authorizes us to use the signature on file of the bureau of motor registration, their voter registration signature so we can avoid that step, and have a signature on file for all of those new registrants immediately. >> a number of our vendors here have been active in a lot of the states early on. arizona was a pioneer. terrific system. terrific success. so i highly encourage you to talk to our vendors as well. this is a big project in process, and you know, there's a lot of exciting ideas just about how working more cloly our dmvs and motor vehicles, we could be bringing those photos, however we do it, into the polling place, so we don't have to fool around with a lot of the different things that we are engaged in now. but we also know that the technology is going to transform itself over and over and over, so our ability to be flexible and innovative will be important but sharing information among

all of our offices, our states is going to be really crucial so we can keep ourselves on the forefront. i think we don't want to be driven by outside forces. we want to be leaders, but we're going to have to be active in helping ea each other to stay i leadership role as we go through the year. we want to make sure that you a kinds of voters are participating, but we also want to do that in a way that makes sure that we are able to handle our jobs and do them well with less money, with more people, with just more pressure. so the more we share our best practices and great ideas, just the better we will do at our job. any last words, secretary? thank you so much everybody. and we're quitting a couple minutes early. so make good use of that time. thanks a lot.

good afternoon. i now name president of the national association of secretaries of state. i am delighted this afternoon to begin the final session of the 2012 election preparations with

a terrific roster of speakers and one whom i will later have the privilege of introducing in a few minutes, as bit of background, our elections committee holds regular conference calls to keep up with the many things office, facing each day. during one of our calls we decided it would be beneficial to have a true dialogue with members of our congress. we wanted to discuss concerns that we have regarding the impacts of existing federal law as they relate to elections. at that time we had just receive a letter from steny hoyer signed by 196 democratic members of the house urging secretaries of state to protect voting rights by opposing new state measures that would quote make it harder for eligible voters to register to vote, end of quote. while we have invited a number

of speakers and guests from the list that signed the letter, none of them could join us today. i was wondering if anyone in the room who might have had dialog with mr. hoyer might have any comments at this time? or if he sent anybody to speak on his behalf? no one? okay. at this time, i feel it appropriate as president of the organization to speak and to say that i believe this organization has a collective interest in ensuring fair and honesty elections and i believe that policy disagreements and elections and i believe that policy disagreements and discussions are healthy and inevitable, however, the blanket letter to all members of this organization is not. his stating that "partisan

plays" are being made, that within itself is partisan. disorganization is not partisan. we all take oaths to follow the laws that are created by our legislative bodies not to follow preferences of either party's philosophy as they relate to voting or any other dealing of the oft of secretary of state. our laws and preferences will vary from state to state but we as an organization need to send a loud and clear message that our ability and integrity to follow the law and administrate those elections and laws does not and will not vary. questioning whether members of this organization, regardless of political party, can oversee elections in a professional, fair or ethical manner is insulting to the credibility of this organization, and it is my job as president to ensure that it

does not divide this organization. does anyone else have anything other to say? i can't see that far. can you tell me who that is? chris cobak? >> yes, madam president, i think all of us received the letter from representative hoyer, and it was addressed to every secretary of state in the country, and i, too, was disturbed by the letter, and although i did offer my own response in defense of my particular state's changes of its election laws, i think it is appropriate for this body to respond in some fashion because it was addressed to all of us collectively. i drafted a resolution that is very short and to the point and it's nonpartisan. and it's balanced. it simply says that we all have the right to do whatever we believe will improve our election procedures and that that can include a variety of different things and that you

know, nass stands for the non-partisan and federalist principle that the states may pursue their course provided they are pursued in good faith and that they are consistent with the united states constitution. i'll send around some copies of this and pass it around. i would like to introduce the resolution to all of us. >> is this something that you want to pass around and discuss at the end? is that your intent? >> however you want to proceed is fine. >> okay, we will do that then. in the meantime we have one brave congressman. one righteous man who joined us today, and not only -- well, no, i'm afraid he didn't, but there were many invited to come. this is the one who accepted our invitation. after the short introduction, you'll know why he joined us today. she one of our favorites, a

