military, but he had a much broader conception about what american identity really was. >> he reached out across the aisle, he watched the peace corps on may 1st of 1961, incredible program for young people. he started with the alliance for progress. and he engaged in the space race. >> for a complete american history tv schedule, go to c-span.org. next, voter i.d. laws and other election regulations from this year's republican national lawyers association conference. the hour and 15-minute discussion took place at the national press club in washington, d.c. >> good afternoon. i am honored to introduce the three panelists we have for this election law update for this national policy conference. to my immediate left, and i'm

not making a reference to any political ideology, is hans spakovsky. i'm sure hans doesn't really need much of a introduction to this group. hans is with heritage foundation, and he is one of the country's recognized, most well recognized authorities on voter fraud and election law. and seated next to hans is don palmer, who is also one of the country's leading in these areas, and don is a former member of the elections board of the commonwealth of virginia, and he served formally as the florida department director of elections during the 2008 and 2010 election cycles and also served in the justice department in the civil rights division. he is also a veteran of the united states navy, and i should also remark that hans is a former member of the federal election commission and also joining us shortly will be commissioner lee goodman, who is also currently on the federal

election commission and a former chairman. he will be speaking about election law. so, without further adieu, i'm going to turn it over and i guess we'll get started with hans. >> thank you. i was asked to talk a little bit about voter fraud and the voter fraud commission. -- i think he gave the responsibility of that to vice president pence. we have not heard a lot about it yet. i think they are still in the midst of organizing it. okay. i think they are still in the midst of organizing it, and so we don't really have a lot of detail as to who's going to be on it, but i think what i thought i would do today is talk about some of the things they ought to be doing. now, let me first tell you that about a year and a half ago i got really tired of seeing these

stories in "the washington post," "new york times," and elsewhere how there's no voter fraud in the united states, so we started a database at the heritage foundation. now, i don't have a big staff. in fact, i don't have a staff really at all. we do have interns, so if any of you have college kids or law school students, you should make sure they apply for the internship program, but we do have interns, so what we started doing is we didn't have the resources to go backwards in time and research voter fraud from the start of the country, but we began putting cases into our voter fraud database as we ran across them. and, of course, the problem there is they don't all get reported. the major newspapers certainly don't like to report on them. often it's just local small town newspapers that will report on a case when they know about it, and even there many times they don't do it. we also put in a very substantiative rule.

we didn't want anyone being able to say, oh, you claim voter fraud occurred in this particular case, but you don't have any real proof of it, so we said we're not going to put any stories in there where somebody claims they saw something happened that shouldn't have at a polling place. the only thing we're putting into our database are cases in which someone has been convicted in a court of law of committing fraud. or cases in which a judge has ordered a new election because of irregularities and fraud in the election. this week we added another 20 cases and we're up to 492 cases, 773 convictions, because often there are multiple defendants. and this is a -- i brought a visual aid. this is a printout of our database, and each description's

only a short paragraph, so there's a lot of stuff in here, and it goes all across the country in almost every state. i'll tell you two of them we just put in this week. a guy in colorado who pleaded guilty to voting twice for a deceased father, once in the 2013 general election and then again in 2016. and another case we just added, which for those of you who are familiar with the way absentee ballot fraud is sometimes committed in this country and have seen the cases where campaign workers go into particularly urban and poor neighborhoods, when they know that absentee ballots are arriving in the mail and then go up and either tell the people that are getting them how they need to vote or take the ballots from them and fill them out themselves. we just added a case from texas where a man who is a postman

pleaded guilty to a federal bribery charge. he admitted to taking $1,000 from a paid campaign worker in exchange for a list of the names and addresses of mail-in absentee ballot recipients on his postal route. so i think you all can imagine what was being done with those addresses. how big is this problem? we, of course, don't know, because there is no systemic effort to look at this. we have an honor system pretty much throughout the country when it comes to registration and voting. so even when fraud occurs, it's very hard to detect, and it's usually by accident. i have to tell you, i think the 492 cases in here are just the tip of the iceberg. and i'll give you an example of what i mean and something that this voter fraud commission needs to look at. there are a number of states in the country that are part of something that was set up by

