on minority voters and, in many cases, an overwhelming impact on our seniors. and so, i want to encourage that we work together to be able to educate these voters, not just for 2012, but looking forward beyond 2012, i also hope that we can join together, look for ways to improve the voter registration process, in many of the states, the voter registration process is far behind other systems. for photo id, for example, where there's a requirement that you have photo id, it seems to me that it's unnecessary then to have a completely separate voter registration procession where people are required to go twice, once to register and second to get the id that they need.

and so we have been in favor of election day registration as a compliment to the photo id process for those states that have it. we remain in favor of and concerned about cuts to the early vote process in a number of states. we appreciate that not all states have early vote, but those that do, we have seen a tremendous increase in early vote participation, over 2008, approximately 30% of all voters voted early in that cycle. so certainly for people who have work obligations or whether they be child care or senior care obligations and may not have the flexibility to participate in that single day, an early vote remains critically important. and so with that, i will end there. i'm happy to take any questions,

i'm certain that there is some disagreement with where we are from a policy standpoint on these questions. but, again, i think that in the end we are all looking to ensure that the voters have access and can participate and i hope we can work together to ensure that that occurs. thank you. >> thank you very much for being part of -- we're going to save the questions until we have the rnc representative and then we'll do the questions together. as you know, the rnc frequently has their former chair of the rules committee come address nass and he was unable to be here today. he asked that christopher adams fill in for him. mr. adams is the election attorney at the election law center. he was a former general council to the south carolina secretary of state and worked as an attorney in the voting section of the department of justice. recently he has served for as a

counsel on four different presidential campaign on ballot issues. christopher can address some of the activities taking place in the states this year, please join me in welcoming christian adams. there are three things that i will characterize the 2012 election from my perspective that you probably haven't seen before from republicans. i think you're going to see it andic it's going the affect the work that you do during the elections. very briefly, the first one is that you will see an unprecedented social media outreach this year from the republican side that quite honestly was lacking in 2008.

the pendulum swung and, well, the -- my counterpart's side was very good and effective at social media, internet outreach. in 2008 the other side, let's just be frank, was not. the second thing this year involves the move act. in 2010 as secretary peres noted, there was a warm-up here where everyone was getting their selige legs. one thing you will see in 2012 is a lot of groups on the ground

registering military voters. there is going to be a concerted effort for voter military registration. on military bases throughout the country, it outposts and towns such as, for example, fayetteville, north carolina, we have very large military populations. this once again has been largely ignored in past elections. those days, i think, are over with. and this year you're going to see that. now, what does this mean for you? it means that you're going to see quite possibly influxes of registrations from groups you've not seen before. there's a group called the military voter protection project that exists primarying for registering military voters, and you may remember they brought a case in maryland last election involving -- it wasn't actually a move act case. it was a 14th amendment claim,

but it looked like a move act case where ballots were mailed out that had state offices on it and not a federal office. so this lawsuit was brought in maryland by the military voter protection project alleging the violation of the 14th amendment, that military voters were being treated differently than in-state voters who got to vote for everybody, but the military voters did not. the second thing you're going to see this year, as i said, is a very aggressive move act voter registration effort among military voters and their families. the third thing you see and the last thing you mention you haven't seen before is a very aggressive effort at section 8 enforcement of nvra. mr. perez spoke about section 7 enforcement, which, of course, is the welfare agency voter registration provisions, but there's only been one case essentially, united states

versus missouri, on section 8 enforcement regarding the cleansing and purging of voter rolls. i think that you're going to almost certainly see in this election cycle very aggressive efforts by third-party groups perhaps with some political affiliation to bring cases against counties in most instances that are out of compliance with section 8 of nvra. there is a perception, not entirely divorced from reality, country are corrupted with large numbers of dead and ineligible voters. secretary hoseman is not in the room, but there's counties in mississippi have upwards of 120% and 140% of voter registration that aren't allowed to vote. his office is very much aware of the problem and has fought to get something fixed. place there's a problem, and that's a situation a lot of folks on my side of the table view as an utterly intolerable

situation heading into november's election. the thetd are third thing, and i'll close with it, i think you'll see this year a very aggressive effort to clean up the voter rolls in places where the voter rolls have problems. that's not to say that's a state problem.nd you will hear throughout, these are county problems that the states can't get solved. i think in large measure that's going to be the approach taken by the parties who bring these cases. hopefully just because it's an nvra case in your state doesn't mean it deals with your job and what you're doing, but i think it's certainly something you will see happening this year very shortly. thank you. >> thank you both, gentlemen, for your presentation, and i know they're ready to field any questions that you may have.