member of nass. indiana's secretary of state for many years, the president of this organization, and in the leadership of it for many, many years. he's a personal friend to many of us, and he worked very hard to arrange and as i understand it rearrange, dearrange and rearrange his schedule to be with us today, and not only do we benefit from his experience as a former state election official and thus his true understanding of what we do, he is also a member of the house administration committee and, therefore, in a position to address election law at the federal level. congressman todd rokita is eager to hear your questions and concerns and he is here for dialogue, not here to give a 50-minute speech and bore us to death. he wouldn't do that to you. he does want a dialogue. he is here honestly to take questions and to provide you with answers. so at this time, please give a great nass welcome to a great former nass member, congressman

todd rokita. >> thank you, beth, i really appreciate that introduction. the reason i'm here, we did have some scheduling issues as many of you do as well. it's nothing new. i know what happens being a former nass president. i know what gets happened to you by leslie reynolds if you don't come at the appropriate time to do your duty. so i am here, really, because i absolutely love this organization. i'm still in love with it, even from the perch of my new public, elected responsibilities. some of you have, i got meet on the way in and rekindle some old friendships and i appreciate that very much. some of you asked me how i like

my any job and robin carnahan even asked if she could kiss my ring. i'll hear about that later. and i said, you know, to robin and others, i said you know, the job of being an elected representative especially in our nation's capitol is a high honor and there's nothing like being an elected state-wide official. especially when are you the chief election officer. it's been the highest honor of my life and i credit a lot of that to what i learned here from many of you, and from this organization and the way the organization conducts itself. in all honesty is what brings me back here today. i do want to say thank you for having me and let's get to it. >> no softballs with this

gentlemen. who has the first question? >> wow. >> okay. well, i'm with you until 4:00. or until you ask plea to leave. >> thank you for being with us, while i've been involved in mpl. >> thank you for being with us, while i've been involved ilea t. >> thank you for being with us, while i've been involved iea to. >> thank you for being with us, while i've been involved i to l. >> thank you for being with us, while i've been involved in elections for a long time one way or the other i'm new to the business of running an election though. i have to say i had not paid much attention to the provisions in the constitution that kind of share power on elections between the congress and the states. but i do feels as this proposed resolution has, that it's the state's responsibility and that many states delegate it to local governments as well or work with local governments. i guess my questions for you are number one, how do you feel about the idea of actually fining states for not following federal law exactly on elections

issues? that's one that has come up before us, and i'd love to have a dialogue about that. the second issue, it's kind of a question and a request. it's that, we right now do our elections on paper. there's very little of it, electronic. people can fax their ballots in. we're moving to more electronics things, but we have not been briefed and we cannot get a class five briefing on who can read a file as it's moving across the wires. i'm just very concerned about how, you know, there's a lot of people pushing uses to move away from the paper trail to go fully to electronics. it would be helpful to have congress look into the privacy issues as that happens. there's so many way to impinge on a voter's privacy if you move to electronics. >> i appreciate that. and welcome to nass as well. i see you as a new member.

let me take the last question first. when i was elected secretary of state back in my first day in office, january 1st, 2003, we had just had the help america vote act signed into law, and we had these varied discussions and those elected before me had good input into the making of the law as the congress was writing it. and so these issues were kind of the -- were very well debated then, and now carry on. i come from a state and personally believe in the validity of electronic machines. having said that, we left it up to our counties to decide what machines fit them best as long as they were compliant with the help america vote act. so in indiana we have a patchwork of paper based machines and completely electronic ones.

and they work well. so as i remember the debate, i heard the concerns about privacy -- the concerns about privacy were actually in the paper, and that was a reason to go to the electronic. so, do you have a follow-up to that? >> yeah, and i'm not as concerned, we do electronic scanning and optical scanning, and so forth. it's more kind of the cyber space voting. to be able to vote online from wherever -- if it's coming from a computer in a foreign country, the national security agency can read what is coming in. because it's not presumably a u.s. citizen, or how would they know that? and the general question is, if we move to a system where it's a all online voting, and our move toward that, and we are under lots of different pressures here right now and some of it from congress to do that for overseas voters. what protections can you offer to make sure that votes