kansas and missouri some years ago called the interstate cross check program. and the states in this program once a year, kansas gets all of their statewide voter registration lists and they compare them. and each state gets back a report on all the people in that particular state who also just happen to be registered in other states. now, i have in front of me the 2016 report, and i thought i would tell you that, for example, virginia, which is where i live, right across the river, in 2016 it turned out they had 284,618 people registered in other states. north carolina had almost half a million voters registered in other states. illinois also had about half a million. georgia had more than half a million. now, many of these may be

inadvertent errors, you know, people who have moved to another state, didn't bother to tell the old state where they used to live that they have changed states, have changed residence, have changed votes, and nothing may happen to this. on the other hand, some of these people may be, like pasco parker, a man who we recently added into our voter fraud database. we put him in north carolina, although he actually could have been listed -- because our database is broken down by state, so you look up the state and can find out the fraud cases there. we put him in north carolina, although we could have put him in north carolina, florida, and tennessee. the reason being, he was registered to vote in all three states, and in the 2012 federal election, he mailed an absentee ballot to florida and north carolina and voted in person in tennessee.

now, the important point in this particular case, and this is important to this entire issue, is the fact that his triplicate voting wasn't discovered by election officials in north carolina, tennessee, or florida. it was discovered by a citizen's group in north carolina called the voter integrity project that started going through these lists trying to find the people who had registered and potentially voted in more than one state. and if the citizens group all volunteered hadn't done this, this guy would have gotten away with it and nothing would have been done about it. because the point is, is that many states while they are getting this data, they don't often get the resources needed to actually start checking the voter histories on these individuals and finding out whether are they breaking the law and are they getting away with it, like you all may recall just a few years ago, the

democratic congressional candidate in maryland, i think her name was, what, wendy rosen, who was running in the democratic congressional primary and opposition research was done on her, when they discovered she had registered and voted in the same election -- several of the same elections in both maryland and florida. now, she was forced out of the race, she pleaded guilty to election fraud, she's one of the cases in our database, but again the point there is, that would never have been discovered except that she ran for office and opposition research was done on her. the election officials didn't discover it. and this is something that needs to be looked into by this voter fraud commission. now, i will tell you that the opponents of election integrity, and there are many of them, are so concerned over this that recently the governor -- remember how many hundreds of

thousands of people i told you in virginia are also registered in other states. recently the virginia legislature actually passed a very good bill, senate bill 1581, it would have required the department of elections in virginia to provide general registrars with the resources to investigate and check out these double registrants. that was vetoed by governor terry mcauliffe. now, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to veto a bill that is simply the resource to check out possible double registration, double voting, unless you ought to ensure that fraud can be committed and that you can be -- it can be gotten away with. now, let me give you another example of the kind of cases that are out there that's nothing being done about. prior to the last election, the

public interest legal foundation ended up -- they ended up having to sue to get it, but ended up getting records on just eight counties in virginia, just eight counties. they discovered that over 1,000 registered voters in virginia had been taken off the polls because it turned out they were not u.s. citizens. many of them had voted in prior elections. these were found by accident. now, your immediate question would be, well, were any of these files turned over to law enforcement for investigation, since as you probably know, it's a felony under both virginia law and federal law for a noncitizen to be registered to vote. even though they had a right to do them. now, since that time, and they haven't written a report about it yet, they have gotten records

from other counties in the state and they have found even more noncitizens who registered and voted in prior elections in the state. now, some may say, okay, well, you found 1,000 in eight counties. i can tell you there are hundreds, if not thousands of more in other counties across the state. is that significant? well, i would remind you that within the little more than the last decade we've had two statewide a.g. races decided in virginia, one by less than 1,000 votes, another by only 300 votes. so it is very possible that individuals who are ineligible to vote may have voted in that election. and right now there is hardly anything to deter noncitizens from registering and voting. their chances of getting caught are very minimal, and every state that has tried to do something about this, there are four states, kansas, arizona, georgia, alabama, who have tried

to do something about this by putting in provisions that require you to provide proof of citizenship when you register to vote had ended up in enormous battles in court because the league of women voters, demos and other groups, many funded by george soros, do not want anything that would improve the security and integrity of the american election process. and so these efforts have been stymied. the other thing that the commission needs to look at, and i will end with this, again, that just hasn't been done. the resuources have not been usd is this. for example, you all probably know that in every federal district court in the country there is a u.s. attorney's office, right? 94 u.s. attorney's offices. and there have been a number of reports, there's at least one

