taken on a tour, answer any questions he has. and i think that would resolve a lot of these issues. it's easy if you don't understand our election system at all to believe conspiracy theories about. it's hard to invest your time in learning about and hard to invest your time and serving as a poll worker as millions of americans do, to understand all the checks and balances and redundancies and transparencies in the process that make large-scale voter fraud effectively impossible. and so i hope that we can return to sanity after this election is over and try to actually learn what is going on in our election

system, because right now our election system of the united states is actually more secure than it has ever been. there are more paper ballots than ever before. elon musk said something recently about why democrats oppose paper ballots, and i responded we have over 95% paper ballots in the united states. everything a ballot in all of the battleground states. the only places with no paper component of the ballot all our louisiana and some counties in texas. host: i put the paper into a computer, what do you mean? guest: we have the paper ballot, which the voters themselves are actually seeing in most cases actually marked and verified. they confirm that the choice are on the ballot. machines are much faster accounting, but we don't trust machines. in all of the paper ballots, they audit those machines, which means they take some of those ballots, they count them by hand and compare it with the machine confirms, that the machine got

it right. the most famous audit was the complete 100% hand count of all presidential ballot in 2020 which again confirm the result. that was the same pieces of paper that human beings and voters have actually seen and voters have actually seen input into that scanner. did you have doubts in 2016? because in 2016 we had paper ballots, the entire state of georgia was digital. most of north carolina have no paper ballots. legitimately there is no evidence they didn't. but i didn't hear anyone complaining about paper ballot then and now we have much more paper ballots. in 2020. we have 97% or so in 2024, so we are doing really well. we confirm the results by comparing to the same piece of paper. host: we are coming up on 9:00 a.m. eastern.

this is beverly in illinois come outline for democrats. good morning. caller: i would like to make a comment on the gentleman regarding the supreme court would not like to get involved with this election. that is what i disagree with. they hope it is a tight election and they can be involved. a right wing supreme court would like nothing else but to get involved in this election. i am just praying it is such a landslide that we will not need that at all. that is all i want to comment on. host: i hear that a lot -- guest: i hear that a lot and i understand the concerns. there have been people across the political spectrum that disagree with decisions the supreme court has made in various ways. i will say this. in 2020 the supreme court had opportunities to get involved in in the election and did not take those opportunities. i think it is likely in 2024

they are not looking for those opportunities again. it is the same makeup of the supreme court as in 2020. i think the cases are not well set up for them to take. i know there's a lot of angst about the election. sometimes i hear people worried the losing candidate might try to steal power as we saw in 2020. i think it is possible the losing candidate tries to incite anger and perhaps violence and tries to engage in a desperate attempt to steal power, but i will tell you that is not going to work. it is a strategy doomed to failure. we have guardrails in place. counties and states will certify votes in november. states will certify votes usually in late november and early december. i have 100% confidence and that, particularly in the swing states. the governors will ascertain

electors. they have stood up to these kind of challenges before the electorate will meet on december 17. in january, we will have a joint session of congress provided by vice president kamala harris. while there might be attempt to throw out electors, they will fail because they will rely on 51 senators being able -- willing to disenfranchise an entire state. i do not see that happening. i think the supreme court will not have an opportunity even if they wanted it to intervene in this election in a way that would change the outcome and i do not think they want it. host: this is tommy, republican. good morning. caller: very impressed with mr. becker. i would like to know his opinion on the dominion voting machines.

in georgia, we use dominion voting machines and a lot of questions come up about them, whether they are secure and accurate and that kind of stuff. i would love to have his opinion on that. host: -- guest: we hear this quite a bit. there has been a lot of disinformation spread about the voting machines, not just this one manufacturer but others as well. dominion voting machines were used in states that trump won and states that biden won. the dominion voting machines in georgia and every state except louisiana and texas, where there are some paperless voting machines, the voting machines in every state have paper and they are audited, so people can confirm that those ballots are actually counted correctly. one other point i would make, we want to use voting machines

because we have long, complex ballots in united states. arizona has 79 races on their ballot this year. that is not unusual. in most places, there are multiple pages in dozens of races and you cannot hand count those in one night. he probably cannot in a month. so you want something that can count them fast and accurately. machines do that better than human beings, so we want to use the machines but we do not want to trust them without verifying, so we have verification. one final point about claims made about voting machines in 2020, fox news was sued over false claims. by this voting machine manufacturer. rather than go to trial and risk a verdict against them, they were willing to pay out nearly $800 million in a settlement before trial rather than trying to fight those defamation claims. kari lake and rudy giuliani were

sued for defamation for claims that included claims about the voting machines and both of them rather than go to trial, they were invited to come with evidence that what they were saying was truthful. they both seated liability -- ceded liability. they both said, i lied, let's go to the damages phase. it is easy for people to make wild claims on social media. when you go to court before any judge, and i do not care who appointed those judges because there were at least eight trump appointed judges who heard cases in 2020, all of them held these claims to a standard of evidence. they had to prove those claims. in every case, those claims have been debunked and often the people making these claims about voting machines and ballads of noncitizens have run away from having to provide evidence.

