election before it occurs. or some sort of action that's going to take place in order to influence the outcome of that election in a way that our democracy doesn't necessarily intend because you can have good campaigns. you can have good commercials that certainly can sway an election or influence the outcome of election. but what we're talking about here is malfeasance. and exactly what that means. >> doug chapin? >> yeah, i think tammy's got it right. when you think about elections in this country, rigging focuses on the very narrow piece of real estate that is the polling place. there's that great line that's been attributed to lots of people but i think it's tom stopart that voting is not in the voting but in the counting. when something breaks or a black hat gets involved at the counting stage where there is some sort of slip between the

duly cast ballots of voters and the actual tabulation of the results. and so when we think about rigging, and what we probably want to talk about today is whether or not there's something going on, not misfeasance but malfeasance, actual bad acts by somebody to interfere with the process of going from a duly cast ballot to a valid, certified result. >> so let's pick up on just that issue. what evidence is there that rigging in either respects that you've defined is actually going on? >> well, i would argue that there really isn't any sort of evidence that this is happening. and the other thing that i think is really important to talk about is how this has been brought into the public conversation is specifically about the presidential election. we need to talk about it on a national scale. there are instances where there are some rogue actors that have

done bad things, but the majority of those types of instances is really in local elections where you'll have something like vote buying or someone casting an absentee ballot that's not their own. it occurs occasionally and rarely in local elections, but we've never seen it happen in a large scale national election. so i would argue that there are known vulnerabilities, and election administrators know what those vulnerabilities are and have mitigated as well as trained their poll workers, their staff, as well as all the stakeholder groups, election observers and others what to look out for to make sure it doesn't occur. >> the list of things that people worry about in terms of so-called rigging, things like we've got voters showing up who are dead. how is that possible?

or we've got impersonation. or we've got folks -- mexicans sneaking over the border, casting a ballot. can you give us a sense of what we know about those incidents? >> so a lot of what you've just mentioned ties back to voter registration because in order for anyone to receive a ballot, they have to have been registered, with the exception of a few places that have election day registration, in which case they can register at that point. if you're talking about individuals who are ineligible for any reason, citizenship, age -- they're only 15 but really enthusiastic, they've been seeing all the rock the vote ads. sore they, you know, are in a state where disenfranchisement has not restored their rights. the health america vote act requires when a registrar, voters or election administrators receives a form that it goes through a verification with other state

agencies. and so those sorts of things are check and ververified. it's very difficult for someone not an eligible elector to even get registered because of these sorts of validations. and then you have to, in fact, receive the ballot. if you're talking about requesting a ballot to be mailed to someone, many states require signature verification. so you may very easily be able to obtain someone's personal information on facebook, but you -- it may be much more difficult to obtain what their signature looks like in order to actually receive a ballot, cast that ballot, have the signature verified a second time and have it actually be cast. >> doug chapin, you are an expert on election law. you have worked with a lot of folks at the state and local level on elections. and you've worked with officials on things like pretesting of the

process, and then what's known as post-election auditing. are those helpful in terms of picking up, detecting wholesale rigging, voter fraud, that would change the outcome of an election? >> absolutely. and that's a nice follow-on to what tammy had to say about the process. i often talk about the polling places, the black box. it isn't a black box in the traditional sense you can't see inside. there's a fairly lengthy process that begins, weeks, even months before an election whereby election officials are testing and retesting different parts of the process. they are doing checks on the registration list. they are verifying absentee and vote by mail ballot requests. they are doing public, open to the public tests of their voting machines. things like logic and accuracy tests. there are opportunities for

people in many opportunities to be observers, legal, well-behaved observers at the polls. elections don't end on election night. we go through a process called canvassing. before we certify the vote. in many states, including minnesota, you have a procedure called post-election auditing. so we are dipping our cup into the election stream numerous times throughout the process. and while you can have small disturbances at the local level, the wholesale altering conspiracies being discussed right now would be so improbable as to be impossible given the number of times that we check and verify the process through. there's that great line that came up during the arms debates in the 1980s. it's a russian phrase. [ speaking russian ] it means trust but verify. election officials trust their

voters but they verify the process numerous times so that both they and the voting public can have confidence the outcome is what the outcome should be. >> and i would just add that it's also noteworthy to consider exactly what kind of numbers we're talking about here. if you're talking about the number of jurisdictions that conduct elections in the united states, it's between 8,000 and 10,000 depending on what you're including. whether you're including voter vegistration, which i would. so you have 10,000 jurisdictions. some of them are run by republicans. some are run by democrats. all of them employ employees of both political parties. all of them have poll workers or on-site election day workers that many states require you to have either a complement of party affiliations within the board. tragedially, historically, it used to be ds and rs. but with the growth of independent or nonaffiliated

voters, many states have had to adjust their statutes in order to allow for unaffiliated voters to still participate in the polls. so you have a complement of your electorate within the polling place to keep an eye on what's happening. and they swear -- they take a sworn duty, a sworn oath at the beginning of election day to uphold the constitution. not a lot of people have to take a sworn oath before they take their job duty for the day. i think they all take it very, very seriously. >> doug chapin, obviously, we've become a red and blue country. not everywhere, but many parts of the country. and i think there's some trepidation on both sides of the aisle among voters that when you get to a deep blue state, or you get to a deep red state that despite the checks that tammy has mentioned, that the partisans are able to kind of work their way and stuff the ballot box or allow individuals to register who are not actually

eligible. is that something that we've seen in america? >> i don't really think it is. at the risk of being redundant and repetitive and saying the same thing again. we have lots of opportunities in the system to check that it's working the way it should. and the vast majority of election officials in this country, i think oos possible if they are partisans at all, to put your thumb literally or figuratively over the letter that follows their name and not be able to tell their partisan leaning. that many of these election officials do have very strong policy positions, and we can talk about the differences between the parties, if you like, but i -- examples of that kind of thumb on the scale inside job are rare to nonexistent in this country because, again, you can't get away with it because it will be detected throughout all the difference checks throughout the process. >> tammy, you worked in florida.

for everybody thinking about political elections. florida and 2000 are part of the conversation. >> i was in arizona, but i see where you're going with this, so it's okay. >> so was florida in 2000 an example of partisanship run amok? >> so, i would say that to answer the question that you asked to doug in a different way and answer the question you just asked me, you asked if there are partisans that are registering voters that are not eligible in order to influence and i'd say the opposite is the case. that people who are eligible electors are having obstacles put in their path in order to register and to participate. i am a firm believer in facts and data. and so in 2004 in arizona, we had a voter initiative passed where voters had to document proof of citizenship before they could register to vote.

it was no longer a sworn affidavit is no longer relevant. we had tens of thousands of people who registered that did not prove by documentation. the vast majority were able to achieve documentation and get registered but many were not. many of them were elderly and no longer had a valid driver's license or a birth certificate. so i would say that there are more statutory and legislative efforts to, in the hopes of ensuring that no one who is ineligible can register. sometimes at the cost of preventing eligible electors from participating. that's really a policy question that people have to decide. is it justifiable to prevent an american citizen who is eligible in every way to exercise the franchise if, in fact, it allows, you know, some strict rule that ensures that no one is

able to register who is ineligible. >> and just to be clear. the voter i.d. law in arizona and efforts elsewhere, that is directed at one type of issue related to this vague concept of rigging. it's just for individuals trying to impersonate a voter or individual who is not eligible to register. >> correct. >> so this is sometimes kind of folded in as a cure-all, but it's actually from the perspective of you all who are in the trenches or have been in the trenches, this is a pretty narrow solution. doug chapin, you're looking -- >> i guess i want to jump in. you asked, was the 2000 election in florida partisanship run amok? i think the answer is no. i think it's true that the two parties have very different views on election policy. democrats tend to worry more about access to polling place. for them, the worst possible outcome is someone who is

otherwise eligible and is unable to cast a ballot. republicans, all things being equal, tend to worry about the integrity of the system. the worst possible outcome is someone ineligible and still able to cast a ballot. election officials come at that differently. in that environment what happened in florida was as much about some of the other tensions that we have in election administration. there you had a secretary of state who happened to be a republican who had responsibility for but not necessarily any authority over local election offices, some of which were run by democrats since they elect county election officials in most of florida. so while those two groups might have seen the problem differently it was about as much of lack of fit between what the state requires and what the locality does that was the issue. stir in the fact that you're electing the leader of the free world and partisans from literally across the country are

physically flooding courthouses and election offices. there was partisanship. was the system an example of citizenship run amok? the answer is no. >> tammy patrick, there are folks who are convinced that there's a threat of rigging the system. and the conversations i've had with them often involve a declaration that we just don't know about it. that it's going to and, you know, the kinds of issues that you have raised, that's fine but it's so rampant that our detecting systems are just not picking it up. and we're blind to it. what about those kind of issue of a kind of rampant situation of voter fraud that would not be detected and would change the outcome of an election? >> i think we're better than that. i think that if there was, in

