participating. government doesn't determine the price of ads. the government hasn't decided that ads are going to cost something. it's the marketplace. it's the private -- it's reality, one. and it's private people doing that. you know, are you going to get the lumberjack to work for free to cut down the tree in order to make the news print so that you can do this for free? you know. it's not about the government imposing a barrier. it's about the government providing for freedom and preventing the government from imposing a barrier which is the suppression of speech by criminal penalties that john has supported and continues to support. secondly, as to exxon mobile and chevron, to my knowledge they haven't done a thing after citizens united.

matter of fact, very few private companies, for profit companies had -- labor unions do but not private companies because of the market forces. they don't want to get in the controversy. they didn't want to lose customers. what we have seen though is advocacy groups of all stripes participating and having new avenues of participation since citizens united. the final thing is, you know, we have reached the tipping point as far as contribution limits are concerned. we have had 13 states, including florida, raise their contribution limits. the reason is quite simple. finally the forces of the reality is sinking in on incumbent politicians that by limiting contributions to them they're not preventing challengers from getting the resources, they are hurting themselves.

vis-a-vis these independent spenders. that's a good thing. contribution limits should be radically increased. and if we had that, we would have a more transparent and accountable system. >> thank you. this is an illuminating debate. [ applause ] now a panel discussion on voter i.d. laws and early voting. our speakers all have ties to florida politics, and they debated the impact of such laws at the local level. this was part of a political campaign ethics conference. it's close to an hour. >> so again, as was stated, our

intention is to open up our conversation for questions from the floor. we invite you to participate by asking questions but first we're going to try to work our way through a preset agenda of sorts. on the panel voting rights, foiling fraud, protecting access and finding common ground. this is a distinguished panel this morning. i'm excited to be the moderator. the people on this panel i think have thought long and hard both in the trenches and in the academy about voting rights and access to the ballot. in roberto martinez, we have a former u.s. attorney and someone who served on the transition teams of two statewide elected officials.

in professor robert zelden, a scholar has written at least two books on hugely important supreme court cases, one on bush v gore and another sweat v painter who is thought and teaches these issues at nova southeastern in the history department. in robert fernandez, we have someone who has worked in the executive department of state government and who perhaps more than anyone on the panel has thought about these issues in service on with respect to ethics and elections here in the state of florida. and dan gelber who has been both a federal prosecutor, a state elected official, has again sort of thought about these issues

and on lots of levels most recently at least in my knowledge as a member of the voting rights commission which held an important hearing here in south florida earlier this year. and so i think we have a wonderful mix of viewpoints and perspectives both institutionally situated and to have i think a very fruitful conversation. so i'm going to start with a sketch of what we'd like to talk about with respect to issues around voting rights and fraud and access. and so the first is an issue that comes to us most recently out of the 11th circuit. that is, the 11th circuit's recent decision in arcia versus the florida secretary of state

with respect to the legality of the 2012 purging of the voter rolls for purposes of purging noncitizens from the rolls. and the decision was decided under the national voter registration act and it was decided that the -- that the action violated the national voter registration act. and i'd like to invite our panelists to speak about efforts to maintain the legitimacy of the electoral roles with respect to citizen participation and issues of access particularly in light of recent supreme court decisions around the voting rights act. and so i'm going to start with

mr. martinez on my left and invite other panelists to speak about the tension between again access and the protection of the integrity of the voting process in the voter purge debate and controversy. mr. martinez. >> thank you. good morning. i'm not sure i'm the right person to begin the topic. obviously we will all have an interest in making sure those who have the right to vote. that they vote. we also have an interest in making sure that vote is cast by people who are in fact entitled to vote. it protects the integrity of the process. with regards to the purging of the rolls, as i understand it, professor, that process has been stopped here in florida and for good reason apparently, the rolls that were being used were -- there was question of their accuracy. so i don't know how much more i can tell you at this point in time. i thought you were going to talk

about the photo i.d. requirement in wisconsin. >> we'll get there. [ laughter ] >> the secretary of state has delayed the institution of the voter purge until the homeland security database is more accurate according to the secretary of state's memorandum. if anyone wants to address that question and again the tensions that rise. >> thank you. and bob was brought here to class the place up. i was brought here to go the other way. i think the purge voter i.d. a lot of these things implicate the issue that is not unique to florida but especially acute and pronounced in florida. florida is a state that's always in play.