host: can you take on this text? we have gotten some version of this via phone call or text before. this is what lou says in new jersey. morng. i voted for trump. i have been voting since i have never seen an election wereounting wased and it happened were all swg states and my candidatertant was winning at that point. thereafter, it changed. would you not be skeptical of integrity? guest: i would if that happens, but that is not what happened. in every jurisdiction, they were continuing to count ballots. i have this analogy i use. it takes a long time to count ballots, particularly in larger counties. imagine a jellybean jar got like a fishbowl filled with jellybeans. imagine that you are trying to count and see whether there are more red and blue jellybeans.

if it is 70% red, you probably do not need to get to the bottom of the jar to know that red has more jellybeans. he probably say i can call this early. if it is 90%, he might be able to call it right away. if it is 49 point 9% red, you are probably going to have to get to the bottom of the jar. i challenge anyone to take a big jar of jellybeans and see how long it takes you to get to the point where you can do that. if it is a close election, it is going to take a while. they did not stop counting ballots in fulton county for instance, that video taking the ballot box out, they were continuing the effort to count ballots after a brief pause because of a water main break them up but that was a separate issue. they came back and kept counting ballots. there is no way to instantly take 160 million ballots and snap your fingers and magically have them counted.

they count them in batches. what they do then is they know what the count was in each batch and they can take them and review them by hand and make sure the count matches. that is what they do. there was no stoppage of counting. there will not be any stoppage of counting this time around. they will be counting 24/7 in most places. philadelphia was counting 24/7 over days and days. they just have to go through that process. please be patient and recognize these are your neighbors and community members. in counting centers, there are observers from both parties watching this all the time. in detroit in 2020 when they were banging down the doors and almost rioting outside the county center, there were 200 observers on the other seida the door with both parties watching the counting process. please recognize there is no one who wants us to believe that our system is a failure more than our adversaries in russia,

china, and iran. they are spreading this information now and unfortunately being aided by domestic actors. host: in florida, this is ray. you are on with david becker. go ahead. caller: when it comes to the integrity, this is what most people -- the gentleman can sit here and try to bloviate on what he feels as far as the election. what people feel is when some states take four and five days because they will not let them count mail-in ballots until 7:00 that evening -- it seems like states like florida, which i am at we have as many people as arizona or and it does not take is that many days. it is not because it used to be a swing state. they just count the ballots. they get it done. any time waiting for days and all of a sudden you're up a million or down a million, obviously people are going to say something funny is going on,

plus certain parties want to have no identification or voter id. the jim crow 2.0. people will freak out. there are more people voting today that before that law. guest: thanks. first, i agree about georgia. georgia did an excellent job of running an election. it has one of the highest registration rates in the country. they do an outstanding job in georgia. florida, and i'm just sharing facts here, florida does not count all their ballots by 9:00 p.m.. in 2018, they had two statewide races decided by .25%. they could not call those races for days because the margin was so narrow and because under federal law -- florida has a

large military population. those ballots do not come in in some cases until days after the election and they must be counted particularly in close elections. we also have some amnesia about how fast and slow it takes to count ballots. it took a month to resolve florida in 2000. the fact is every single state takes days and weeks to count their ballots because under law they have to have military ballots come in. the only difference is the margin. florida now has wider margins then georgia in the presidential race. it may again. it is likely to be called earlier than georgia. that does not mean florida stopped counting. i guarantee at midnight they still have ballast account. they might be done counting in the early morning hours the ballots that they have, but there are still military ballots in provisional ballots to be accounted for. host: do you know how long counting took in florida? guest: i was working with the

doj in 2000. the doj, very important lien correctly, was informed by the attorney general that we were to stay out of this, that the campaigns were handling it. that is appropriate. i was not in florida at the time. they initially called florida for gore and then took it off the board and went to several hours later. it was really late on the west coast, even later on the east coast with that happened. then it was clear this was just too close to call, so the machine count a lot of these pushcart ballots, we knew there was going to be an issue trying to interpret voter intent from some of these ballots. you had the hanging chad. that is a legitimate margin for litigation. very unlikely that the loser will come back from behind.

for people like me, it may seem like a margin of 10,000 votes, which a few of the states had, is a narrow margin. it is in terms of taking longer to call the race and what the percentages are, but from a recount perspective it is a landslide. there has never been an election with a greater than 1000 vote margin statewide. that has ever been overturned by recount or litigation. it is almost possible. they would have to demonstrate they have enough votes to make up the margin. in might take longer to count or for the media to call the race. counts are happening everywhere for days and weeks after the election. it is just likely you do not care because the media has already called the race or the margins are not that large. host: this is gail in texas. thanks for waiting. go ahead.