fact, such activity and action taking place, we would know about it. and the reason i feel that way is because there is meticulous oversight of the elections process. and elections are ongoing in the states. there are local elections, state elections. these election officials are using the equipment. they're laying out their ballots multiple times a year. and if there was something wi wide scale and prevalent, we'd definitely know about it. there's documentation of chain of custody. there's security access to the physical machines themselves. the machines are not connected to the internet. so there are -- there are air gaps in between the machines so you can preclude any sort of malware or issues being transported from one machine to the next and infecting the entire election. because there's such observation

of the elections process, i just don't believe that it's as wide scale or -- that it's even present at all because i think that we would know about it. many election officials have sadly been diverted by this attention. in the last few months when what they really needed to be doing was focusing in on the details. because elections are all about the details. it's about ballot rotation. it's about how many ballots you're ordering, about making sure the date is right at the top of the ballot. it's things like that that they should be focusing in on and not this other topic and this other object. not that it's not an important topic, because it is, but this timing for it is really unfortunate. and so what i think that we're seeing is that they're reacting in their way because they're hearing from their voters there's concern, about a lack of confidence in the system because they're hearing their vote is

going to get hacked, there's going to be a long line. it's all rigged anyway. you don't like the candidates. the government is terrible. who wants to participate in that? it's incredibly problematic. local election officials are being even more transparent. they are putting their logic and accuracy tests of the voting equipment out on periscope and on twitter. facebook living the testing of ballots. they're trying to make sure that their voters know that this is a transparent process, and i think election administrators from both sides are saying, no, stop. we've got secretaries of state that are republican. secretary houston came out with a statement. there are democratic secretaries of state saying this is not the case. we run a good election. and people need to have confidence in it. >> it sounds like one of your concerns is that the charge of rigging and the half of america registered voters are being worried about voter fraud is

actually starting to have a cost on the ability of election officials to do what they need to do to be ready for election day. >> i think at the end of the day, they're going to get the job done. but we may see some mistakes, some transpositions of numbers on occasion. things like that. just small errors that hopefully will be kaucaught before electi day. we've seen a couple of them in the news. it's not going to be impactful. the outcome, but these are the type of things that election administrators are doing during this period, not talking about connectivity, cybersecurity, that sort of thing. i don't want to discount that conversation because it's a very important conversation to have. it just would have been a better conversation to have last year or even in january or february. but not this close to an election. because that's part of what's impacting, i think, the voters'

confidence. yesterday charles stewart issued a review of a study that he had done -- >> charles stewart is a professor of political science at mit? >> exactly. and he had done a study with paul gronke from reed college back in 2012 and asked the voters, the elect rorate that y are confident your vote was cast and how confident are you in the votes being cast nationally. there was another survey that came out recently that asked not exact verbatim question but basically the same thing. what was pretty interesting and doug will chime in here if i'm getting this part wrong because i read it quickly yesterday is that what it showed was that for republican voters, their confidence increased somewhat by 5% or 6 percentage points. but for democratic voters it was almost double the confidence in the actual process.

so it's not having a negative impact so far, at least with those who were surveyed. but that's definitely the concern. so that's what we just want to make sure the efforts to educate the voters on the process continues their confidence. >> obviously, this will be ongoing issue because after the election, we'll see how each of the candidates for the two major parties respond. doug chapin, you have a -- the distinction of being one of the most heavily quoted experts on election administration when every four years presidential contest rolls around. and every year you deal with a kind of litany of issues that come up. first off, could you talk about, what are some of those issues that you would expect to come up this year, and are those issues, issues that could be tied to, you know, some kind of malfeasance, rigging, or is this

just kind of the everyday activity of running a pretty complex system in which many, many millions of ballots are going to be cast? >> i'm going to answer that question in just a minute. 50, since we're in washington, i'm going to ask you the question i wish you would have asked to follow up on the polls. three things really quickly. number one, the polls we see about confidence in the election system mirror what we see about confidence in congress. people tend to like their own member of congress but don't have a lot of fath in congress as a whole. we see similar numbers nationwide with faith in the election system. the interesting numbers that charles brought up yesterday play up the degree to which partisanship and tribalism have begun to affect our election system. larry and i had an e-mail exchange yesterday. it appears the claims of rigging and arguments about the election system are actually driving democrats to be more confident in and supportive of the

election system, simply because another candidate is being critical of it. but finally, and i think this is most important, is that in many ways, public opinion polling is interesting but doesn't really necessarily reflect true public opinion. fortunately, most of you are sitting down here and those of you who aren't, hang on to something. the average american doesn't pay a lot of attention to the nuts and bolts of the election process. there's this kind of general knowledge. and when you dig in, even a little bit, those opinions can change awfully quickly. we saw that with the minnesota voter i.d. debate. overwhelming support for photo i.d. in minnesota. but opponents of the vote, the referendum, started digging in with an unofficial, the more you look, the less you like. and the more facts that were made available, that majority started to eerode. to the extent that people actually pay attention, listen to the people like me who get yoeted a lot and people like

tammy who actually know what they're doing. they understand that the process is a lot more secure and a lot more reliable than they thought it was. so polls are interesting, and we pay a lot of attention to them. but i have faith that americans actually will understand the process better than they do. now, having said that, what happens on election day? a lot of things happen on election day. one of the reasons i am an election geek, i love the work that i do and why we're trying to bring it to a new generation of students and professionals across the country is because it is this intensely human experience. we're going to have more than 100 million voters going to hundreds of thousands of polling places dealing with hundreds of thousands of poll workers and the like. in that environment, things will go wrong. people will find the wrong name on a list. a machine will break. there will be a long line. a door will be locked that should have been unlocked at poll opening. if experience is any guide, at least one person will take a

swing at another person at a polling place on election day. and, as my friend mindy at election line.org will tell you, a car will probably drive into a polling place some place in america on election day. stuff happens on election day. so we will have -- we may have places run out of ballots or where the voter list doesn't get to the polling place in time. places where the number of voters show up overwhelms the physical space at the moment and we'll end up with long lines. that all goes into what we'd call misfeasance. mistakes or sort of the human eleme element. election officials know that will happen and will prepare for it. more and more folks have been looking at this. more and more jurisdictions are setting up election day command centers where they can monitor what's happening at polls and send resources, ballots, people, what have you, in case something

goes wrong. things will not go smoothly on election day. but it wouldn't be america. it wouldn't be election day or democracy if it did. things won't go perfectly but the outcome is something we can all rely on. >> just to be clear, even though things are not going to go well, your point is that's not the result of an intentional effort to alter the outcome of the election? >> correct. it is the inevitable glorious result of america being america on election day. >> you've been watching elections for a while. you are one of the country's experts. does that surprise you that things go awry on election day, particularly presidential election? >> it doesn't surprise me because -- and there are a variety of reasons why things go wrong. on the president's collaboration on election administration, we hold stakeholder group meetings to find out, why do lines form?

we asked to election administrators at the state and local level, stakeholder groups, academics, and the voters themselves. and one of the reasons we found out is that every four years we pay a lot of attention to elections. and it's usually, as i mentioned earlier, in the month or so right before the presidential election. maybe in the primaries if they're interesting. so this year it's been a bit of a roller coaster. in the off-cycle years when election administrators are going to their legislators trying to get legislation for reforms, for improvements, for resources, for funding, they don't have the attention that they should be given. and many of those reforms are known and tried and true around the country. and in the report on the american voting experience. so there are set reforms that we know can improve the voting experience in the united states.

many states have picked up some of those reforms and will be trying them out. this will be the first presidential election they've implemented them in the last couple of years since the report came out. and i think that's important to know is that it's not for lack of trying. many cases, and if you look at the national conference of state legislatures, they keep track of what's trending, what sorts of reforms in election are being introduced and passed. so we now have more states with online voter registration. we know the efficiencies therein and that can improve the voter rolls. more and more states checking cross-check programs. we know the efficiencies there. >> would you just stop there. not everyone here has followed these reforms nor read the commission's report. could you just -- >> it's riveting. >> could you -- it is actually very well written, and it's not written in a jargony sort of

way. could you flush out a little bit of some of these things you're ticking off. >> certainly. so we were tasked by executive order by president obama to look at ten different areas of election administration. everything from voter registration, providing language assistance, voters with disabilities, military and overseas voters, voting technology, you name it. it was all there. a buffet of election issues. and so we came up with a myriad of recommendations. they were bipartisan and unanimous by the commission. the commission was bob bauer and ben ginsburg who was governor romney's attorney. and you see him quite a bit these days on nbc. so it was unanimous and bipartisan. we came up with reforms like online voter registration as being something that we should be doing to modernize our registration process because

it's all on paper. so if you want the foundation of your democracy to be accurate at the polls on election day, let's really look at how voters are registering, when they're registering, when they're keeping their information current. the vast majority of voters believe when they change their address with the department of motor vehicles, it changes their registration. now states have differing interpretations of the national voter registration act and whether or not that's an automatic opt in or opt out. states are revisiting some of the ways in which they are keeping their voter registration rolls accurate. we had very specific recommendations for serving military and overseas voters, making sure they're permanent registrations because in some states they'll cancel a military or overseas voter at the end of the year which we did not believe was appropriate. so there are a wight variety of recommendations. and things as simple as ballot layout and design can be as important and as critical in