so when you have a -- when you have like nobody wonders what's going to happen in new york on november 5th. but they wonder what's going to happen in florida when you have close elections, the apparatus of elections tends to be more important. the fault lines are displayed more proudly to the world. when you have a close election and we obviously saw that in 2000. so it happens with all of these issues which i think is the issue you're getting at is the question is whether the "efforts to promote integrity are simply being used as a stocking horse to try to change the outcome of an election." and i'm not worried about appearing too partisan because frankly, florida is a state where the apparatus of elections are run by the legislature which is a republican legislature. it may be different in states where democrats run the legislature, but here in florida it, really most of the efforts

to deliver "integrity to the process" whether it's a purge or voter i.d. in other states that are close, most of those generally are intended really more to suppress the vote than it is to assure integrity because things like early voting constraints and purging and things like that really aren't a lot of people running to polls with fake i.d.s to vote. there aren't really a lot of felons really desperately trying to vote. there aren't people here out of status hoards of them running to vote. if that happens, it happens incredibly infrequently and usually by accident. almost all of the problems with voting from an integrity point of view are in the absentee voting area. almost always. you don't hear about other cases really. i would tell you that the purge was a very -- was an idea whose only purpose was to suppress vote of a population that they believed that the governor believed might not be necessarily favorable and i think frankly most of the election laws that come out of

the legislature have an ulterior and a mischievious purpose. >> and again, this is connected to the issue of voter i.d. but to push back in some sense, there clearly are documented cases of -- and even in the 2012 voter purge, there were documented cases of noncitizens on voting rolls. at least 85 people were whittled down from a large number of 180,000. i guess the question that i have for the panel is, does it matter and if i take mr. gelber's comments to heart, he seems to suggest it doesn't but does it matter that the secretary of state is putting a hold on moving forward to find a better database?

that is to say, to the extent that there were problems with the 2012 effort to protect the integrity of the voting rolls, was it based upon the mechanism used, that is to say that the use of dmv records simply was a bit noisy and allowed for the inclusion of too many legal voters, or does it go back to your point about what you take to be the intent behind the attempt to sort of clean-up the voting rolls? >> if i could speak on that, i think this is somewhat equivalent to being shocked there's gambling in this establishment. we've known for a long time the various databases we've used for our voter rolls have been filled with flaws. and to suddenly discover oh, my god, there's flaws here and we need to hold back which is probably the right decision is also coming a little late. we knew this back in 2000. we knew this in 2004, 2006.

this has been an ongoing problem not only in florida but across the nation of voter roll databases that simply we don't know, we don't have enough good data. we have problems in which there are errors and mistakes in the databases we're using to check against the voters. and the end result is much as we've seen here. you start with hundreds of thousands. there's big news and everyone hears about it. in the end you come down to 85 people. out of 100,000, out of what, 7 million potential voters in florida. the problem isn't new. and so while i think the decision to hold back was the right one, why were we in the situation to begin with in 2014? why weren't we fixing this or not even or holding off earlier? >> professor, i'm not an expert in this area.

obviously, the way in which this whole thing was implemented was rather clumsy, certainly gave that appearance. so it didn't look well. but it is in our best interests to make sure we don't have people on the rolls that are not entitled to vote, right? if we have somebody who's on the rolls here but also on the rolls in another state and that person is voting in two different states, obviously we don't want that. if the person is not qualified to be on the rolls in the first place, we don't want that person to be voting. we do have a legitimate interest in making sure the people entitled to vote are the ones voting. perhaps the way in which it was done was so clumsy, it throws the whole process into question. we don't need to throw out the baby with the bath water type of thing. i know it looked bad. i'm glad it stopped. it certainly didn't look good for the republican party and for the governor. obviously, the way in which it was implemented may have been clumsy but that doesn't mean we don't have a legitimate interest in making sure there is integrity in the voting rolls.