>> i am calling -- i was registering people for many years and i felt very uncomfortable because when i was registering people i was not -- host: i am listening to you through your phone. turn down your tv. you talked about registering people and you felt uncomfortable. why? caller: because i had to take their word that they were citizens. i could not request to see their license. i could not demand to see their id. so i had to take their word for it. and that always bothered me. it always bothered me that i did not have -- i could not ask for their id. host: what year was this? caller: in 2000.

guest: the help america vote act passed and it requires every voter who registers to provide id on voter registration forms, so i can guarantee everyone in texas there for 20 years now every voter registration form has an id number on it and when it gets that voter registration form texas is checking that id number against the motor vehicles file and social security administration file. that is why we know the number of noncitizens is so small, because even if someone accidentally got registered -- it is rational for someone here legally or illegally to register and vote because they will be painting a target on themselves for deportation, but -- and they will get caught, but even if it happened accidentally those id checks are central for catching

it. the number of noncitizens who actually voted in united states is incredibly small. you do not have to trust me on this. trust republicans attorney general who have left. host: david becker is the founder and executive director of the center for election innovation and research. candidates from both tickets in michigan today. the last two residential collections and dozens of visits by boat and pains is here. four days until election, the race remains a tossup. the coverage of comparables when the event is underway here on

span to. >> american university history professor election and exclaims the methodologies over the years to predict the outcome of every essential election in the race between al gore and george w. bush posted by the common good nonprofit organization. it's about 30 minutes. >> okay, we are so excited to have our guest tonight as the clock is ticking down to the election. the art of election knows all too well how the political wind can.

shift. nostradamus of elections, he has predicted nine out of 10 elections since 1984 with his system, keys to the white house. he is a professor at american university. he became a distinguished professor in 2011, so please give a warm welcome to professor allen.

>> you have been unbelievably gay in your predictions. let's start with your prediction system, how you got to your prediction? >> i don't look at the pundits. they have no track record of success, i don't look at horserace polls, they are not predictors and error margins are great. it is purest it is to gold error and people may live, change their minds and they have to guess who the likely voters are

making polls complete noise. what do the keys do? they are the alternative, they tap into how presidential elections work up or down on the strength of the white house party. mentally i developed the keys in 1981 in collaboration with vladimir of moscow and we uses method of pattern recognition to look at every presidential election. remember, this is 1981 from the election of abe lincoln in 1860 to the election of ronald reagan in 1980. and that's what led us to the 13 keys which best distinguished between incumbent and challenge victories and our simple decision rule. if six of the keys go against the white house party, they're a predicted loser.

otherwise they are a predicted winner. >> so are we looking at an earthquake for this year? >> not according to the keys? >> all right, let's go through it. >> yeah. according to the keys, here are the keys that count against the white house party. remember six and you're out fewer than six and you're in at least predictively. so the white house party, harris and the democrats lose my mandate key based on us house elections. they lost us house elections in 2022. obviously, they lose the incumbency key. but you know, i was very critical of the democrats for viciously trashing their sitting president right out in open. i've never seen that before and i've studied our politics since the founding. i also thought they were headed for a disaster. not only would they push biden out and lose the incumbency key, but they were heading for a big party brawl and lose the contest key as well.

and no white house party since 1900 has ever won re election when they lost both those keys. but somehow, maybe they listen to me. i doubt it. the democrats for one a spine and a brain and united behind harris and avoided losing the contest. key. so they're down to a mandate and incumbency. a third key they're down is foreign military failure for the middle east. it's a humanitcatastrophe with no end in sight. then there's 1/4 key that they're down. the incumbent charisma key. this is not a subjective key as people try to claim they've been saying this for 40 plus years. it's a very tightly defined, very high threshold key to win this key. you have to be one of those once in a generation across the board, appealing transformational candidates. very few of them. the iconic examples are franklin, a democrat and ronald reagan, the republican, whatever