making sure that a ballot is actually being recorded as the voter intends. is yes, yes? is no, no? what am i supposed to do? how many times can i cast a selection? if it's vote for three, vote for two? so we know that there are usability best practices that should be done, but in many cases, states are precluded from doing that because it's in statute that everything has to be all in capital letters. well, that's the worst possible way to present information to our voting public. so there are ways to lessen the lines. there are ways to make sure there's more integrity in the system everywhere. and i think that election administrators are trying to get those reforms passed and many of them have been successful. but there's still a lot of work to be done. >> so doug chapin, i know you are an eternal optimist. and while there's been i pale cast over election officials,

perhaps unfairly, after all these these are folks who are really in the trenches doing the work of democracy here in the united states. but is there an opportunity here as well, particularly given where technology is? are there some areas where you look at areas where we've had trouble? maybe some of the areas that tammy patrick has just listed? things that you talk about during presidential elections where we have the solution through technology and just new innovations? >> absolutely. and you're right. i'm an optimist. but i think that's the only rational way to be in any endeavor. in this case, it really applies. one of the things i really appreciate about election officials and why i like working with them is this commitment to the notion of improvise, adapt and overcome. when there are long lines, think about how we lay out the polling place. think about how we lay out ballots? and i'll point out that our

program at the university of minnesota is currently running a course on election design. so check us out on that. they work together. they talk to one another about how to get the word out to voters in advance about early voting or vote by mail or what have you. they study one another and learn from one another all the time. as we come into this new, more technically involved era with online voter registration, you're starting to see jurisdictions share ideas about how to protect their online voter registration databases from the bad guys throughout who want to steal personally identifiable information. we've seen them share information with one another on about how to make those systems accessible to people with disabilities or intelligible to people for whom english is not their first language. i talk about the election community. that's not just a turn of phrase. that's actually a real thing. and this is a group that does t

doesn't -- doesn't except to be universally acclaimed. the bricks that are thrown at them, i like to refer to them as the grenade catchers of american democracy. they're used to being in the line of fire. they always come together and find a way to identify a solution and then, more importantly, share it with one another in a way that works for voters in the country at large. every problem is an opportunity. and election officials, that's an everyday thing. >> just to come to, you know, this issue about technology. because it's the future in every domain of our life. does technology offer a way, for instance, on voter registration to -- with high level of certainty identify who the person is that is registering and whether they are actually eligible to vote, which is one of the main concerns of those who are worried about rigging? >> we're certainly seeing that. and tammy mentioned the commission report recommending

online voter registration. that was one area which was, maybe not surprising to tammy, but surprising to me was tremendously bipartisan. that online voter registration has been adopted in bright red states, bright blue states, every shade of purple in between partly because it marries the two concerns that the parties have. it makes it easier to register but states tend to bake in some kind of eligibility check whether it's the driver's license or somebody else. so there are lots of opportunities to make voter registration more available. the pew charitable trusts and several states have set up something, eric for chort but the electronic registration information center whereby participating states share registration data with one another. not just to identify people who may not be eligible but to identify people who are eligible but unregistered. and states are reaching out to them and physically sending them an application or giving them a link to an online registration

portal. it is easier than ever in this country, i am confident to say, to register to vote and just as importantly to check and update your remgistration. it is easier than ever to find out, where do i vote? what's on my ballot? what are the rules for casting it? technology has made the distance between election offices and their voters as short as the distance from your thumb to your smartphone. >> and just to add on to that is it also the case that our confidence that the right people are registering? that the technology also improves the integrity of the process and the security confidence that we can have that only eligible citizens are registering and casting ballots? >> i think, yes. i think that, again, because citizenship and/or other eligibility checks are being baked into some of these online registrations, and the ability to, whether it's through e.r.i.c. or kansas cross check where states are sharing

registration lists, they are checking and double-checking going on all the time in the field. so i think that our confidence, the evidence suggests that confidence in the quality of the voter registration lists is and should be at an all-time high. >> tammy patrick? >> i would take it one step further in that, of course, doug is absolutely right. i'm very biassed for online registration because it started in arizona and it's been something that's been a bit of a soap box for over a decade. so i'm excites to see its adoption. part of the reason i'm excited about that is that not only does it have all the efficiencies doug mentioned but also allows additional security when you have third party stakeholder groups, political parties, candidates out registering voters. you can have them registering on paper and handing it to that person and then it may or may not ever get to the election administrator. that voter feels they've registered because they

completed the piece of paper. they handed it over to someone with a clipboard. it turns out if you have a clipboard, you can do just about anything because people trust a clipboard for whatever reason. but instead, when you have online voter registration, and there are hrpd hundreds of organizations that have leveraged online registration to register the voter right then and there. it goes officially into the state system and many of the states have created very efficient systems to turn around that data electronically and send it back to the parties to the groups doing the registration to let them know this person is duly registered. start your get out the vote effort. so it's good for the political parties. it's good for the candidates, for the stakeholder groups that are out there doing this effort. if they could shift their work from registering voters to getting out the messages and getting out the electorate, i

think they would all be thrilled to shift their efforts in that way. >> let me just jump on that really quick. that's the up side. that also raises challenges for election officials. with the advent of online voter registration, number one, can the system handle the load? a couple of states, they simply can't. where the rush at the last minute. i believe virginia was 350 people per second were trying to register online in virginia. and that, i dare say, probably rivals even "american idol" at its peak. that's the kind of capacity. and states have to be ready for

attacks or injection attacks. we have to treat voter data like the absolute gold that it is because it's golden to people that would do bad things with it. >> i want to pick up on the hacking issue. we've seen hacking of large retail companies. we've seen hacking of banks. we've seen hacking recently of political parties and campaigns. should america be worried that -- whether it's wikileaks or perhaps a russian effort can hack our voting system either in terms of the registration rolls

or in terms of the ballots that are cast and then counted? >> right. so those are definitely two very distinct things. all of the examples that we've seen in the media have had to deal with voter registration. and it's also important to consider that in many states, the vast majority of information on the voter registration file is public information. or it's obtainable, very inexpensi inexpensively. for $25 you can get the entire voter roll for the entire state. other states it's more cost prohibitive. it was a penny per name in the state i was in, which sounds like nothing, unless you have 2 million registered voters. it adds up quickly. we're talking about voter registration information. online voter registration is a little bit of a misnomer. it's an online voter registration application process. so it does not automatically give that individual access to the database. it does not automatically put

that person's information on to the voter file for that state. it's an application in the same way that if i am a clerk entering in that data, i am applying it into the system where it will run the background checks, bouncing it against the department of motor vehicles, bouncing it against other state agencies for states that have set up more expansive check. so it's an application process. additionally, states have redundancies of their voter registration files. if i'm going to go in to modify my registration online, what i'm actually seeing when i put in my information and it seeks to see if i'm already registered and finds my registration at my old address, so i can change it. it's just hitting a redundantant system that gets upload every night or every hour. it's not the full system itself. so you are only accessing a

duplicate. for voter registration. that's what we've seen in the news. it's also important to know that most states provide the voter file, the vast majority of information, the voter file to the political parties, and that's where they get their canvassing door-to-door list. that's how they provide it to the candidates. that's where that information was hacked. it was not hacked at the official election registrar's, recorder's, superviseors elections offices in the instances of the party hacks and so on. >> doug chapin, isn't the real risk of hacking that the vote totals are going to be changed. that the russians can come in and pick the winner of our election? >> you certainly hear that, but the answer is no in which all the ways we check and test the system. there may be some people who fear that. but i don't think it's terribly

likely. i shouldn't -- i wouldn't go that far. it's impossible, i think, to change the outcome of an election remotely. the kind of threats we're talking about are the public facing systems like voter registration, and even then that's just information, it's not outcomes. so to be worried about somehow a bad actor, whether it's a state actor or a partisan actor is going to be able to interfere to get between the ballots and the outcome is next to impossible if not impossible. >> and the other caveat there is that to say that they could do so undetected, right? because that's really what's at stake here. so let's say, i'll play devil's advocate. let's say they did get in and deleted half the voter file in a jurisdiction. those voters are still going to show up and vote or request a ballot, hopefully they'll turn out. and have confidence in the election. when they do so, if they're not on the voter file, they have the ability to cast a provisional ballot.