>> to go even further, there's a question about whether or not the state ought to have access to its own database. that is to say, to the extent that the state is relying on a database of homeland security in reading and preparing for this panel, he thought, isn't it interesting and this is not to cast aspersions on the administration, isn't it interesting that homeland security would say hey, the database isn't quite ready. so you to the extent that partisanship might be influenced, might influence both the homeland security's efforts to get a database to the states that can in fact be used doesn't make the argument that the states in some sense ought to have a database or ought to be able to make recourse to a database that is not perhaps vulnerable to the machinations

of perhaps a -- the opposite party. >> it sounds like a great idea except florida has been trying to put together its own database in this area for about the last 20 years. and it has been flawed. the dmv database is flawed. various other databases in florida sought to use as a comparison for the voter rolls. has been flawed. sometimes it's by choice almost. in 2000, the decision was make connections that involve the same first name, last name, middle name and date of birth but it doesn't matter what the order is. they knew there would be a lot of false positives. so they understood the database's limits and said okay, we'll go with false positives and sent the whole list out and said purge them. this has been an ongoing problem. the databases that we ourselves have in florida aren't very good. so one of the reasons returning to homeland security is because they're looking for a better ker database. whether homeland security is doing it for political reasons or surprise, it's hard for them

to get a good database, it doesn't -- it undermines the process as a whole. and voter registration until we have a national registration process we're going to run into these problems and it's going to be difficult to purge the lists even when as was mentioned it's legitimate to clean out the voting lists on a regular basis. but if you're doing it in a way that legitimate voters are then purged when they shouldn't be, that questions legitimacy of the electoral process. >> very briefly, i agree with bob you shouldn't have people who aren't authorized to vote voting. but i think you've confused who is the baby and who is the bath water. in a sense that when you have you know, when you have 80 people who probably shouldn't be on the list obviously and they may or may not be voting but you're prepared to literally purge tens of thousands of others that ought to be on the list that aren't on the list

that are legal residents and ought to be voting, that's the problem. that's what happened in 2000 with the felon list. we put out a list realizing i think they're smart enough to realize that whole lots of citizens of our state were going to be purged to get a couple people who probably shouldn't have been on the list. that's what happens. because i believe that i think this is clear as day, that those lists tend to implicate certain types of voters who vote a certain way, there's not a problem doing it. that's the problem with the voter purge is it takes citizens who should be voting. there's a story of a broward county veteran was the face of it, i served in world war ii and i can't vote right now because somebody with my name is also on that list. and i think that's the problem. you shouldn't do a purge unless you can really protect actual voters. >> let me just chime in here for one second.

you know, dan is right that maybe there might have been serious issues in 2000 but we're in 2014. what i'd focus on in this debate is where are we in 2014? and although we are still talking about a purge list, in 2014, i mean, i challenge anybody in here to tell me that there is massive purging going on of people who should be voting that aren't allowed to vote because of a bad list. yes, there are lists. yes, there are still problems with it, and they have voluntarily decided we are not going to go ahead and do this right now till we have confidence in the lists that we have that in fact people who should not be voting are in fact not going to be voting. we can talk all day about what happened in 2000. but in 2014, that's not happening. that's where we need to focus where we are in 2014 and going forward and how are we going to make sure -- there is a legitimate public interest in making sure people who should not be voting do not vote

because it dilutes everybody else's vote who should be voting and entitled to vote. having said that, we want to make sure that nobody like the veteran is put in that situation. i can promise you based on everything i know, that's not happening in 2014. >> if i can just follow up. because i think part of the topic of the panel is common ground. so can we all agree that we should have a list that's accurate? it's just the way in which we go about doing it that needs to be reviewed? is that basically what we're saying? can the democrats and republicans agree we need to have a list that is accurate? it seems to me that's a pretty basic -- >> that goes back to my question. again, if i take mr. gelber seriously, seems to suggest that a list that's accurate is irrelevant in light of the intent behind the attempt to clean up voter lists. so i think that's in some sense the crux of the problem.

>> yeah, why would the governor push a purge when he knows the list contains tens of thousands of people that shouldn't be on it? i mean, that's -- the governor's a smart guy. he realized what you and everybody else here realized that that list isn't capable of actually really purging people who shouldn't be voting. it's going to include loads of others. >> but does that is so taint the attempt to protect the integrity that every subsequent attempt becomes suspect? >> i suppose we have an enlightened governor, governor gelber and he decided he wanted to cleanse. >> is that an endorsement? >> let's suppose that he wants to enlighten republican chief of staff. so he hires me. so we go about cleaning the list in the right way. i think we all agree we want a list that is accurate and that is honest. >> we all agree people who shouldn't be voting shouldn't be voting. but that's the easy part of