gao study out there that took a look at people called for federal jury duty in federal district courts. now, where do the district court clerks get their lists of people for jury duty? they get them from voter registration lists in the local area. and in every single district, people are excused from federal jury duty because they swear under oath they are not a united states citizen. now, has any of that information ever been forwarded by the u.s. attorney's office or the federal district courts back to the election officials to let them know that a person that they got from the election list is not a u.s. citizen? why, no. and do you think that any u.s. attorney's offices in any of the 94 districts have ever actually asked for the voting and registration files on each of these individuals so they can investigate it and see if

there's a possible prosecution for violation of the federal law? why, no, that has never happened. that is something that the justice department ought to be doing right now. is going through those records in every single district across the country to investigate those cases. some of them may be mistakes, but others of them we know are not mistakes. i have sitting on my desk in my office three decisions from the 7th circuit court of appeals. each one of them about a noncitizen who as soon as they got to the country wept and got a driver's license, got registered to vote, and then voted in an election. and you know why they got caught? wasn't election officials that caught them. it was because they went and try to get a change of status with the ins, and i will end by telling you those are also records that need to be combed through. again, it's never been done, at

the department of homeland security. i have had -- i have sources inside dhs who have told me that there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of files inside the homeland security of individuals who applied for citizenship and who when it came to, i think it's question 12 on the application for naturalization, there's actually a question there that asks a noncitizen, have you ever registered or voted in a election, and you'd be surprised how many people truthfully answer, yes, i have. but what do you think has been done with any of those files? absolutely zero. so, that's the kind of thing this voter fraud commission needs to look into. i hope they do it, and i hope -- well, i have to say, i hope there's not a lot more voter fraud discovered, but unfortunately, i think that if they actually do that, and if the doj and dhs actually start doing the kinds of things that

they should be doing like i've described, the next time i come to you i'm going to have to probably bring a cart to carry all the volumes of this database. thanks. [ applause ] >> good afternoon. my name is don palmer. i thank you for having me. i wanted to take a little different approach to the voter fraud commission and also talk about that from a perspective of someone who served as a chief election official, state election official in two states, and this is really an opportunity. i might go to my last point, my last point was going to be, and i'll go first with this, is on the voter fraud issue, the democrats on the left continue to move the goal posts. it isn't that there's zero fraud or small fraud, it's now it's do we have, you know, is there an epidemic of fraud? the fact of the matter is, just

one or two people interns in an office have collected this over a couple of years, and i would encourage you as lawyers in each state to become aware of what those convictions are, because my experience as a lawyer in a state and i've worked at the department of justice, is you may have access to indictments, grand jury that -- descriptions that have been released. you may have access to more information, and sometimes quality is better than quantity, because it's difficult to record and report these things. something like this is very valuable, and i've found that actually having indictments and those sort of things in what's happening in your state is very valuable when you talk to folks in your state about that issue. now, the first thing i want to talk about, one of the major points i wanted to say, is the voter fraud commission has an opportunity to really do a review and audit of the 2016 election. as an election official, we all

hope that things are run perfectly, but we all know there's, you know, irregularities across the country. there's processes that don't work at times, and so we want to see what happened, were voters impacted, what did our failings show and how can we improve that? there's nothing to hide. what are our weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the system, and sometimes we have to look in the mirror and look at what the data shows to show that we need to take steps to reform how we verify the registration process, how we create a voting process that ensures there's one vote for each person. now, some of the specific issues, some of which hans pointed out that are very key across the country is the vice president and the president specifically noted that there are people that are registered and sometimes voting on different states across the country, and that is a problem that has been around for almost a decade now, if not more.

it continues, and part of the problem is, is that states are not adequately communicating with each other, so hans mentioned ivrc. there's other organizations that do comparisons, but not all states are participating, and for example i'll just throw two out. state of texas is not fully participating, state of florida is not participating. there was a bill in florida i think is not going to make it. last day of session is today to allow data sharing. but these are major states that are not participating in these programs, and when you look at the list, some that are not fully participating, so our responsibility is if a commission looks at this, you know, there needs to be an identification of this as a problem that needs to be resolved and the commission should make recommendations that all states participate. the issue of citizen verification has been both litigious and emotional. i'm not sure why.