in that case, that jurisdiction would be looking to see why do we have this huge influx of provisional ballots? and they would be able to look back and see what are the similarities? all of these people have their registration canceled on the same day or the same time and the voter's votes could count because they'd be able be able to track it back through the system. there are transactional logs. you know which staff member keyed in someone's voter registration changed someone's voter registration. there are ways that we can monitor the system. there are changes of custody documentation so being able to do it undetected is really critical and i think when you talk about the ballot casting and tabulation, it is important -- i keep saying it's important to know. everything's so important to know. but it's -- it's very rare and i say that because i'm not aware of a single jurisdiction that has their equipment connected to the internet. the vast majority of states

actually have standards and laws that require that you cannot have it connected the internet. and there are protocols in place to make sure that the same stick that's downloading the new election on to each piece of equipment is used, you know, a different stick is used for each type of equipment or a different one is used each election so there are a long laundry list -- and we have been -- one fortunate outcome of this is we're talking about some of these things and resources that are available for election officials like as doug mentioned, the department of homeland security has offered a whole host of calls with secretaries of state and state elections directors and election officials. but the election assistance commission, i mean, we would be remiss if we didn't talk about the outstanding role that they have been playing in all of this. when the commission that i was on, the president's commission, was doing our work, there were

no commissioners. we now have three of the four for the last couple of years and they have outstanding work to advance the technologies, to get new standards approved, to work on the next set of standards that will really allow for such increased performance of our elections. in the oncoming years. now we just have to decide who pays for new equipment because the equipment we're using is aging and the vast majority of election officials feel it's the last presidential election to be using the equipment that they currently have so that's yet another layer of this onion. >> i've got some questions here from our audience. i want the move to them but before i do that i want to follow up quickly with you. given the next generation of voting machines, that will be coming online, do you think it's imperative given questions about rigging, given concerns about

hacking, that whatever new machine comes online should have a paper ballot to provide confidence to voters or is that just, you know, so antiquated and in efficient that we should move past it? >> so, it's -- i believe that there -- pretty much every single state has a requirement for a paper record for the next it ration of voting equipment that they purchase. and currently, there are only a couple of states that don't have a paper record but they have very, very rigid and stringent testing and post-election audits to ensure the validity of the election and every jurisdiction does a reconciliation audit the number of people that signed in, that should actually be the same as the number of ballots cast. so everyone does that sort of a balance. and then there are other states that do things like hand count audits that refer the paper record to the electronic record.

what many of the new it ration voting equipment kind of are looking to have is that they all have some sort of a paper record and in most states that's considered the official ballot cast by statute. >> and really quickly, whether or not it's paper, every state needs to have a voting system that's auditible and every state that isn't already doing it should be doing a post-election audit so that we can make sure that the outcome reached that the ballot supports so right now paper tends to be the best way to audit, whether or not there are some sort of technology that allows us to independently verify the guts of a machine without a paper ballot, i don't know. but the important thing is that the system be auditible and with that ability we actually audit the systems. >> so here's a question from the audience. and the question is, very good conversation. but this is quite technical. and the questioner says, isn't

the case that the critics of the system who are warning about rigging and some of hose who are warning about hacking have already done quite a bit of damage by raising confusion, diminishing confidence and casting a really pale over the coming election results that we'll have in three week's time. tammy, do you want to take a crack at that first? >> sure. and i think that's the concern. this is technical because the elections process, it gets down in the weeds really, really quickly. it's all in the details. so it's much easier to make a false claim that is broad and expansive and vague and then have to combat it with actual details of what's going on. so i think that that's really the challenge that we're kind of faced with here. when you have -- i believe it was recently there was a hearing not far from here on the hill

about this very topic, and one of the congresswomen said, you know, i don't believe that the russians or anyone had any intention of rigging or hacking anything but they have created chaos. and by creating that chaos, they have, in fact, been successful. and i'm just hopeful that that plays out to be untrue in the long run on november 9th or the later on in the month, hopefully election administrators will have thanksgiving. that's always a question if you're done in time for thanksgiving and i think that's what we're really going to find out is if, in fact, i believe that they maybe have underestimated the tenacity of the american voter and the american electorate because i think that everyone will make sure that they understand what their options are, so if they have to go to the polls on tuesday the 8th, that's what they will do. if they have the opportunity to

vote early, we are seeing record numbers of absentee ballot requests in the states that allow voters to vote by mail. large numbers of individuals showing up early voting sites across the country. i saw yesterday in the news something like 1.5 million people have already voted in this election so i think that the american electorate will turn out. they're registering in record numbers so i think that -- but again, i'm an optimist like doug here so hopefully i won't be proven wrong. >> doug, isn't really the challenge here that all the kinds of things that both of you comment on and try to understand and analyze that come up during elections, misfeasance, just stuff happens, isn't now the reality that because we're having a conversation about rigging, because we're giving it attention, it's now gong to give credence to the idea that kind of plain vanilla administrative

slip-ups become seen in a entirely different and sinister light? >> i guess so. i mean, i think we certainly had heated rhetoric. whether or not the charges are false, i think they're falsi falsifiab falsifiable. we have the data and have the ability to show the system works when it's supposed to work even when stuff happens on election day. we are seeing americans react in this election. and i blogged a couple weeks ago of the belt and suspenders election. voters are voting sooner, checking their registrations multiple times, they're going to make damn sure that their ballots count on november 8th. so, yes, there is sort of a raised concern that the system might not work but each individual seems to be taking a role and making sure that her vote gets cast and counted on election day. am i worried that there's a lot of negative energy around

elections? absolutely. but if i worried it will be prooufb to be a problem on election day? no, i'm not. i think we have the data. >> tammy patrick, let me put to you a question. aren't we by talking about rigging and giving it attention, giving it more credibility than the charges deserve? >> i've heard this brought up in the last couple of weeks. and i would say that if we weren't discussing it, if we weren't refuting it, that sometimes silence is legitimatizing the stated claim so i think that it's critical we're out there talking about all of the safeguards that are in place to ensure that our systems are secure and that there is integrity in the process. but i do -- i do hear that on occasion and i understand that perspective. but i think that if we aren't out there with correct information that the wrong

information will continue to be conveyed and we need to be out there dispelling it. >> doug chapin, similar type of question but want to put you the day after the election when one of the major candidates who's lost makes the argument that they lost because the system was rigged. how do we respond to that? >> prove it. i mean, prove it. i mean, there will be piles, reams, terabytes of information available to show the system worked the way it was intended to work. many states allow when's called a contest procedure. you can actually contest an election. we had one in minnesota with the u.s. senate race. you can't allege a problem. you have to be able to prove it and put enough votes in question to put the outcome in doubt. so, right now, it's rhetoric. i think if it happens after the election, it becomes an allegation and such an allegation needs to be backed

with proof and if there's proof, then we'll hash it out. if there's not proof, it's just rhetoric so prove it. >> to ra pa ra phrase the first lady michelle obama, if one of the candidates goes in the direction of rigging, then your suggestion is go high to the data? >> sure. >> follow the data. but again, prove it. it seems to me that it's easy -- talk is cheap in this -- you know, and i say probably multiple times a day, i'm an election geek. not a political junkie. i understand that the kind of rhetoric seeing right now is politics. i understand that. but when you come for the election system, especially the day after election day, you need to have proof. you can't just say the system doesn't work. you actually have to prove it. election officials don't have the time or bandwidth to prove the negative but they're showing that the system worked the way it should have. >> so, let me give you an example of the kind of proof

that those who are doubters already putting out there. you have worked for pew center in the states. and they -- the pew did a study in 2012 on election rolls and showed that many states hadn't done a good job to keep their election rolls accurate. now, those who are suspicious of the election system point to that study and say, there are 18 million names that are fraudulent on that list. what's wrong with that? >> oh, by the way, we don't have time to cover the whole thing but that study was done with the intent of showing how the current registration system sometimes lags reality with regard to people who have died or people who have moved, large numbers of those registrations are people who moved from one place to another. tammy already mentioned this but when you move from place "a" to

place "b" and you know you need to register you might not realize you have to let the old place know you don't live there. if you try to vote at both places, you are almost certainly going to be found out. do people who die remain on the rolls? yes. because sometimes the process of notifying election offices of deaths takes more time than it could. but again, those sorts of things are usually quickly identified. there's always going to be a lag because we are a nation of many hundred million people who are constantly moving. it's something like 1 in 6 people moves or people -- tremendous mobility in this country. the voter registration list is always going to lag reality. one of the benefits of online voter registration is that it gives vote earls the possibility to both check and update their registrations more quickly and with the help of programs like eric to help states track that movement, as well. so is there a lag? yes.