still stay private? >> well, i have been asked to come not to speak on behalf of other members. i can certainly speak for myself and part of indiana, but i can also give you a sense of what congress may to in the here and now. based on the membership that we have. and i think that the way you'd see us approach your question would be to empower the state and the states as much as possible. that would be the approach you'd see coming out of the house of the majority committee on this issue, for example. and i think that is where this decision lies. the answer lies at the state level and what your voters and your taxpayers are most comfortable with. keep in mind though, once you lose the confidence of your taxpayers and residents and the nation, think florida, 2000, you're going to see the federal government and congress,

like we always do, act and act quickly and generally overreact to the situation. so i think your goal has to be in an aura of federalism. do what you have to do to keep the confidence of the voter and the taxpayer in the process that you have. and that is not to dive into another topic, that is an example of how we successfully approached the photo i.d. in indiana. it was a confidence builder, and successful and increased voter turnout. so do it that way and then you have that backstop and the defense to say to the federal government, stay the heck out. what protections can we give you? we can talk about and debate that, but if you have a system like that, you need to be able to have the protections yourself first. there was a first question there. i'm sorry. >> how about the issue of fining state officials?

i know secretary chapman is up to speed on that. >> yeah. i might have to be briefed on that, but, honest, there's no talk about that going on in the house administration committee that i know of. that seems pretty draconian to me but maybe i'm not -- >> was it not recommended by the justice department? >> oh. >> no that was a separate issue that we discussed but it occurring in our state with the question of who appropriately handles those filings, which the secretary of state's office does in our state, but we do not police or enforce them. and so i've asked most of the representatives here from their states how they do and of course there's a patchwork of how it's done. so, a little bit different in every state. but one of those questions was, who follows up on those candidate filings? and if they haven't reported in three years, or they reported two weeks late, or they have misleading information on those filings, are they fined?

who enforces those? and the attorney general in many cases does. >> the filings of declaration of candidacy? >> the financial filings. >> save that one for mr. perez. >> if i could, you know, offer some further clarification on the question. i think we heard from bob kerrey this morning. that the reason that the secretaries of state or the states are liable is because that is what the federal law says, the federal law says that the states are liable for the voters ensuring that the ballots go out on type. every state has a different set of rules, as you are aware of as a former secretary of state, and in many cases we are being held accountable for something that we don't actually have control over, and the idea that the, that federal officials, the members of congress that work on these issues --

because it sounds -- we've all worked at different levels of government and we know how the sounds were put to control the states, but the states don't do it all the same. in ohio, we have many counties and i never handle a ballot. not one. never. they are all done locally. so to be held liable for something that we have no control over seems to be a disconnect between how the law is perceived in terms of its implementation at the local level, the state level, and how the federal government believes that it should be implemented. >> thank you. i appreciate that. that warms me up a little bit. we had similar types of i account, penalty and account act, but not responsibilities in the help america vote act.

that was the story of my life as a secretary of state for eight years. seemed like we were always responsible for and accountable for things we did not have any control over. i don't mean to be blase about this, but i certainly have become, john, desensitized to it. so part of me tells you, let's suck it up and get the jobs done because that is what the secretaries of state do. having said that, there has to be a reasonable approach, and i would be interested to work with this organization if you find an alternative way regarding the issue of accountability, or a process to make sure that we can best to our job as chief election officer without unfairly being held to account for something we have no control over. i would love to work with you on a bill if we identify series serious issues and some alternatives to them. >> and congressman rokita, if i might, i don't want to mislead lieutenant governor from alaska was asking that question that

was one issue. to be a little more specific with you, we were concerns, or i felt that is -- felt that a majority of the group made some comments about some recommendations that have come out of doj, stating basically that absentee election ballots were late than the secretary of state would be fined and of course, we understand, nobody has worked harder, as you know, and nobody will work harder than secretaries of state from around this country to ensure that our military are allowed to vote. and i think that is something that we all agree on, it's a common bond that holds us together as a nation and certainly as an organization, it's the one thing we certainly agree on, but, you know, the concern was that we would be sued that election absentee ballots are not handled by secretaries of state at all and in many cases are a different entity of government that has no accountability to us, then we're held responsible. to answer your question about what one of the solutions might