we have qualifications and verifications of all types of issues before a voter is fully qualified to vote to be a citizen. that is sort of one of those basic qualities in most state constitutions to vote in an election. we should have a process to verify citizenship, and as hans says, right now it's virtually an honor system. and that works some of the time, but there has to be processes in place that don't provide too much of an imp position on voters so we can verify the information on voters. the information is out there. the question is, will agencies within the federal government provide that in a manner that can allow state and local election officials to do the verification? right now that's not taking place. perhaps the commission could take a look at how that would look in the future. as an election administrator, there are steps that both state

and local election administrators can do to reduce and mitigate the risk of voter fraud, both absentee and in person. sometimes it takes the help of state legislators, but in the end i hope that this commission takes a look at what are those processes, what are those steps that can be taken to reduce the risk that we find sometimes across the country. and then provide some recommendations that legislators can then act upon. again, i'll just end with the same note i started with. the other side tries to minimize convictions of voter fraud, and in many ways that's really sad, because committing a crime, double voting, voting when you're not qualified, or committing some sort of conspiracy to defraud the electoral system is a crime against democracy. it's very serious, and prosecutors across the country sometimes don't take it very serious. it's my hope that this

commission will take a look at that and why it is a crime against democracy and why the department of justice and federal and state prosecutors across the country should prosecute these crimes. [ applause ] >> commissioner goodman? >> thank you, dave. you can hardly pick up a newspaper or turn on television today without noting the trend of a cultural dimunition in the value we place on first amendment rights. what's happening on college campuses writ large and at the federal election commission where i work, we -- the debates that you hear coming out of the federal election commission, whether the debates are popularly or hyperbolically characterized as dark money or

dysfunction at the federal election commission, boil down really to one issue, and that's whether we're going to regulate first amendment freedoms more or less, and whenever you hear complaints about what's happening at the federal election commission, you should understand that debate to be about the first amendment. nothing more, nothing less. and those who call us dysfunction or lay other labels on what the republican commissioners do in a restrained approach to regulation at the first amendment, you should see through those labels and understand that the debate is over one central issue, restrict first amendment freedoms more or restrict first amendment freedoms less. and even if you want to restrict first amendment restrict first amendment freedoms more, you have to be honest about the debates you carry on to say what i'm really upset about is i want to regulate first amendment

freedoms more and the republican commissioners won't let me. so, let me start with a passage from a 2016 decision of the united states court of appeals in the district of columbia. the fec is unique among federal administrative agencies having as its sole purpose the regulation of core constitutionally protected activity, the behavior of individuals and groups only in so far as they act, speak, and associate for political purposes. thus, more than other agencies whose primary tasks may be limited to administering a particular statute, every action the fec takes implicates fundamental rights, and the court went on, to observe that the fec's unique prerogative is to safeguard the first amendment when implementing its congressional directives.

now, that is a statement -- that statement from the u.s. court of appeals cites prior u.s. court of appeals decisions from the circuit going back 20 years. so it's not new. it's not part of the roberts court doctrine. it recognizes that this agency was created to regulate in an area permeated in everything it does by the solemn first amendment rights of american citizens to associate and speak. so, if i am to be criticized honestly for a restrained approach, my critics should at least acknowledge the profound importance of the first amendment and what i am trying to do when i try to strike a balance between regulation and first amendment freedoms. now, let me raise three flash

points in this debate. we debate fundamental human right to associate and speak every day at the commission. you can't walk around the hallways of the fec without bumping into somebody's constitutional right, but let me just give you three examples of that -- of the flashpoints and the arguments we're having within points and the arguments we're having within the commission. the first is the internet. in 2006, commissioner spakovsky was there, he can tell you the commission went out for public comment to decide what to do about this new form of speech, this new medium of speech called the internet. in 1999 the commission had its first brush with it, like a lot of regulatory agencies, tax agencies, the s.e.c., the internet and the activity and the communication that it facilitated strained old regulatory regimes designed for

brick and mortar world. so in 1999 a gentleman named leo smith in connecticut decided he had had enough of the efforts to impeach president clinton. and so he was one of the first wave of website designers, so he, using his little corporate facilities, meaning a computer and an internet connection and the software he used to do work for clients, created his own website. and it was highly critical of nancy johnson, then congresswoman from connecticut, and it encouraged people to vote against nancy johnson, because she was embroiled in the effort to impeach president clinton. there were allegations that leo smith made illegal corporate expenditures by building that website and communicating to