this. the hard part is, well, if you don't have a list that works, what do you do? and just like in the court system, you say we'll let ten guilty go free instead of convicting one innocent, what is the ratio of voters? are we prepared to kick out of the voting polls you know 1,000 citizens so we can find that one guy that isn't a citizen and until you have a good list, it's an academic debate. of course, our governor has acted with a bad list. that's the point. he didn't act with a good list. he knew the list wasn't good and he did it anyway. i only used 2000 because there's a history of it in this state. i'm sure we'll talk about a history of voter suppression at some point in this discussion but i think that's the point. >> well, i certainly want to pivot to that. that is to say in light of the supreme court's decision during the last term in shelby county

in which the supreme court invalidated the formula, the coverage formula that triggered preclearance under the voting rights act, the court seemed to suggest that history would not forever be a taint on certain political jurisdictions. and certain covered jurisdictions immediately began to move to implement or move forward with the implementation of voter i.d. laws. the supreme court in 2008 affirmed the state's interest in protecting the legitimacy of the ballot by use of voter i.d. laws. so there's -- so we stand here sort of after crawford, after

shelby with the doj in litigation in texas and north carolina and in other places with respect to voter i.d. laws, the conversation that we just had on wednesday a district court in wisconsin has thrown out the wisconsin voter i.d. law and again, it goes back to this question of the evidence that justifies the state's interest in protecting the integrity of the ballot. and the effectiveness of voter i.d.s in protecting it against the harm identified by the states. and again, a project that was affirmed as constitutional in crawford and in which now post-shelby, we've got some work to do in lots of places. and so in light of the wisconsin

decision which seems to minimize crawford, that is to say, which seems to say look, we're going to take seriously the impact that voter i.d. laws have on subgroups within the state to make the assessment of whether or not these laws violate the voting rights act, and again, there probably is lots of common ground on this panel with respect to what ought to count as evidence, what counts as sufficient evidence to justify the state's interest. so i'd like to -- i'll start with you, this time again mr. martinez. >> okay. well, again, i'm not an expert in this area. this is very esoteric. in the shelby case, what the court said has come back with a different formula. they threw out that formula. they invited congress to come back with a different formula. i don't know whether the obama administration has proposed one.

putting shelby aside. the wisconsin decision which a friend of mine brought to my attention and he's in the audience that decision was rendered recently, what that held in case some of you don't know, it held that in wisconsin passed a law requiring a photo identification. in order to be able to vote, you had to obtain and present a photo i.d. if you didn't have one, the state would give it to you for free. for free. and what the court in a very long opinion held was that getting that free photo i.d., if you didn't have one, would impose an unjustified burden on those people who didn't have the photo i.d. and therefore, found it unconstitutional. and the court also held that the class of people who would be impacted were mostly the poor people and that included in those categories would be african-americans and latinos. so it had a discriminatory impact. frankly, i find the scope of that ruling rather expansive.

the court went out of its way to find that unlike crawford, justice stevenson crawford, the state did not have the an interest in protecting the integrity of the roll sufficient to establish that requirement. and i think went on to legislate its own standards. you know, it surprised me in reading that opinion, professor because we've had photo i.d. in florida for quite a long time. i don't believe it to have been an impediment to anyone's right to vote nor do i believe it to have been discriminatory as to any particular subgroup including hispanics which i'm in that category. i think that effort in wisconsin, maybe it's unique to milwaukee and wisconsin. if this is part of a movement to stir up the votes among certain groups, perhaps that's the intent behind it, but as far as being a law that is unconstitutional or contrary to the voting rights act, i think that was a reach by the district court judge.