does that mean that 18 million dead, relocated and otherwise fictional people cast ballots on election day? no. >> i would absolutely agree. and i would push back that those are 18 million fraud lint registrations. because the vast majority of those are duly eligible individuals who have had the audacity to move, get married, that sort of thing. and when many times people have life changes, they are not thinking of contacting their supervisor of elections or their county auditor to let them know that they have moved. and we also know that studies prove that the vote earls believe when they do a change of address at the postal service that it updates their address automatically for voter registration. and that's not the case in every state so some states do it that way with national change of address and the state of minnesota started doing that, as well, and they have found great efficiencies in it because that's what the electorate is thinking is happening so instead

of assuming that our population is going to know the nuts and bolts of our election laws, we're having our election laws reflect what our -- the people we service believe the service is. and i think that that's important moving forward. >> so, thinking forward, to after the election, what would be some concrete, feasible reforms that either washington or the states ought to be looking at and passing that would create both the reality and the appearance of fairness in the election system? >> i have a long list. so, i would say the best place to start is the president's commission on election administration report. of course. shameless plug. in all seriousness, there are a number of reforms there and i have been talking with -- i would say that say whether this

should be a federal effort or the states' effort is subject to debate and that's a whole other panel. but i think everyone should be reviewing the state in which they live and whether or not their existing guidelines reflect a progressive way of servicing their electorate and what i mean by that is that many election laws were written 50, 60 years ago, they were, you know -- and they have been updated over time but they're certainly so e sconced in paper and older procedure that is they need to be reviewed. one of the things i'm mentioning to state legislators, as well, to make sure they're looking at their deadlines. it was incredibly necessary to cut off voter registration a month, two months in some cases before an election because you had to get all that information, keyed into a system or handwritten in the books and get them prepared to go to the polls

on states. with states of online voter registration, that's an almost instant process to get that updated and using an electronic poll book at the polling place, you can update that over the weekend before tuesday's election and get it deployed in plenty of time so there are ways to reflect what we need and what we do in our every day lives. and so, i think that that's really what we need to be talking about and as i mentioned before the funding because we need to start considering a revenue stream for our elections and it's not something that every ten years we decide we need to put a chunk of money into voting equipment and then, you know, have these little stop gaps along the way. it's really critical that we pay attention to it and that we devote some resources to it. >> doug chapin, what is your agenda items for fairer elections? >> i think we need to up our investment in the american election system.

i think, number one, tammy's right. we have to invest money. whether it's federal money, whether it's state money, whether it's some kind of partnership of states and localities, we need to find a way to make the cost of elections manageable for election officials so that they don't have to go hat in hand to the legislature every decade or so. i think we need to invest in the rules and laws. tammy's right that many of our books are -- laws on the books deal with an election system that looks more like 1910 than 2010. we're not thinking about poll books and the like. and finally, i think we need to invest in the community itself. i mean, obviously, at the university of minnesota with the certificate and election administration we are investing in the next generation of election professionals and understand the job of election administration changed. you know yurks're not just someone who is collecting and tabulating votes but think about cyber security and identity

theft. you are somebody who needs to think about the way to lay out and design a ballot. you're somebody that needs to think about the different communities in your jurisdiction, language, disability, what have you, come to vote at the polling place. the job of election administration is much more complex both administratively and politically than it ever was and we need to invest in a new generation of election officials who can make the ask for funding, who can make the ask for improving procedures and then can also do the day-to-day work to make sure the process works for the voters. >> tammy patrick, the president's commission that you served on, one of its recommendations was for a concerted effort to create training for election officials, to create a profession or to support the profession that already exists. could you say a little bit about that? >> sure. so, part of what we included had to do with really what doug just

mentioned, recognizing the varied skill set that you need to be an election administrator and looking at in it a wide perspective. so, we know that there are states that have certification programs of their election administrators so in order to conduct an election in the state of arizona you have to go through secretary of state certification program, it's a week-long training. it goes over the laws, federal laws, state laws. a wide variety of things that you need to know and a background in it. what we find is that a lot of election administrators in some cases they run for office. but in others, they're appointed and or are hired on as a job. and maybe don't have any experience whatsoever. i speak from personal experience of having no experience in it. and it's quite a learning curve. so, having an established way for someone to educate themselves on the job, what's necessary, because i will tell

you most people do not wake up when they're 5 or 6 and be i want to be an election administrator. that's too bad because it's an exciting profession and once elections get in your blood, you don't turn back. it's a career path that runs the gamut of every possible thing to imagine, good and bad, there's never a dull day. no two days are the same. and it's an exciting and very, very fulfilling and rewarding position. so that's for the election official. but we also recommended to make sure that there are procedures in place to train our poll workers and our other election administrative staff because in some cases, poll workers trained the first time they work and then they never have to go to training again which as we know elections change a lot from one election to the next. the laws change. we have litigation. we have procedures that change.

so it's -- the training piece of it is really, really important. >> doug chapin, i want to ask you about one of the challenges that strikes me and i'm curious what you think about this which is there's been a lot of conversation about our criminal justice system, that officials in the criminal justice system ought to look like the communities they're in. there is enormous generational tidal wave of folks in the election world retiring or thinking of retiring. does that create an opportunity to create a new generation of election officials that looks like america? >> absolutely. i think that, you know, right now as tammy mentioned, most folks didn't wake up deciding they wanted to be an election official. it's become what i like to call the accidental profession. there's someone that started as a poll worker or was in another area of local government that sort of fell into elections and it got in their blood. but we have an opportunity in this country with i think the wave of retirements that are

going to be coming in the field. right now, what we tend to do is we tend to take existing election officials and teach them about how to reach out to different communities in their jurisdiction, how to make the polls accessible for people with disabilities, how to reach people from different, you know, ethnic or language communities and that's an important challenge but at the same time there is also an opportunity right now to take people from those communities, people with disabilities, new immigrant citizens, folks from racial and language minority communities and teach them election administration, to make the profession of election administration look not the population at large. you know, i talk about shortening the distance between the voter and the process. in many ways making the profession look more like the population also shortens the distance comfort-wise for everybody in a community that the system works for them. so, you know, the humphrey school at the university of minnesota is dedicated to the

issue of diversity in a wide range of issues and excited to continue that work in the field of election administration. so the short answer to your question, larry, is, yes. >> thank you. tammy, i want to kind of circle back to some of the conversations we were having earlier in response to some of the audience questions. one question is, what you think of efforts like registered poll watchers which we, you know, number of states have created, you know, there's concern that, you know, does this in some ways intimidate voters? is this a strategy to chase off eligible voters? or, do you think of this as quite legitimate and constructive way to create greater confidence of, you know, both parties can be at the election site and be part of verifying? >> so, i think that what the

critical distinction here is whether or not there are sanctioned official mechanisms in place for individuals to be observers. so, most states have political party observers or candidate observers that are credentialed. they're allowed into the polling place. they're able to observe all of the functions within the polling place. but there are restrictions on what they can and cannot do so in many cases they can't within six feet of voting equipment, can't speak to the voters within the polling place and they have to talk to the supervisor of the poll workers. those sorts of restrictions. but they're observers and so they're there to observe and uncouple bered observing okay ses and others outside the polling place, outside the electioneering limit and speak to voters, that sort of thing. that's the way that many states handle it. so if someone -- i always had great value in that sort of observing effort because the

jurisdiction i came from, we had 2 million registered voters. the bulk of the time i was there we had over 1,100 polling places. hiring 8,000 people to work the polls. did they all go to training? no. did they all pay attention at training? not always. did they sometimes misremember what they heard in training? at times. so having observers there could be very helpful and call my cell phone and say, ethel doesn't quite understand this piece. you need to send a troubleshooter over. that was incredibly helpful. however, if there are uncredentialed individuals trying to flood polling places or prevent access, and as mentioned i was in arizona and we did have that one election. we had individuals not in my county but down in pi ma county that had video cameras, they had machine guns strapped on the backs going up to voters getting out of their carls and challenging their right to vote. that, of course, is prohibited.

by law. and so, that's where it's important that we know who is going to be participating in this observance process, whether or not they're following the actual process which is wonderful but if they're going to be rogue actors to the polls to try to intimidate individuals or restrict americans' rights to vote, that, of course, is incredibly problematic and why we have laws to prevent that sort of intimidation and it's important for everyone to know including poll workers, the sanctioned party observers, voters themselves, if i see something like that, who do i notify in who do i call? and so, that's going to be really important that that sort of information is out there so that if something like that should occur, we're able to address it immediately and prevent it from impacting additional voters. >> so, not -- you know, to put a fine -- you know, to make this a sharp point, donald trump has been saying at campaign rallies

we have got to watch the voting places to prevent rigging. and other sorts of concerns about elections getting stolen. and if i understand you correctly, correct me i've got this wrong, what you are saying is that's fine. come watch. but come in through the process been established by the republican party, the democratic party, to be a registered poll watcher in states where that process exists and, you know, become a constructive part of that process. but don't come to the polls with an idea that you're going do intervene with voters trying to engage with their constitutional right. >> i would say follow the rule of law. even. so, there are laws about this. there are access points that individuals can get in and observe. in many states. so, any concerned citizen should contact their local political

party and find out what they can do to participate. i will also tell you, though, that many election phd min stray or thes get very trus traited looking for poll workers. the last week before an election, jurisdictions will see ten to 15 and some cases 20% of the poll workers will cancel. on election day, you'll have 5% to 15% that won't show up at all. i have been observing elections last couple of years since i left mare copa county and one out of seven in one polling place, one of seven showed up. so if you're concerned about it, yes, go ahead and be an observer. that's great. but i would challenge individuals to instead be a poll worker. go to the training. find out what the mechanism is. but know that you're going to be there and you're going to service every voter regardless of the party affiliation, going to service everyone. you're not there as a point of challenging individuals.