people about nancy johnson. he quickly came to the fec and asked for an advisory opinion and the federal election commission took the position that the cost of his computer, the cost of his internet access, his monthly internet access, the cost of the software that he purchased to build websites, all of that would constitute a political expenditure regulated by the fec. it soon became clear that that was not going to be an effective regulatory rule, to begin regulating everyone's use of their personal computer and home internet connection on their kitchen tables. so the fec went into a rule making that resulted in subsequent litigation and then back to the commission, and after several years in 2006, the commission adopted a rule that entered that exempted from our regulation, free speech on the

internet. with really one exception, and that is, if you pay a fee to post a banner ad or other material on a third party's website, the commission would regulate that just like we do if you paid a fee to the paper edition of "the washington post" to run an ad there. if you pay a fee to a third party, it is regulated. if you communicate with your own resources, it is not. and that -- and the commission recognized that the medium as a practical matter carried very little measurable expense for groups, as well as individuals to communicate. well, fast forward to the past two or three years, and my democratic colleagues at the commission have begun to rethink the breadth of that freedom on the internet, and in case after case we are splitting our votes

3-3 with the three republicans observing the exemption, a robust interpretation of the exemption under the 2006 rule making, and our colleagues voting to find nooks and crannies of regulation in an otherwise broad exemption. second flash point of the last few years has been a lack of sensitivity to the free press rights of press publishers by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle at the federal election commission. case in point, august of 2015, the fox news is hosting a debate among republican presidential candidates. they set criteria for their debate. they would take the top ten polling candidates and put them on a debate stage and televise

it. newsroom editorial decision leading up to the debate, we believe our viewers deserve to see more candidates, so leading up to in the two weeks leading up to the debate, fox news altered its criteria and took an added seven additional podiums to an undercard debate, if you recall. they look at the field and said there's some very serious people that need to be added to the group of ten. carly fiorina, jim gilmore, george pataki, these people are newsworthy. an exercise of completely newsroom editorial decision. and they added seven podiums, and then if you recall watching that debate, they spliced in the answers from the earlier debate into the main debate as part of their news coverage.

complaint was filed by a candidate who didn't make even the 17. claiming that fox news made an unlawful corporate contribution to the 17 candidates by changing its criteria. office of general council of the federal election commission recommends a finding that fox news made illegal corporate contributions. three democratic commissioners concluded that fox news had violated the law. two of my democratic colleagues voted to punish fox news, to impose civil penalties on fox news for violating the law, despite the existence of a press exemption that exempts the press from our regulation altogether and the press exemption has been there since 1974.

another case, independent filmmaker makes an exotic film questioning the parentage of the president of the united states in the lead up to the 2012 election. and distributes that film for free to people in select states. three democratic commissioners vote to find that an independent filmmaker, a bona fide documentary filmmaker who has nearly 20 films to his credit, violated the law by making a documentary film and distributing it to viewers. third flash point in the debate is the meets and bounds and jurisdictional lines of the federal election commission with respect to associational

privacy. and this is what you popularly hear termed as the, quote, dark money debate. let me tell you what so-called dark money is and what it's not. and what it's not. because if you read popular press you will believe that our nation's federal elections are awash in dark money flooding the air waves. dark money is spending by groups that do not have the major purpose of being a political committee. we have regulatory jurisdiction over political committees and if you are a political committee you have to register with the federal election commission and you have to report every dime in and every dime out on an ongoing per pech july basis. you have to surrender your associational freedom by disclosing what all of your donors are.

now, clearly there must be a definition of what a political committee is. and that definition sets the outer limits of my regulatory jurisdiction. beyond that definition, if you are not a political committee, we still have jurisdiction over your expenditures and every time you make an independent expenditure or you fund an electioneer communication as a noncommittee you are filed to file one-time report with the fec disclose if planned parenthood action fund make an expenditure in connection with a specific election. but we do not have full-blown comprehensive regulatory jurisdiction over those groups because their pump is not electioneering. they have a lot of other purposes. we are engaged in an ongoing debate over the meets and bounds

of where your associational privacy ends and our regulatory jurisdiction begins. and if my democratic colleagues have their way, every little political thing you do with very little definition around every little political thing you do will evidence your political purposes broadly defined and you will be swept into the full jurisdiction of the federal government and you will surrender your associational privacy. now, as to the extent of this issue, in 2012, total dispersements by nonpolitical committees, nonprofit trade associations and nonprofit 501c-4 action social welfare groups totalled $306 million or