>> thank you, mr. secretary. i just had more of a comment than a question to address a few of the things that mr. crossly had talked about on -- especially being with reducing in-person early voting. i just wanted to state for the record we did that in georgia, we went from 45 days to 21. it included a mandatory saturday voting which he we haven't had before. the reason that the legislature took that up was because the counties were complaining about the cost of having to have three poll workers in the early voting locations. there was hardly anybody coming in those first two or three weeks, and the legislature really listened to them. we had a very strong bipartisan vote in the house, and i think that's important for people to realize. i know as i campaigned around the state in many of our

counties, a lot of the election boards, when we go into town and visit with elections office, you'd have the republican member and the democratic member of the election board there, and in many counties they both supported reducing the number of in-person days. we still have -- you can vote 45 days before the election by mail. also, on the photo i.d. law, we could spend a couple days debating that. i will tell you that we're working with an african-american legislator right now who wants to add college i.d.s for institutions that receive public money in georgia to the list of photo ids. the reason she wants to do that is is to help students at predominantly black colleges, and we are supporting her in her efforts on that, and hopefully we get that done this year. i thought it was important to hear those kind of stories that some of these things, especially on the in-person early voting, has been bipartisan and support. >> mr. gessler.

>> i would echo those comments. i hope in your an naalysinalysi you determine between voting -- in colorado we define as in-person poll voting at a polling location versus absentee ballots. in colorado we saw a huge drop-off in early voting, and that's in large part because we've seen a large increase in absentee voting by mail. so people who may have in the past showed up at a polling place early to vote instead are getting an absentee ballot. so in our nomenclature i hope you recognize when you say early voting, i look at it as polling place voting, and our data is directly opposite yours, at least the view that early voting has increased, whereas it decreased at the polling place. absentee voting has grown. >> go ahead. >> i wanted to address both of these.

one, i certainly appreciate that and welcome the opportunities that states have made and may be making to increase access in terms of allowing additional kinds of ids to count. one of the things that we worked with states in promoting is written and signed affidavits by the voter. if for some reason a person happens to forget their id, that they can sign that they are who they say they are, and that they live at their home address, and that information can be used if it turns out there's any irregularity there. when we speak of early voting we do in fairness include in that a host of different kinds of votings and across different states some have in-person early voting and some have -- it's a

mail-in process, but it's still called early voting in that state. so we use early voting as the term, but it does vary from state to state. >> secretary richie. >> thank you. i'm very interested in the section 8, because, in addition to administering the database, most of us are candidates and we have to buy lists, so you don't want to waste a lot of money and time, but also most of us have at some point called someone and after asking for someone having a long pause and knowing what's coming next. that that person has been someone's loved one lost, and you get appropriately fairly sharp response and hang up the phone. but what i don't understand, if

there's only been one, is there some context that we all could use that information to help leverage the people who would determine if there was money, for example. let's say we wanted to accelerate the removal of the people that died instead of having to go through the social security death registry, we might have a midnight exchange of death records among our public health agencies on a state like they do commercial truck driving licenses, and that would accelerate the process. we would need more data than just one case to make the case to the legislators and the people who control the money and who control the law and that stuff to be able to leverage improvement, especially on the things that kind of really matter to us on a personal base circumstance either as a candidate or as an administrator of a statewide voter registration system. >> if i'm not mistaken, your state is already exempt from section 8.