if that's the intention, then i think you need to revisit the laws and understand exactly what your rights are as an observer in your state. >> doug, do you want to jump in? >> yeah. i think the interesting thing to watch over the next couple of weeks, we have had searches in the past or calls in the past for large numbers of people to go observe at the polls, poll watchers, challengers, what have you. my experience has been with very rare exceptions like the one tammy described, they often don't show. either the result solidifies in advance of election day and more talk than action and they'll be prepared for the folks the show up on election day and no guarantee they actually will. i know election officials are probably more so than ever this year thinking about how they set up lines of communication with their polling places in case someone does show up with either

the improper attitude or is a little more aggressive than the law or common sense allows. you know, that want to figure out how to balance the desire to keep voters safe but also not to drive off voters with the impression of an armed camp at the polling place. but one of the things over the next two-plus weeks to watch will be important all of this talk about people at the polls actually comes to pass and experience suggests it may not. >> so, don't freak out yet. >> that's right. i mean, you know, be ready. but i mean, i don't freak out anyway. but i think this is -- it's worth being prepared for. you rather be ready for it and have it not happen than the alternative. >> tammy patrick, given your experiences, as someone that's watched elections and help run them, what would be your advice to states that are thinking about how to respond to the -- what we hope will be a very rare

incidence of voters being intimidated and being interfered with? what would be the correct procedure for dealing with that sort of unusual and extraordinary situation? >> so i think that election administrators across the country have plans in place, contingency plans for a variety of reasons, exuberant poll watcher, worker, observer. so they already have plans in place so what i would suggest is just make sure you've reviewed your plans, up to date. make sure they're current with the way in which you are -- doug mentioned the command center. the way in which you're already communicating with your poll workers. having your field rovers completely understand what to do in any sort of an emergency situation, whether it's a fire or an elementary school goes on lockdown or, you know, anything can happen. these sorts of things do happen

in elections and so there should already be procedures in place. so just revisiting them getting closer to election day. making sure poll workers are aware. you don't want to scare off poll workers. i worked through a very similar situation back in 2008, and our poll workers were concerned but i will tell you they were so resilient because they said, no one's going to scare me away. no one's going to prevent me from doing my job. i have worked the polls for 30 years. i've worked the polls for 20 years. and i'll be there. you can count on me. i think it's just important the know what the process is and to follow those procedures. >> doug chapin, you have worked with the media for a number of years and you're highly respected as a trusted source. looking at the press and the press coverage of elections, and particularly the administration of elections, and thinking about the current context in which the

blood pressure's a little up this year on worries about either intimidation or untoward action, what would be your advice to the press about how to cover the administration of elections this year? >> i talked to election add min stray to recalls. i think too often reporters reach out to somebody like me and i've always happy to talk to them but the people who actually do the work know the answers and we had a lot of coverage of the hacking, the rigging, the delays in registration deadline with hurricane matthew. if i had a nickel for every story about election administration that doesn't actually quote an election administrator i could have retired years ago. these folks, they have e-mails. they actually answer their phones and love their jobs and love to talk about it. i know that the candidates like to talk. i know that the campaigns have a

lot to say. but you'd be surprised how much the people who actually do the work know about the work. and can give context to and grounding in the issues that are being discussed. so, seriously, there are thousands, tens of thousands of election officials across the country. probably one or more in your jurisdiction. if you're a member of the media don't just call them in the next three weeks. get to know them between the elections and get to know how they do the work that they do. i'm certainly not going to tell members of the media not to cover what's being said at rallies. i mean, that's part of our political system. but make sure you talk to the folks who actually do the work when you're writing your stories or filming your pieces for your readers or viewers. >> when you say election officials, is there particular office? is it -- should members of the press be going to the secretary of state? should they be going to county? i mean, should they be going to the actual voting precinct?

where should they be heading? >> if it's -- my recommendation would be to find your local offici0 election official, secretary of state will know state law but the folks who are the day-to-day grenade catchers of american election administration are the local -- they pick the polling places, maintain the voting machines, hire the poll workers. think tier ones to know what the polling place is going to look like on election day and really smart and capable people besides. >> tammy, did you want to jump in on that. >> i just agree whole heartedly. that's important to know. it's a hard question to answer in terms of who to contact because in some states you have four or five different county agencies that have some role in the elections process. you might have a recorder that's in charge of voter registration and early voting and director in charge of voting on election day. you may have all of these

combinations thereof. i think that looking at your local county, parish, whatever that jurisdiction is, township, municipality in some cases and i think most people in the media know and then i do think it's important to also reach out to the secretaries of state. and i would also arctticulate follow them on social media. many of them are putting out great content that you can use for stories that are positive and that can help inform the electorate moving into election day, whether it has to do with what day ballots are mailed out or when hours are, you know, for early voting locations or in-person ab ten see. there's great content out there that you can harvest pretty quickly. >> the secretary of state in minnesota, steve simon, just recently used facebook. >> yes, he did. >> smashed the previous one-day record for number of voter registration that was successfully done so it's a good

example. let me ask you, though, of secretary of state because obviously in some states these are partisan figures. and from the perspective of the media, they want someone without an ore in the fight so let's say someone runs for secretary of state as a republican or a democrat, can they be trusted on election night to give kind of a fairer telling of the perspective from the trenches on election operations? >> i think the vast majority of secretaries of state take their role very seriously as -- as a nonpartisan role in the election on election day. i mean, everyone has some sort of partisan angle or perception. but everyone tries to check that at the door. there are exceptions to those rules but i think on election night and leading up to election day, if you want a statewide perspective that the secretaries of state and state elections directors offices are good places to go to to find out about statewide procedures,

legislation, the statewide results are usually accumulated at the secretary of states websites or the state boards. >> i think this is an absolutely stunning conversation. we have covered a lot of the big issues that are circulating and i know for some folks who have been sending in questions, they're concerned even talking about it gives credence to charges that, you know, maybe not be things to worry about but i agree with you, two. i think this is an impressive conversation. the more you know about what goes on election administration, the more confidence people should have in the system and its integrity. we'll be counting on you two in the days forward and i want to thank tammy patrick, a fellow at the policy center and doug chapin who runs the certificate election administration at the university of minnesota. thank you very much. >> thank you. [ applause ] thank you so much. thank you. >> i can't believe i got that wrong. c-span's "washington

journal" live every day with news and policy issues that impact you and coming up friday morning, jim barnes, senior writer of ballot peed pedia. and then angie editor of politi-fact of the promises made by hillary clinton and donald trump and how the trutd and accuracy are measured. watch live beginning 7:00 eastern friday morning. two days after the final presidential debate, hillary clinton holds a campaign rally in cleveland, ohio. she speaks at cuyahoga community college live on c-span 2. sunday, a debate between candidates for a u.s. senate seat in washington state. incumbent democrat patty murray against republican chris vance.

see it live at 10:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. on election day, november 8th, the nation decides our next president. and which party controls the house and senate. stay with c-span for coverage of the presidential race including campaign stops with hillary clinton, donald trump and the surrogates. and follow key house and senate races with our coverage of their candidate debates and speeches. c-span, where history unfolds daily. next a panel on the role of money in politics. the impact of the 2010 citizens united supreme court ruling and efforts to engage millennials in the political process. the american constitution society hosted representatives from public citizen, democracy alliance, demos and the campaign legal center. it's just over an hour.

>> so, what we're going to be talking about today as both, you know, attorneys and organizers, folks involved in the field, is how millennials are uniquely situated to tackle the issue of money in politics. money and politics is a problem. people could argue in the united states. we have never had a perfect democracy but in the advent of decisions like citizens united and mcculturen, recent supreme court jurisprudence made it more difficult to have an equal voice and vote in the democracy. so, we are very lucky to be joined by a dream team of young, millennial up encomers in the democracy space. on the far left is brendan fischer, associate counsel of the campaign legal center. next to him is austin belali, director of the youth engagement fund for the democracy alliance. and right next here to me is allie boldt, counsel at demos. so, a couple things, programming-wise to start off

on. acs has a couple of events next month. we are getting attorneys in the area who are available to volunteer their time on election day or a couple days proceeding to do something called election protection where we man the phones, we try to answer questions of folks from around the country have in collaboration with the lawyers collaboration for plex day to make sure that the vote is counted and an event on 17th of november, a voting rights training, an organization of the voting rights institute. it is part campaign legal center, part american constitution society and georgetown university and a training for attorneys to help on pro bono basis to make sure that everybody's vote is counted and a legal seminar for that. so, today, we are going to talk about five big topics. we are going to talk about what the current legal landscape is. what the u.s. supreme court is given us, how we got there. what's been possible under the current rules and rubrick and millennials in other progressive

movements, what kind of successes millennials have been able to get behind in other areas of the law and policy and then take a look inward and talk about what the democracy field is good at doing and deficiencies, how to be better positioned the lead and especially to have millennials lead the next phase of the movement. and then finally, we are going to end on a little bit of optimism and talk about what's possible with a supreme court vacancy and result in a progressive supreme court majority for the first time in 40-some years and hearing what a new democracy agenda could mean not just for millennials in this era but for folks around the country. so, let's start off. my name is scott greytak, again, counsel with the group of free speech for people to take ideas into action, to promote and reclaim our democracy. and to go from the defense to the offense in order to get initiatives moving that can help build an inclusive democracy for all.