4% of total expenditures by all political committees regulated by the fec. and by 2016, that number had declined from 306 million to 196 million and from 4% to about 2.5% of total expenditures. and we know it down to the penny because you are required to file those expenditure-specific reports. i can tell you down to the penny that planned parenthood action fund and its state affiliates spent approximately $7.7 million to say vote for jones or vote against smith in the 2012 elections. i can tell you down to the penny how much the united states chamber of commerce has spent in election after election. what we don't always have jurisdiction to pry into is who gave money to planned parenthood

action fund and who gave money to the u.s. chamber of commerce. i contend that for me as a listener to assess the messages i receive from planned parenthood action fund or the u.s. chamber of commerce i don't really need to know who gave money to planned parenthood action fund or the u.s. chamber of commerce in order to assess those political messages. i think i know enough about the organizations that are sponsoring that speech and at the end of the day we have to draw a line somewhere and to say that we drew the line where 98% of the expenditures are fully disclosed and 2% of them are in event-specific, ad-specific disclosure means we have drawn, we have tailored that line pretty tightly. but if my democratic colleagues have their way, who becomes a

political committee will be far broader than we know it today. and if you register voters, if you engage in issue advocacy anywhere near a election, all of that activity will be counted toward a major purpose and you will be fully regulated by the federal election commission and surrender your associational privacy. so, after citizens united and given a muscular exercise of first amendment sensitivity among republican commissioners, we have seen the left generally seek other measures to reverse citizens united. either effectively or legally. the first, of course, was the hope to replace justice scalia on the supreme court and change the balance of power on the

supreme court. another measure that you hear about which is, again, all about the regulation of first amendment rights is an effort to amend the first amendment. in the popular press, you often read that the effort to amend the first amendment is about reversing citizens united. if you look at the last it ration, the last congress, it went far broader than citizens united. it completely counter manded the buckley v. lay low analysis that the resources it takes to speak implicate first amendment rights. the amendment went in reversed buckley v. vallejo. third, we hear all the time efforts, new, creative legal theories to countermand citizens united. the latest approach was to define all publicly traded

corporations that have any foreign ownership. i dare you to find a publicly traded corporation that on any given day doesn't have some degree of foreign ownership on the u.s. stock exchange. the effort was to define all publicly traded u.s. corporations as foreign nationals and there is an absolute prohibition on the right of foreign nationals to make expenditures in connection with american elections. that would have effectively knocked the u.s. chamber of commerce out of the public debate, exercising its rights under citizens united. there's always another way to skin that cat. when i confronted the proponents of that idea with whether or not they were going to define media organizations that had foreign ownership as foreign nationals, such as "new york times," i was

told, oh no, not the media. when i asked about international labor unions that have foreign membership, many of the american labor unions also have members in canada, for example, and tout this on their websites, i was told, oh no, not the labor unions. it was targeted approach to countermand corporate free rights and countermand citizens united. failing that what you're seeing now is an effort to fill what the reform community believes is a void at the federal level, to ask the securities and exchange commission and or state attorney generals to fill the void by requiring more and more disclosure of me believes and donors at the state level, under the theory that if you can get that, if you can wrest that

disclosure and make it public in california and new york and maybe one or two other large states you can effectively countermand the associational privacy rights of those groups through the back door of the states. and finally, my favorite is that the fec is so dysfunctional because we had a 12% resolution rate at the vote of 3-3 in 2016, 12.5 -- resolving the most complicated cases, by a vote of 3-3 in 12.5% of the time has been deemed dysfunctional by the left and the reform community as an argument in favor of converting the commission into being a 3-2 body instead of the 3-3 constitution that congress

set up in 1974 to prevent one party from taking advantage of the others. it is important that you understand what dysfunction means when you hear it. it means that the left is unhappy with the substantive results at the fec and they want more regulation of your first amendment rights. and it is nothing more nor less than a narrative that fits that result. thank you. >> so we'd like to open the floor for questions for our panelists and if you would raise your hand if you have a question and a microphone will find you. start right here. >> okay. thank you. it is to me i've always been disturbed by the motor voter law. in a sense that it's a way to encourage noncitizens to vote