you're minnesota, correct? i think you're one of the six that could not possibly be subject to these obligations. >> i would not be beyond ignoring that fact if i had an argument to use with legislators to figure out how financing of any improvement, but i think we could have agreements among states on at least death records, because a lot of minnesotans go to the southern states. so this is a different kind of problem. so i'm interested in the stories that help us convince the people, be it local officials or finance committee chairs or whomever, to make these improvements because all of us are interested in clean lists, i mean, for all kinds of reasons, we want clean lists. >> well, i've looked at the data very carefully around the country county by county, and the spread of the data -- the spread of it tells me that this

is more a county problem than a state problem. that's just an instinct. i haven't gone into it. when you have counties in mississippi at 140% and you have laws that mississippi has, which takes the power away from the state to do anything about it, i think it's a county problem. that was the central issue of u.s. v. missouri up to the court of appeals, is whose problem is it. absent some evidence or clear state line of delineation on authority, it's largely a county problem. >> was that the remedy that was suggested, was on a county level? >> unfortunately, it was exactly the opposite. the doj took the approach this is a state problem, and came at it, as you heard earlier and throughout, that that's the attitude of this justice department. this is always a state problem and we're not going to look at counties. i face this in the case of u.s. v. alabama that i brought. i won't get in the particulars the case, but the question is why aren't the counties

reporting this data to the ac? the answer, of course, from the justice department's perspective is we only look at the states, and so it sort of locks you into one model of resolution that i don't necessarily think is very helpful. i will -- obviously, this will be in the front and center this year. i mean, you're going to hear about these cases, so i guess the question is what comes out of it. i can't predict. we i want to stress, i think it's a county problem more than a state problem. >> okay. i think -- >> mr. secretary, can i say one word to that, which is we agree, actually, and would join you in moving toward a cleaner list to the extent that -- to the extent that we have the data that bearing out that this is problematic.

so i don't think there is a difference of party on this issue, and i would say the same thing with respect to your comments on move act compliance and ensuring that military voters in maryland are able to vote across the ballot. that is something we would absolutely be in favor of as well. and the -- the section 7 enforcement that's happened under the social service provision of the nvra is one where i think there has been more data sort of consistently bearing out that its had an effect at registering more voters. so to the extent that there's data that supports the case, i would stand with you on that question.

>> we're going to have to wrap up, but one quick last question, ruth. >> thank you. ruth johnson, michigan. one of the problems that we have right now is that the federal government required us at our dmv, which we do through the secretary of state's office, that we would ask everyone if they'd like to register to vote when they came in to get a driver's license or personal id. they did that, and we have thousands of noncitizens now registered to vote. my question is, how do we get them off? we've had social security, homeland security, i.c.e. and all refuse to help us, and they're the only ones that have that information. on a quick note, a man from indonesia voted because that is in indonesia the law. he didn't try to commit any malice. he just didn't know better, and he faces possible deportation, large legal bills, his business is a wreck because of it and it's impacted him negatively. so it helps everyone if we're able to take non-citizens off the voter rolls. >> you're in a unique situation in michigan, because that

advance lawsuit in 2008 that clamped down on what you could n on what you could and could not do with your list. look, the secretary of the state of colorado, mr. guessler has looked at this issue with noncitizens. utah found noncitizens who voted in the 2006 election as part of a legislative audit. it's happening. it's reality. i have texas voter registration form, there's forms in harris county for a client that says are you a u.s. citizen and they checked no and were registered to vote. this is how bad it is. how do you untangle this web is a difficult question. the only tools enable your own policy decisions. a very complicated questions. i'm convinced noncitizens are voting in elections and that's a very, very dangerous situation. >> what's the answer? >> your answer is tougher. i'm not sure how the consent decree is entangling what you

can and cannot do. >> i don't know who is a citizen and who isn't in many cases. ho how do i determine? we've sent letters out, if you're not a citizen, how do wets off the list? >> two things, this the way we task, look at the federal form registration a big issue on citizen checklist, the question is what do you do with a form that comes back unchecked yes. are you a u.s. citizen and they don't answer. that's a big question. there are differing opinions about the answer. some say you don't register them. some say you register them and wait. you could adopt a policy that allows you not to register them based on the failure to work off a yes check box. many will disagree with that. i suspect the previous speaker may have a differing view on that. this is a complicated question. mr. kemp next to you passed the georgia citizen verification