>> let me do a historian's job and put this in a little bit of context of why people can come to very different conclusions on the same topic. republicans generally have a view of the purpose of an election which is certainty. the purpose of holding an election is that we know who won and that we are clear as to who won and confident as to who won and there's no question as to who won. so anything that in a sense cleans up the electoral process that gives us that certainty is a burden worth paying because that's the purpose of an election. democrats generally believe that legitimacy in election involves participation. that anything that limits the participation of all those who could vote from voting undermines legitimacy of the outcome even if that means that the results may be a little messy on the edges. these are both legitimate positions to take.

but each perspective focuses on a different answer to the question of what is a legitimate burden for the state to impose upon voters in the voting process. and of course underneath this is that not so secret dirty little secret that of course each side takes the position that is very comfortable with outcomes that will help them. the broader the electoral, generally the better for democrats, narrower, the better for republicans. not necessarily doing it for that reason, just always easy to do the right thing if the end result is the one you want. and so part of the reason why we have this difficulty is we have i suspect a district judge in wisconsin whose perspective is legitimacy of elections is access and you have a majority on the stream court currently that believes the purpose is

certainty temperature that's a difficult thing to break because of differing perspectives. so while we can all say we agree he that we should keep people who shouldn't vote from voting, what that entails at a practical level provides what is the legitimate answer and that often leads in two different directions. >> is there some possibility for common ground if we understand crawford and wisconsin decision as both asking a question about the reasonableness of the fear that the process will be -- will lack certainty or the reasonableness of the fear that the process will lack broad participation? in some sense the court in crawford seems to suggest there simply is no evidence that the voter i.d. law will cause the burden complained of.

whereas in the wisconsin decision, the court seemed to suggest there simply is no data to support the fear. >> actually, he argues and part of the reason it's so long is he goes into great detail trying to explain why there is in fact this burden. the court might have said we have no evidence. you want evidence? here is evidence. at least in milwaukee. but again how one interprets that in part is how you perceive the purpose of the election. >> i have a little bit of a it -- disagreement. first of all, the wisconsin case is a pretty good example to look at. i'll dispute what my friend bob said as i do this. and the judge pointed out over eight years in wisconsin, you could count not one hand, but on one finger, how many instances of somebody trying to use a fake i.d. or showing up at polls as

somebody else that happened. and that 9% of the population, 200,000 or 300,000 people in wisconsin didn't have an i.d.. so those two points sort of tell you that whether you're on the certainty side or the participation side, those aren't the sides in an election when the certainty side is using sort of phony justifications to create obstructions to vote. you ask anyone in this audience who sat in a line for eight hours in 2012 or six hours in 2008, they won't tell you that this was to make sure there was certainty there was early voting. they will tell you that somebody did something to stop the process of accepting voters to obstruct that process to cloud

that process because they did not want robust participation. that is what is going on. it's a wonderful thing to say one group likes certainty and the other likes participation, but if the one group that like certainty is saying we like certainty and the way we'll do it is pie simply stopping lots of people from voting, that's not a democracy. and that's what has been happening in florida. there were lines for ten hours because of artificial obstructions. that had nothing to do with certainty of election. [ applause ] >> i became a citizen in 1974 because i wanted to vote. i was paying taxes. i could work. but i wanted to vote. so i believe very strongly. i registered as a republican after i left the prosecutor's office in 1987. i believe very strongly as a republican, as an american citizen first, that people should be entitled to vote. that's my priority, it isn't certainty.

people entitled to vote should vote. with regards to the decision in wisconsin the judge found that the burden was that you had to take time to go to the department of motor vehicles and get a photo i.d. and that was a hassle. that was the burden. and by the way the photo i.d. was free. you didn't have to pay for it. but he found it to be an unjustified burden. i was kind of curious as to why this judge went to such great lengths to basically make this -- find this law to be unconstitutional, so i did a little research on the judge. i don't know the gentleman. i'm sure he's an intelligent person, but he also served for 20 years in wisconsin legislature as a democratic senator. so maybe he also brought a partisan view to that law. but frankly to hold that, taking time -- we all have to do some

effort. to take time to go to the department of motor vehicles to get a photo i.d. for free that that was an unjustified burden, and to find to be an extraordinary reach. >> and again this goes back both to the wisconsin decision and in some sense to crawford. should it matter which groups bear the burden of a voter i.d. law. should that matter to the extent that the voter i.d. law is generally applicable law. right in crawford, scalia writing for thomas and alito and himself said it shouldn't matter. that is to say that the differential burdens borne and in some sense to go back to your point about the wisconsin

justice says crawford didn't decide that question, so i'm free to decide this question and that it does. that the subgroup burden does in fact matter. does it matter, should we take into account that there are groups that will be differentially affected by this and that those are groups that are connected to the voting rights act? >> i think that he found that to be relevant with regards for the statutory violation of the voting rights act. and he found that it had discriminatory impact on those that are poor. and that they tended to be mostly african-americans and latinos. but i'm not sure what the significance of that rationale was. i'm sure african-americans and latinos can take time and figure