because they can gate driver's license in so many states and then there's the form right there to register to vote at the same time. have you seen any evidence that that sort of thing is happening, where under the motor voter law, when they get a driver's license, they're also noncitizens have a much easier time and will register to vote when they shouldn't? >> earlier i mentioned the three decisions i have from the seventh circuit court of appeals and every single one of the cases the noncitizen that got to the u.s. went to a driver's license bureau, got their driver's license and registered to vote at the very same time. and as you know, california has now put in an automatic voter registration law that will automatically register everyone getting a driver's license in the state of of california. last year, i think about half a million of the driver's licenses they sent out were to people who

are in the country illegally. and there's no indication that they really have anything in place that's going to effectively prevent those individuals from also registering to vote. >> next question. >> yes. the first gentleman had my question but i have a follow-up question for mr. goodman. when the fec has tied votes 3-3, my question is what is the legal affect of that? >> when congress designed this organization you can imagine, you know, the debate that was had. we were just coming out of scandals involving the nixon administration. misuse of the department of justice. misuse of the irs to go after enemies of the president. and so, it was in the wake of water gate and watergate scandals that congress designed this agency so when congress set this agency up to avoid one party taking advantage of the

other party, because that's all we regulate is their political activities, congress designed the agency as a six-member body with no more than three democrats and no more than three republicans. and congress inserted into the law a requirement that there be four affirmative votes to take any substantive action. to issue an advisory decision, to adopt a regulation. we have to have four affirmative votes. so, what you will hear 3-3 -- you will hear 3-3 votes characterized by the left as deadlocks. dysfunction. i actually characterize it quite differently. if you set up a body, if you wanted a king you should have just set it up with one director to make all the decisions. congress designed a commission with six people. and we assume bring if you have

six independent thinking people you are going to have votes that divide, sometimes 6-0. only times 5-1. sometimes 4-2. and yes, some of your votes are going to distribute 3-3, especially in a complicated area where you're supposed to be first amendment sensitive and you have any myriad of facts that come on. so, come before you. so, 3-3 votes simply mean that a case or some regulatory decision came before us and it did not convince the requisite four affirmative votes. now, many people say that's a failure of the commission. i say, no. it's a failure of the idea to garner four votes on a bipartisan basis. >> let me ask something as a former commissioner. this is really, really important. all the reformers say, oh, well the fec ought to be like the other commissions, like the s.e.c. you know, an odd number and never have a tie vote but the whole point here is the fec as

lee has very well explained is it's regulating in one of the most sensitive areas we have. first amendment activity. and the only way to guarantee that when you have someone in the white house that person's political party doesn't take control of the agency and use it and use its enforcement powers to target members of the other political party is to make sure that you have an even number of commissioners and any time it takes action they have to convince one member of the other party to do it. you hear a lot of complaints about the fec, dysfunctional, et cetera which i don't agree with. but the one thing you don't ever hear is a claim that they only enforce the law against members of one political party and not the other and that's because it takes both parties to agree to go after someone for violating the law. that's very important. >> yeah. let me add.

there are proposals floating to reconstitute the commission to have two democratic members and two republican members and one super chairman who will be an independent. [ laughter ] and i always say, appoint me and i promise you i'll be independent. i can assure you i'll be independent so long as i'm the person making the decisions and i'm sure everyone here can make that representation. >> isn't bernie sanders an independent? >> some history here is important. for about the last seven or eight years the commission has had a self proclaimed independent on the commission. he's a good man. i like him very much. steven walfor. he was recommended for the commission by harry reid. and on the commission, he has caucused for years with the democratic commissioners and has

voted with the democratic commissioners. probably over 90% to 95% of the time. now, he's a good man. i'm not criticizing him or his convictions or his votes. but you need to understand any -- any grand idea drawn up on paper to make this agency a 2-2 with one super chairman with super powers as an independent, well, we have already seen the independent on the commission. so, you can use history as a guide for where that -- where that idea would take you. >> next question in the back here. >> thank you very much for what you shared. it almost seems wrong to get legal credits for this. it's such a pleasure. i wanted to ask why when we're discussing voter fraud we always talk of it as if it's almost a victimless crime. it came home to me once when i

was under employment in south dakota, actually, on the kids running around who were getting extra votes. and at the same time, i'm watching a farmer come in from the fields in his overalls with his little boy and he's come at a hard working man coming to cast his vote and it occurs to me that those kids running around stealing votes were stealing from him. it's not a victimless crime. the victims are the hard working people who deserve to have their vote not dilluted or devalued by the voter fraud. >> i think that's the point i was trying to make about these type of crimes being a crime against democracy. i have seen many of these up close, heard the facts, actually read or heard the facts of it. and you're right because what you're talking about is usually