be, it was recommended this morning, and i'll have to tell you, not by me, because my governor's birthday is february the 3rd, and i don't want to share this with him, but someone said if they're suing the state, why not the governor? why are they suing the secretaries of state? that is an interesting concept. but the governor, based on a recent supreme court, is the absolute authority so i think it's a good question. i think. >> i think it's a good question. i think it's a good issue for this group to be working on. what i'm seeing in washington already, it's really easy, first of all things are happening so quickly. needlessly happen so quickly. for example you look at the bing. the state of indiana, we budget every two years. so i had to turn my budget in and we had to live under it for two years. now we are planning to spend money as we are spending next year's money and then we are

spending the next year and it's printing money and having our kids pay for it and it keeps going around and around on this hamster wheel, for no good reason in my opinion. the budget, if we decide to pass a budget, it starts all over again. so in all that, when we have bills on other issues, it's easy just to say, oh, chief election officer, secretary of state, make them liable. make them accountable. without, in my opinion, not any more thought than that. and so, i think it would be great for a group like this to help put forward an alternative solution, because we have thought through it. working with a group of congress people to get that thought into law, and we can actually add some value to this process. first and foremost i think that elections should be state driven

to the extent there are fines involved and accountability measures employed that should come at from the state level and not necessarily from the federal government down. but using that as a platform, maybe an approach to solve this problem. who should be accountable, realizing that we are all human to begin with. >> right. >> has there ever been a perfect electi election, john, in the history of the world? no. will there be a perfect election? no. there will be mistakes. but the difference is, are those mistakes happening to just african americans? are they just being done upon women? are they being -- you know, that's the difference. will people, you know, indiana had 5,500 poll workers. average age, 72. sure, there will be mistakes, not because they are 72, the 22

year olds also make mistakes. but that's the difference. are they unintentional, ad hoc or is there a systemic issue? >> if you could explain to me, just help me out a bit on the -- ea -- i'm sorry. on your committee's scope of oversight and duties, obviously, we've talked during the last few days about eac. we've talked about apparently department of justice proposals creating private right office action against secretary of states of state. we have also talked about f-fap and their activities in the election word that seem to be driving some state's procedures as well. for your committee, what all do you oversee and then, what do you influence, although you may

not have formal authority over it? >> the committee on administration basically oversees is eac, and the fec, and then we certainly have influence over the f-fap process. so, of course we also issue the members parking passes and things like that. but that was not the heart of your question. >> that would be a fair amount of leverage. i'm trying to find out who i should i be talking to? >> basically what we are dealing with is fec, we had a hearing with them and eac, we had a couple of hearings with them and then the military voting process as well. and then -- >> and the department of justice, at least discussions o proposals, with regard to personal liabilities? secretaries of states? >> i hope we have influence over that as well. how much they listen is an open question. >> congressman rokita, ross miller from nevada.

some of the discussions this weekend in our conference have centered around the eac, obviously this organization, as you are aware, has twice taken the position that we believe that the eac should be sunsetted. there's now some discussion as to what to do in the interim. and, i was wondering if you could just offer a little bit of background as to what is happening in congress with the eac and offer any potential predictions as to what may eventually result? >> thank you, ross. well, as you all, i'm sure, know, a bill was heard in house administration to defund and otherwise sunset, repeal the enabling language that instituted the organization. i was a original co-sponsor in that bill. in that my involvement in that bill comes directly out of the two resolutions that came out of

this organization that i was involved with helping to author and get passed. that bill passed committee and it went to the house floor for a vote that we needed 290 votes for. we did not get that. so it was a suspension vote. we suspended regular order. i think that leadership thought we had the votes. it did not pass. i am working to see that the eac repeal bill gets heard in regular order so there will be a floor time for it, and then it would need 218 votes to pass the house and go on to the senate, where i imagine it won't get heard. but i certainly don't speak for the senate or what the senate makeup will be after november. so what to do in the meantime?

we have no commissioners it's my understanding. we have, i think, the attorney is acting as the executive director right now, who i think it's public knowledge, if not, i guess we are sharing news, that person is being nominated for another position. so the question on the table, especially with regard to the presidential election coming up, what does the eac do or should it be doing under its charge that would help us, quote/unquote, as secretaries of state, as chief elections officers, have a fair and accurate election this fall? and i will be the first to admit i am rusty on duties right now of the eac, aside from the legislation i've worked on, but with the other issues that we deal with with congress. i rely on