out how to get a free photo i.d. it's not that difficult to do. i found that the comment by the judge frankly to be perhaps a little patronizing with regards to his views of certain subgroups. i'm not sure i understood the reason for that rationale. >> i disagree. surprised. 9% of wisconsins who were voting didn't have the i.d. marketplace tells that you 200,000 or 300,000 people didn't have it already. i've been to the dmv and i dispute that factually that's an enjoy able experience. not to disparage anybody who works at the dmv. but i think the point is that it does go to the intent of action. if you implement a voter i.d. law knowing that 200,000 voters don't have i.d.s and those tend

to be minority or democratic performing, then -- and there is no justification for it in that there hasn't been a documented case other than one person who accidentally voted for their spouse who passed away over eight years, then it goes to the intent of the action and also disproves the idea that there is any legitimate state justification for imposing that burden. and we didn't though in florida what that does because there are lots of people who don't have vehicles who can't afford even public transportation sometimes who live remotely, who live on the sort of the fringes of the economy. and frankly those people have a right to vote, also, without an added obstruction. >> professor, maybe somebody here knows the answer. we've had photo i.d. laws in florida for quite some time. is there any evidence that that has had a burden on any

of voters from voting? i've never heard of it. never seen any litigation, never heard any legislators raising that topic. >> i'll pivot to some questions from the audience. they are interesting questions. they touch on some of the things that i wanted to talk about with respect to access and some of the state level changes in the last legislative session, not the most recently ended. and two of the questions go to the question of the registration process and asks why don't we look at the process of registration which is where the

problem begins which is again one of the post-2011 efforts that the state enacted with respect to attempting to clean up the voter registration process or at least third party voter registration which was subsequently halted. i'd like to touch on that in just a second. and then another which raises the question about low voter turnout. this goes back to long waits in lines or at least in some sense implicated by long waits with respect to how easy ordinary citizens take it . so let's talk about the voter registration reforms enacted in

2011 and again because they go i think to the heart of this question. protecting the integrity of the voter roles and who does that and under what conditions and regulations those are done. they weren't addressed in the most recent reforms, but -- >> if i can, i'd like to talk about that legislative session. but actually focus on a few other things just because some of my esteemed panelists here, dan especially, keeps talking about the huge long lines which is true. and i think we all agree that it was unacceptable. but there were some changes that were done. i'll focus on miami-dade county. i had the privilege of serving on the election advisory council made up of -- actually the mayor of miami gardens served with me

on that council, and it was made up of elected officials, lawyers, bipartisan. really tried to see what we can do to fix the issues. there were a lot of reasons other than the nefarious intent that dan would like to subscribe as to why there were the long lines in 2012 and i could spend an hour talking about the storm of different things that all happened at once to create these long lines. having said that, i think we did both things locally and at the state level to try to fix those things so that that doesn't happen again. at the state level, the legislature went ahead and increased early voting and to allow flexibility in early voting. larger counties, urban counties with large populations, obviously would like to have as much early voting as possible to try to make sure that as many people can vote by early voting if they so choose. some smaller counties that didn't have the issues with a lot of people wanting to early

vote had to incur the expense of minimum requirements whether it be hours of days of early voting when five people would show up all day long. so we have basically whereas before you'd start on the tenth day -- the requirement is you must start on the tenth day before and you must have it at least running through the third day before the election. now you can start on the 15th day before the election and you can run all the way up to the second day of the election. we increased it from eight days to 14 days. >> can i interrupt and ask another question of you directly? with respect to the 2013 reforms, what do you expect we'll see from the imposition of the requirement on supervisors of elections to issue reports on their website with respect to election day preparedness? that is to say to talk about the number of machines, to get that information out to the public well in advance of either a

primary or general election. >> i would think generally speaking that will be a good thing in reference to demanding that there is accountability and in a public way how are we being prepared for the election. for the elective process. in miami-dade county that's happening. part of this election advisory council, we have an election incident after report that was generate that had basically anybody who is interested in, it's interesting and it talks about all the different reasons why we have all the long lines and all the fixes being put in place both at the state level and internally to try to alleviate these concerns. and so miami-dade county is doing it and i would hope all the other counties across the state follow it and obviously -- you're right, there is a provision in the statute that requires all the counties to do that. so that is something that happened.