you may think of harris, she's only been a candidate for a little while. she hasn't reached the status of an fdr. so that's four keys down two keys >> so you're saying you don't. so then donald trump, even though his people think he's transformational, he's not charismatic to that degree. >> you know, he may be a showman. people may think of him in that way, but the key is tightly defined and he doesn't come close to being an across the board, appealing candidate. he appeals, appeals to a narrow base, which is disqualified under the definition of the key in four years as president, his approval rate on average in the gallup poll was 41%. the narrow base. it put him right at the bottom. historically of all presidents in two consecutive elections, he lost the vote of the people by a combined 10 million votes. fdr and reagan won six elections by landslides. so it's not what you might think

of him. it's whether he fits the definition of the key and he doesn't come close. that's why i didn't turn that key against the incumbent party. and that's why i only have four negative keys. i issued my prediction on september 5th deliberately before the harris trump debate that the pundits were saying was so pivotal but debates predict nothing in fact. and that debate didn't predict anything, but i wanted to drive home my message that's governing not campaigning that counts. so based on the keys, we are going to have predictively a path breaking president, the first woman president, at least cracking if not shattering the glass ceiling. and the first president of mixed african and asian descent kind of foreshadowing where america is going. we're rapidly becoming a majority minority country, old white guys like me are on the way out

>> ok, there we go. um so what i'm curious about is um you say it's about governance. so our, our, the polls that we do show that people are very dissatisfied with how government, that government is no longer effective in part because of the partisanship and the division clearly that's seen in national polls. so does that doesn't go to kamala harris. >> my keys have been tested over 160 years of american political history. they're not something i just conjured up and you know what patricia every single day? i get a slew of emails from people saying, oh, we know how to better define your keys. we should look at the polls about voter sentiment or what

they think about the economy or who they think is ahead in the issues. and my answer is if you want to do that, develop your own prediction system, i encourage it. but if you're going to use my keys, you've got to stick with how the keys are defined and how they've been answered retrospectively and prospectively for 160 years, you can never predict elections upon issues. and in fact, on the economy, the gap between harris and trump has diminished substantially and harris is also way ahead on issues like health care, reproductive rights and climate change. there's no way to parse out public sentiment on the issues and make a prediction. if you did that, you'd have been wrong on a lot of elections. >> ok. so you have short term economy and long term economy clearly, america has been roiled by inflation that doesn't pass muster in terms of giving harris a worse chance at winning. >> that's not how my key is

defined. >> how do you define it? >> it's defined very quantitatively that there is no recession in the election year and there is no recession. as i said, you could piece out all kinds of parts of the economy, you know, there's inflation, but it's down from 9% to 2 plus percent. the stock market is booming and there are predictors who say harris is going to win based on the stock market. we just have 2.8% growth. you know, the economy in many measures is very strong. but again, if you want to pick out a piece of the economy and use that as your measure, go right ahead. but that's not my system. >> some people are picking out the fact that trump's company truth social is down today as a predictor that he's not doing so well. >> again, i don't look at any of those things, you cannot predict from these individual pieces of information.

that's why i have 13 keys, more indicators than any other system. and i think i've been right about 2000. but, you know, basically i have been right, either 100% or close ever since i predicted ronald reagan's re election in april 1982. nearly three years ahead of time when 60% of americans said he was too old to run again and his approval ratings were historically low. i predicted trump in 2016 when all the pollsters, all the pollsters and the pundits and most of the modelers were saying something different. and you can imagine predicting trump did not make me very percent plus democratic dc where i teach at american university. but my predictions are predictions. they are totally nonpartisan. i've predicted the two most conservative presidents of our time, reagan and trump and liberals like obama. >> what, what date did you predict trump's that trump would win in 2016?

>> september 22nd, 23rd in the washington post. >> that's amazing. ok. we have a question from joe berman. joe. >> oh, sorry. i thought if i just go with the chat, which is, i don't quite understand incumbency. when is it a positive? when is it a negative? >> but keys don't flip and change, you know, for individual elections. >> so, incumbency is always a positive or the keys are always the same. incumbency is always a positive that's been verified over 100 and 60 years. if you try to change a model on the fly based upon what critics think is going on in an individual election, you're going to make errors, for example, in 2008 critics said you got to change your keys. an individual election, you will make errors. -- for example, in 2008, critics said you have to change your keys. you cannot predict obama.

america is not ready to elect an african-american. 2016 after the biggest october surprise ever come the hollywood access tape with trump openly bragging about sexually assaulting women and women coming out saying that is what he did to me. critics said you have to change your keys. if i did that, i would have been wrong instead of right about 2008 and 2016. >> i understand, and come always a positive. you sort of sorted out -- you go down the list at 13. >> that is why have 13. no one indicator turns on election. that is why people say inflation will determine the election. that is nonsense. you cannot predict any election based on a single factor. you will be wrong a lot of the time. >> we are going next to carla's finger. >> what is an example of the methodology of one of your keys? >> i'm not sure i understand the question.