law, which the justice department objected to until georgia wen to court to get it precleared. they found a way to deal with this going forward, not necessarily going backwards. >> okay. thank you very much for your presence. we appreciate you taking time to be here with your thoughts and answer questions. we are going to skip the last piece here because it is an issue we can really handle in our next committee conference call as it relates to initiatives under way in respective states we can discuss in preparation for the summer conference in 2012. and it is worthy -- it is, i think, important to note, we had an amendment earlier offered by

the secretary, and it was suggested to me that the form we're in now is not an actual committee meeting for consideration of amendments for adoption, so this may be appropriate in the committee meeting tomorrow that could be discussed for consideration for adoption. so if you would, secretary, entertain that -- >> that wo fine. >> in the >> yes. okay. thank you, secretary. tomorrow morning we will be meeting from 9:00 to 10:00 a.m. by region. please check the agenda to see which meeting you're in. then from 9:00 to noon the nas business meeting weissues and i. thank you very much for your participation this afternoon.

>> president obama sent congress his budget plan for 2013 and the state department budget would go up a little over 1.5%, just over a billion dollars next year. officials will discuss what's in their proposed budget at 1:30 eastern. we'll have live coverage here on c-span3. 2:00 eastern defense department officials go through the pentagon's proposed budget in detail. cuts defense spending 1% by $5 billion. after the department's comptroller explains the overall budget, of navy, and air force will answer reporters questions. communicat, the fourth in a series from this year's consumer electronics show. this week a look at the impact of mobile networks on society and improving spectrum use with

ha the ceo of mobile networks. what's an ultrabook, the latest in smart phones with bryan deaner tonight on c-span 2. >> miss the latest on c-span? subscribe to our youtube channel and we'll notify you of the latest video post, signature programs, road to the white house and campaign 2012. plus our recent cities tour of beaumont, texas. >> there was this very sad, tragic episode in beaumont. a race riot broke out here june 15th, 1943. there was a story about a black man having raped a white woman. when this story spread into the ship beyond a reasonable doubt, several thousand of the shipyard workers, some say at least 2,000 shift yard workers came out of the ship beyond a reasonable doubt and came down to the city hall and to the police

department to try to find the person who had allegedly committed this crime. >> there are hundreds of videos to choose from online. subscribe at youtube.com/c-span. now a discussion how two cities are using local government to try to create a favorable environment for job creation. in dallas and danville. part of the mayors meeting. >> let's talk about the afternoon. we're going to spend the next 45 minutes talking about business developments and sector strategies model. we'll take a break around 2:30. we'll talk about hard to serve population and serve at risk youth, some of the things the secretary just spoke about. education strategies, which are critical to the united states

and we'll close. i will try to summarize them, taking notes up here and i'll try to summarize for us what we've heard without being redundant. it's my honor to kick this part off. this panel will include, loyola, and president of lori moran, president of the chamber. we will wait until both presentations are over to start the q&a, so if you can hold your questions. i'm going to present, kind of co-present with the veteran from dallas who has taught mae loot in a short time. during her tenure they have received partnership award from national association of workforce boards and alfred p. sloan for business excellence in

workplace flexibility. it's great to have you here. let's do our presentation and then i'll present you laurie, okay? first of all, let me give awe biased thought here that i don't know anything about government. okay? you a thought here that i don't know anything about government. okay? i've been in this job for six months. i was elected mayor in june, and i have been a business executive for three decades, have been ceo of three companies. so everybody kind of brings different viewpoints to their jobs. i bring this viewpoint in knowing how to run a business, not necessarily an experienced government or politician, so you'll see that point of view in our presentation. we will talk briefly about the

foundation for success. and then the key ingredients for workforce engagement and then we will give you some examples of that. and by bringing it to life. we talk a little bit about workforce solutions. just to give you a bit of a backdrop on our numbers. we have ten fortunate 500 companies in dallas, 68,000 employers, about a million two citizens and 6 12,000 in the workforce. long story short, our employment numbers are trailing -- better than the nation's by 1.3%. our december numbers are not out yet but in november we were at 1.8%, so our friend line is getting better. not quite as good as the whole state of texas, but relatively good in that regards.