the ballot summaries, now we have a 75 word limit on the ballot summaries. we had five or six pages of ballots people were dealing with in 2012 which seriously slowed down the lines. now any constitutional amendments have the same limitations. like the other ballot questions have. we've expanded the definition of places that can be early voting sites. before you could only be libraries or specific county buildings. or municipal offices. fairgrounds, civic centers, expanded the definition. miami-dade county is expanding all the early voting sites. in 2012 it had 20 early voting sites. now it's between 25 and 30. so there are a lot of things being put in place to improve the mechanics of elections in

florida. which i'm proud of and proud to have participated in it. i don't think the sky is falling. i don't think people are being denied the right to vote. certainly not intentionally. is it a perfect system? no. this is the debate whether you're talking about voter i.d. or anything else. there always the issue of access and logistics. you have to balance those two things. you want to make sure nobody is denied access, but you have to make sure there is integrity in the process, that it works smoothly. and mechanically. i'll give you another example. we went to touch screen machines after 2000 because we thought that would be a good thing. all the big counties went to touch screen technology which was going to be more efficient, special needs people could vote, such as the blind or deaf. we went away from that technology a few years later because people lost faith in it.

they wanted the paper. what if there is a recount issue. what if there's no paper to do a recount. so the state and county spent millions to go back to the optical scan ballot machines. and that was a public policy decision. and so be it. and now we have optical scan ballot machines. so it's not a static process. it's always changing with the goal of trying to make it better. so you have this issue of access versus integrity. >> anyone want to speak on -- >> i want to follow up on that. especially in light of our conversation on wednesday and with respect to the professor, with respect to the national voter registration, there is clearly both at the state level and at the national level if we take crawford seriously, if we take shelby seriously, and we must, of definite solution. definite solution from a kind of bureaucratic apparatus and from

the states to county supervisors of elections with respect to the kind of discretion and flexibility they ought to have. are there problems. flexibility, do you foresee problems in that flexibility, should we think hard about that? >> well, despite the fact it was only supposed to happen once, it goes right back to bush v. gore and the question of equal treatment in elections. the problem with evolving power more and more locally is you tend to get more diversity. historically that diversity resulted in a very different voting experience depending on which county you were in. in 2000, it was which machine you were voting on. as a result the level of spoiled ballots because of those machines. in a close election, that matters. if you take equal treatment

seriously, and i do take the opinion seriously in bush v. gore, then while devolving power to localities has its advantages, it also has the danger of moving us into the position of what experience you have voting is shaped by where you are. and that can be a good thing or a really bad thing. and you end up having people being denied a vote in one place or denied on vote in one place. long lines in one place, not in another. flexibility is good. it does provide for a greater access to the ballot. but the danger of it is that it can be taken too far and historically -- by the way, historically in florida going back to the late 19th century constitution, people who ran

elections in the state were the county supervisors not the state. in 2000, there was no way to do a state recount. that sort of locality allowed for a lot of abuse. lot of abus electoral process. it was used to keep a lot of people from voting who the majority chose not to allow the vote. so in the sort of long way around it's probably a good thing that we had the greater flexibility but the danger is we are back to where we were a few years ago with the same problem that resulted in the crisis of 2000. >> first of all, the early voting issue is not an issue of legitimacy. although they did make the argument that it was, nobody has argued that people are early voting fraudulently as oppose today election day voting. the question on early voting and access has nothing to do with

legitimacy. there is no early voting fraud that happens. it is purely a question of access. if you look at the last bill in the two bills before that in the run up before the election in '05 and '08 and before '12 all the legislature did was artificially constrain the hours and the places. they said you can only vote eight hours during a day which is absurd. you can only vote eight hours over the weekend and limited to places to only libraries and city halls because i think they wanted to make the process harder. i don't think there is question about that. the democrats ran amendments saying you are going to do this but who wants to be head of the i told you so caucus. before '12 they did the same thing and limited it in the same ways, went from 14 to 9 days.