so, speaking of a legal landscape and looking at now, i'll turn to our resident attorneys on the panel which is brendan and allie to give us an idea of where we're coming from, where we're at and how we got here. allie, if you want to start us off. >> sure. can you all hear me in the room okay? so, first thanks to scott and acs for having this important conversation. and great to be up here with these panelists. in terms of the legal landscape, probably the most well-known money in politics supreme court decision is citizened united which was decided in 2010. and citizens united really unleashed spending by corp. raigss on our elections. and the reasoning in that decision also paved the way for superpacs which are other vehicles that well think interests can use to spend in elections. citizens united really made a lot of people mad and sparked

great activism around the country we'll hear more about but at demos we see the problem in the legal landscape is going back to buckley versus vallajos and decided in 1966. it was after the watergate scandal and around that time, the congress had passed a fairly comprehensive package of money in politics reforms, and, you know, some of the provisions in that package were challenged and were the challenge of this buckley litigation. so some of the provisions in that package were upheld and remain part of the legal landscape today and that includes contribution limits so there are limits on the amounts that individuals can give to particular candidate or party. but on the other hand, the buckley court struck down limits on spending. and that includes limits on how much individuals can spend of their own money on elections as

long as they do so independently of candidates. so, we have never really gotten a chance to see how this comprehensive package would have worked together but probably more problematic is the reasoning that the buckley court gave us in that decision. so, the court said that the government has to have an important reason to pass campaign finance reform and it told us that the only reason that's important enough to justify campaign finance reform and limits on big money is to prevent corruption or the appearance of corruption. the same time, the buckley court said that government cannot act to enhance political equality or level the playing field among candidates. so, since the '70s, courts have been asking this really narrow question of whether campaign finance reform is necessary to prevent corruption. and the effect of this frame work is we haven't been able to

address the biggest problems we face in the political system. and that includes things like barriers to entry. candidates aren't taken seriously politically unless they can raise a lot of money and leaves a lot of people out. it also means that we can't talk about the vastly unequal political power and political voice in this country. in these cases. and we know that elected officials are a lot more responsive to well think interests and the donor class. and that's a problem for many reasons, not least of which is that the donor class is a disproportionate very white, also male, well think frankly there aren't a lot of millennials in the donor class and burdened by student debt. i think -- >> great. thanks, allie. brendan? >> thanks, allie. thanks for having me here. so one point to emphasize it is

not only the supreme court that's to blame for the broken campaign finance system that we're living in. it also rests in large part with the fec, the federal election commission which is the federal commission charged with administering and enforcing law. six-member commission. enacted after the watergate scandal. requirings four votes, four affirmative votes to take any action to take -- requires four votes to promulgate new rules, to open aen forcement action. and no more than three me believes can be part of the same political party and three republican members, currently two democratic members, one independent and the problem with the fec is not so much it's a partisan split. it is not that republicans want to enforce the law against republicans and -- or republicans want to enforce the law against democrats and democrats against the republicans, it is an ideological split and currently the three republican members are

ideologically opposed to the enforcement of campaign finance laws so even the laws that exist after citizens united are not currently enforced. so for example, as allie described, citizens united said that because independent expenditures are independent there's little risk of those expenditures corrupting a candidate and therefore spending by independent groups like superpacs can't be limited. but if spending is not independent, it does pose a risk of corruption, treated under federal law subject to a $2,700 limit and falls to the fec for independence and uphold the laws and regulations guaranteeing that independence, enforcing the laws and regulations defining coordination and the fec has interpreted the law to allow presidential candidates to appear at fund-raisers for superpacs and the fec declined to enforce even the weak rules on coordinating spending and

seen both presidential candidates this year edging ever closer to their supportive superpacs undermining the idea of an independence. and again, citizens united the reasoning rested on the notion of independent expenditures independent and the fault of the fec we have single candidate superpacs. citizens united endorsed disclosure of donations to limit the opportunities of corruption. but dark money undisclosedplode recent years and the fault of the fec undermining the disclosure laws narrowly interrupting it to apply -- a nonprofit spends on elections they only have to disclose contributions made for the purpose of funding those particular ads so any nonprofit can assert that none of the contributions made to it were given for the purpose of funding

the particular ads, therefore, we have no donor disclosure, therefore we have dark money. so, the system wouldn't -- the political system, the campaign finance system wouldn't be great after citizens united if the fec enforced the law but it would be better than we have right now. and also, looking forward, really it's important to keep in mind that a critical element in any campaign finance system, regime is the administration and enforcement of the law. even if we successfully overturned citizens united, congress enacts new laws, those laws will really not be worth the paper they're written on not effectively administered and enforced. so, in this -- can seem disconcerting and some ways it's an opportunity because fixing the fec is a lot easier than overturning citizens united. the commissioners to thefec appointed by the president. the next president could appoint new commissioners to enforce the law.

a thing we have been calling for is for the president to apoint a blue ribbon commission of nonpartisan retired judges, law enforcement officers and they could come up with a list of potential commissioners and the president could appoint commissioners off of that list and we would actually see the laws that continue to exist after citizens united effectively enforced. so that's one thing. there's also been bipartisan legislation introduced in congress to make it a more effective agency. so that i think is one thing that can happen. legislatively or via the executive branch after citizens united to make a big difference in improving our campaign finance system. but after citizens united there's still plenty of room for proactive legislation in the realm of disclosure, in the realm of coordination, strengthening coordination rules and also public financing and i think a candidate who will be coming here later will talk more about that but you have seen

congress is hopeless. congress is not going to pass any proactive legislation on these issues but you have seen many states and cities really advancing proactive legislation, south dakota has a ballot initiative currently pending that would improve disclosure. seattle recently enacted a really innovative democracy voucher program where every voter gets four $25 voechers to give to a candidate of their choice. california improved the coordination and california has improved the coordination laws. so those are the few things to still happen even short of overturned citizens united, confirming a new justice on the supreme court. >> so, overall, it's not good news but there's reason for hope. you know, we focus on the first two branches a lot. right? the legislative branch and the executive branch but a lot of the work that the american constitution society is focused on is how is the campaign

finance system affecting the judges? they're elected in 39 consolidate states across the country. state court judges hit on a ton of major policy issues from the environment to labor, criminal justice, voting rights. and we'll be talking later about the report that the american constitution society put out talking about who makes up the state court benches and are they reflecting the communities that they serve. but it's important to keep in mind the same time that, you know, superpacs have come to dominate elections and like same story for judicial elections. you have seen more spending in judicial elections across the country than ever before, special interest groups having a larger role and spending that pie than they ever have before. we'll get into that later. so let's turn to what has been possible, a little bit of bright lining to this. and we'll go to austin with the democracy alliance. so, you know, 78% of americans across the political spectrum oppose citizens united, a good

rallying point, especially for young people. can you give us a sense of if there is any good news, what is that good news and what is possible underneath this world we live in? >> well, thank you first of all having me, asc, all of us in the conversation is going to be rich because there are a couple of points brought up here i think we can have even a bit of debate about even amongst friends. but i will say that it's kind of strange having somebody from the democracy alliance which is a network of well think liberal donors talk to you about getting money out of politics. little paradoxical and there's a big difference between liberal donors right now and conservative donors across the country. and it's actually a bit of good news to allie's point which is that traditionally the donor class has been pretty conservative in its views about some of these legislative jurisprudence issues but you have millennials who are inheriting a ton of wealth, entering the donor class and unlike the counterparts are

spinning a lot of resources figuring out how to get dark money out of our politics and seems like a self defeating thing but many of them know that over the long haul the interests of the 1% and the interests of the 99% in terms of inclusive economy and democracy that works for all there's intersecting there. that's one silver lining that i think people should think about. and why for the democracy alliance the issue of money in politics is front and center for the community. so there are a ton of movements we have seen over the past few years, post-citizens united which have been able to tap into the consciousness of a new generation and put a lot of momentum at the legislative and other strategies that the money in politics folks have been working on for a long time and there are three principles or cross cutting kind of strategies or trends that you can see in these movements, movements like occupy wall street which i think

at the end of the century you'll see almost historians talking about the era before and after occupy wall street. when you think about the consciousness change or movement for black lives or other movements. and so here are the three things that i think three trends that we should be excited about but we should also look at carefully if we're talking about reinvigorating a democracy movement in the country with millennials. the first is that the movements i mentioned a sec ago stepping into this gap and challenging the role of money in politics or other issues, they're national movements, not local movements. and so, if you look at the way that the news cycle, for example, c-span is in the room and i'm sure all the millennials at home are watching right now. but the reality is that local news outlets have left the landscape and so most of the information that young people millennials get from national news outlets and this is a big deal for the fight because a lot of the narrative that you all