a lot of black churches were doing souls to the polls. none of it is about integrity. it is about access. >> if we take the point that any identification of some number is at the very first instance arbitrary, why not 20 days, any identification in the first instance is always arbitrary, what is the data that is required after that first move? that is to say, if we say we want to refine 15 days, what would have been a legitimate presentation of evidence that the move was -- >> 30 minutes. shouldn't have to wait in line more than 30 minutes to vote. dade county you couldn't vote unless you waited in line for hours. there are metrics that can be

delivered. the most recent reforms and i say reforms because we use that wo word, they still, university of florida just had a big issue there because you can't go to a university campus and vote even on election day you can. why is that there? even with the shame that has come to florida over the last two major elections and it really is shame, the legislature has trouble just saying we want everybody voting. and it is not -- you are not even balancing legitimacy with that. it is just an issue of how many people do we think ought to be voting in this election? how robust a turnout do we want? i agree that there are concerns that when you have flexibility at the end of the day if jacksonville decides that two or three hour lines are okay then that is wrong.

i don't care whether it is the legislature that does it or a county superintendent of elections. it shouldn't be that way. and the state ought to make sure that people don't have to wait that long to vote. there are metrics they can deliver prior to an election to make sure that they are prepared. >> i agree with dan which happens somewhat. actually here in miami dade county part of what we did is mayor wanted us aspirational but he wants to hold a supervisor of elections and the department accountable that we basically want every voter that comes to go vote to be out the door within one hour whether that be early voting or on election day. everything that is being done logistically and mechanically to improve the electoral process system in miami dade county so that you are in and out the door within an hour. in reference to the issue about

early voting i believe early voting is good public policy. i think it is something that we have had in florida since 2004. it has been tweaked over time. you want to ascribe nefarious intent to it or not, that is not me. but the point is that it is not something that is static. it is something that changes overtime. you want to try to give flexibility to the counties because the needs of a large county are different from a small county. i think it is good public policy but it is not a right. it is a privilege. there are 17 states that don't have any type of early voting including new york, massachusetts, virginia, alabama. across the nation and you can ascribe whether it is a blue state or red state it is across the board. so is it good public policy? yes. are we doing it in florida? yes. can we improve upon it? yes. there are 17 states that don't offer it at all and i think that

can't be lost in talking about how horrible it is in florida. >> i don't want to make joe's life worse. i have permission to ask one more question. it comes back to this question of registration. that is, why not some system of universal registration? why not some system of an opt out registration? that is to say everybody who turns 18 is registered or at least registered in the same way as the questioner asked you might register for the selective service. why is it so difficult if we take that term seriously to register and why so many variations? >> are you saying anybody who is 18? if i became a citizen in 1974 that would have been an unnecessary act on my part? i think we have to have some

thresho thresholds. are you saying anybody who is 18 in miami you get to vote and you opt out? >> clearly only if you are eligible to be registered. >> we have to have certain parameters. you have to be a citizen. you have to be 18. you have to live here. there has to be some basic requirements that need to be met in other to safe guard the integrity of the vote. so at some point -- those are burdens. you have to take some steps to satisfy those requirements. i'm not sure i understand the question. i think the state has a valid. >> you don't have to take steps to become 18. those aren't steps. those are conditions you have to satisfy. >> you have to meet certain requirements in order to -- >> sure. but the basic thrust of the question is why so much

difficulty? again, i want to address this back to you because you talk about national registration, how does that -- >> simple answer? because we have always wanted and used registration as a way to control who can and cannot vote. i am speaking in a historic sense here. it has always been a way that the states have controlled their electorate and who they want to vote and how they vote. the more complex you make the registration process the more likely you are to exclude voters. the easier you make the registration process the larger the pool of registered voters is likely to be. i don't know why we shouldn't be able to do a national voter database. i think it is a good idea. i have been supportive of it for a lot of years. for one thing it would take away the problem of people voting in multiple states. you wouldn't have this sense of two states not talking to one another. but the answer is the states don't want to give up that

power. and there are differences between states and how they organize administration. some states you can register on the day of the election and some states you have to register months in advance. that effects the pool of potential voters. each state makes a choice as to which pool they want. >> with that i want you to join me in thanking our panelists. [ applause ] with live coverage of the u.s. house on c-span and the senate on c-span 2 here we compliment the coverage by showing relevant congressional hearings. on weeks c span 3 is home to american history tv with programs that tell our country's unique stories. the civil war, american artif t artifacts touring to discover what artifacts reveal.

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