shared was national and that's what the movements have tapped into. that's an advantage for us. i think as we look at this. the second kind of trend that's happening amongst millennials that should give us some hope and optimism about getting money out of politics is that millennials aren't gravitating around organizationless per se but networks. and so, in the past you had people were a member of a local union or a church or a civic association that was place based in geographically defined and i think it made it difficult at times to reach scale where you can take on the big problems of money in politics and have large leap of progress and not the problem with the internet. now people are -- young people in particular are using networks to get to a scale and able to also mesh together the role of individuals and organizations. and then the third kind of trend that's happening that i think is

an opportunity for us but some people may see as a challenge which is that millennials have been mobilizing post-citizens united at the margins and not at the mainstream. that in some ways the dissatisfaction at this convergence between rising inequality in the country and shrinking political opportunity has led to a radicalization of our generation that cuts across party line. and we have seen it play out se in the primaries, of course, with bernie sanders in his campaign. i saw recent polling support base across the board, millennials are saying, they want radical social change. so at the margins, not at the main stream. so these three trends together, the national movement agent, the networks that are emerging and then this kind of radicalization of how people are thinking art their role in our democracy. our great opportunity, that

should make us hopeful. the final thing i will say as we kind of think about, how do we channel this industry and brif it into the democracy movement. are building a teddy bear or are we building a brizly bear. what me lip yalineals. they don't believe we can make on the problems, with all incremental solutions. they think we need a bridly bear. >> they think we need to build a movement there's dangerous enough to shakeup folks. >> that's the kind of movement we need to support and talk about here today. >> our fourth panel joins us, let's talk about things that have been successful while all around us, other areas have fallen apart whether it's finance, not a lot of respect

convince. three consecutive positiveposit >> the if somebody spends too much money effecting a judicial election and that violates the due process cause. >> the executive branch don't have in their, you know, operative framework. that was a victory. we have coupful of years ago florida bar, first time chief justice roberts held the restriction to raise money. this is why judge, you know, people are saying, hey, can you give me $10,000 and i'm running for jobs and they have a very narrow decision. this number, i'm wearing about whether or not anyone will start creeping and watching you because of it. there is good news. i will say it's more holding a

line. but there is good news right in here. >> perhaps, i expect you can speak to us about local movement or some areas whether it's pushing back on citizens united with resolutions or local organizations, have they've been responding to the environment that's been salt. >> i apologize to everyone being confused about where we are holding savannah. i'm with public citizen or 45 arrow organization, committed to representing the voices and ams it's really important, how is the coward. i want to briefly comment on my speernts working with peers, organizing to take back and stand up for our democracy and pull that down a little bit, that's okay, into how it's happening and how it can happen. what was our frirs rated. i'm sure we've talked about that

because it's shifted and we haven't seen any movements really suck sed. there -- schedule. i think a lot of millennials are feeling like, why movement, how does that work, is that what we need to be doing. then there's another group of people who feel like maybe we haven't had the idea and if the right person with the right idea and right way to recognize the idea, then we could fix the problem. but i think our perspective and the perspective i think we've seen in movements over the century in the ice, we have to shift power. we have to reach people. we have to get away from our own desks and our eds and also not to exclude those things but also get out on the street and talk to people who have power.

if we don't have enough people, working face to face with others to actually build stronger relationshi relationships. . so i think part of the reason people are looking at ideas there is a big chunk of folks saying, if we had an ap. and maybe that's the reason people are looking at it. we've given a lot of power over the entities. democratic republican is support to represent every one in this. the entities that are gaining power, multi national corporations, are not even

american corporations. they have a credit po certain and they are interested in having more control than govern thorough because government sets limitations. so we're seeing a shift and attack on government and seeing a group of people who are extremist, who do not shutdown the government and break the systems that are suppose to protect us from outrageous student death. it's soez to make economical accessible. and so when we break that audience, forcing those laws and provided we've set it up to provide. the status quo runs the show, right. the corporations are doing a -- they're -- they're already

empowering more. >> they'll keep it. so i think it's important to find our ways of organizing and i think there's so many different ways to communicate and they'll power through technology, but also to take back our government. it's our gotvernment. if it's not doing that's we have to reclaim it as hours. we can't put it away somewhere. >>. we need amendment that will establish reasonable limits on spending and elections or allow congress to do that. we need public funded elections that we currently have, if government is a din e table and the election sends the table to the side of the edge, who finds the elections helps breaks the laws. you can get money out of

politics and make sure they're signing it. if you're taking away people's light to vote, then they'll not to sit at the wrote to vote. we need both. people have said, we're tired of big money in politics. we see that congress isn't moving. we'll take the auction that we can take which is pass local. calling for amendment overturned citizens united and related kingdom. p hundred cities -- 700 cities have been able to do that. that's really exciting and that happened because people decided to get together, face to face, think about who has power and hold them accountable and build their own car as electing.

i'm going to pass around a pe situation. i'm not waking a mitt way so that we're not -- you know, the people who fund d.c. government are contractors and people who have construction projects and a district, the biggest donor that they're a basketball company. they do a pretty good job, this are a number of cancels with them. i live 100, 200,000 and they're from the contract here. so they make a small vsment and make it millions of our laws. if we have a different system where once a candidate shows that they're serious and they get small contributions, public funds can match the small contributions so we regard candidates that are serious and have the look, you know, don't have the support -- well minor

of the companies that you see already, literally running our e lerks here. they're. they provide 40% of the funding for those candidates, you can bet they'll be careful. i'm running low on time. and then the other thing is howard county, south dakota, washington state, they all have public financing and transparency. there's a lot moving and it's really people driven. so i'm not going to take too much of our time. we have a thunder clap if you sign -- if you sign the petition for d.c. for elections, we'll also share a thunder clap that literally lists all the different measures that are on the ballot for democracy on november 8th. >> thank you. perfect. >> we're talking about issue,

millennials get certain issues. we were acute into the marriage equality movement. we've been engaged for things like fight for dae 15. a lot of this stuff is pretty defrs and difficult. it's a lot ofintricacies. if you get money out of politics, you can fix issues, whatever the range and issue you care about. there's a financial interest in there, right. what are some issues that have been able to provide pathways for millennials to get us on the radar and move them from just, you know, maybe outraged into engaged and to get them plugged in and really put some sweat behind it. you want to start. >> sure. just a couple, one response i wanted to say is to what's being said so far, i think policy is change is really key.

i also think that it can't be seen as the soul and goal how we evaluate pr sesz. abraham lincoln has a quote where he talks about the shaking of public sentiment as the most important kind of role. when we talk about the role of millennials and how they interact with these mitch as, it's around shifting the narrative, of changing accomplish. in some ways, it's putting a wind at the sales of some of the reformers who are working at the local level. some examples of that's i think, one is around the shoo of transparency. there's been a lot of discussion, citizens united about disclose sure and some of the policy and legal work that needs to be done there. who could match the explosive energy of the most recent

wikileaks. these are conservatives who are seeing transparency as an issue that's front and center in how they're thinking about their agency and democracy. are money and politics, folks, engage in them. the second one i would talk about this tactic that i think -- the more traditional campaigns are not as comfortable with. it's really important in taking off amongst millennials. i don't know if people are familiar which is where you follow a candidate around when they're running for office and you do a direct action aimed at that candidate and force them to respond. one example of this is fossil fuel movement who has been going after campaign fund-raisers from big oil and mos sill fuel and doing bird dogging actions against candidates and getting them on record, saying you no

longer take fossil fuel money in support of your campaign. what it's doing is lifting up conversation about money and politics but through a lens. the second amount that i key is very nice, they're having a national conversation about race in america. they were getting -- we do not want private minute money. it lifted up the conversation. i think the choice, though, for us is to lead tla didn't lead out in front with politics as the money. they led 0 ut front with fossil fuel investment. it's really about money and politics, that's what we have to

figure out, how do we find it to bring more folks into much deeper scaled issue frame. we just saw a super pack, except at 150,000 contribution from private prison company out of florida supporting donald trump. >> is there a way that we can use this issue to tie into democracy about where we're engaged? >> i think so. economy and equality is linked with big money in politics. we see economy that millennials are inheriting is really a web of policies that favor the donor class. and we know that the donor class, particularly in areas of

economic policy, tend to have different views than the 99%. one example is on the federal minimum wage. we know that general public opinion, support is very high for a minimum wage in that when you're working fum time, you should not live in poverty. i think 80% of the party supports that. the donor process, i feel like affluent and the united states and the support for that level minimum wage at the federal level is much less. it's about half of that. you know, we've seen congress be stagnant on the medical minimum wage even though we have high national support for increasing the minimum wage. and i think other areas in our economy are also impacted.