a conspiracy by activists to try to sway or rebut the will of the people and as an election official you have a duty to uphold that the votes are counted and cast, cast and counted and the results are clear. and when individuals try to manipulate the process, that's a crime against all of us. as a democracy. >> the one thing i'll add to that is that's what makes the opposition to voter integrity measures so sad to me and that is that often the victims as you call them of these, for example, vote stealing plots are poor and often racial minorities and a great example of that is a couple of years ago several individuals were convicted of voter fraud in troy, new york. and they were basically engaging in absentee ballot fraud.

they were stealing and targeting a poor, minority neighborhood. and one of the campaign consultants who was convicted was asked by the police, why did you target that particular neighborhood. what he said was, well, because those are the people least likely to notice or object to their vote having been stolen. >> i would also point out that we can debate how extensive voter fraud is but the fact of the matter is it does exist and when you look at the surveys of the american people, this is important to me as a state election official, they distrust the system. different part, parties may for different reasons but there are significant numbers that believe that voter fraud can and does impact elections and it does in close elections, particularly. i guess what i'm trying to point out is unless the american people believe that we take this seriously, honestly take a look at it and what practical

measures can we recommend, let's say a commission does look at this, and then what can our legislators in the states do to sort of increase voter confidence? if we just ignore the problem, the polls are going to get worse and worse of the american people having confidence in our elections and i for one want to stop that trend. i want to reverse it. i don't want to just stand pat and accept where we are right now. >> any other questions? larry? larry, you probably don't need the microphone. >> first, i want to thank commissioner goodman for your service and, hans, previously and defending the first amendment rights of all of us at the commission. i know it's mostly a thankless task. so i for one want to thank you for that. but for those of us who cherish the first amendment, i've noticed in the last couple of

years a rash of complaints, mostly coming from crew and other liberal organizations, that are attempting to criminalize associations or associational rights. if you are a republican or a conservative, if you support a pac or exercise your right to speak during the electoral process and you happen to actually be a friend of someone in the administration or going into the administration or you're at a pac and you have a friend who's on the campaign or you once worked together, there seems to be this movement to attempt to criminalize that and say, because you had an association, you must be conspireing to violate the freedom, the law and illegally coordinate. with little more than that as

the lynchpin. i know there are a bunch of complaints floating out there. have there been any decisions or is there vigorous debate within the fec on this issue? >> your observations raise several points. one, first let me go back to this gentleman's question about the constitution of the agency. we have a complaint process created by statute that allows any citizen to file a complaint with the federal election commission about any other citizen. sort of a private attorney general complaint system. i support that system but if you're going to allow private citizens to file complaints and begin harnessing the regulatory enforcement process on people for exercising first amendment rights, you better have a very strict screen for reviewing and

processing complaints because the punishment can be the process. complaints are filed usually accompanied by a press release. to stigmatize an organization. then to freeze the organization's donors' interests and continuing to associate with that organization while it's under a cloud of violation. to then drain the resources of that organization to legal fees, to address a regulatory action. so the complaint process can be abused and that's why the commissioners are such important gatekeepers. and because we have seen in 2015 at one point i just looked at the whole cache of complaints, pending in the building, and my count was approximately 75% -- excuse me. once you sorted out those that were nonpartisan. a corporation's sue submission,

you know, not politically identified groups. of the politically identified groups, for which there were complaints pending in the fec. 75% of them were against republican and conservative groups and 25% of them were against democratic and liberal leaning groups. now, i don't indict the private complaint system that allows people to file the complaints. but it certainly places a premium on maintaining the political balance on the agency given that one side will attempt to use or may attempt to use -- by the way, it can go either way. it can be a nixon administration misusing the government. it can be left leaning groups lobbying lowest learner and to approvals of nonprofit applications. or it can be at the fec where

people file complaints challenging the political activities of their opponents. so you must have a balanced organization to receive complaints at the rate of 3 to 1 against one side fairly and without bias. now, as for guilt by association under the broad doctrine of coordination, larry, at some point we were accused by our liberal colleagues of dismissing about -- i'm -- i don't have the numbers in front of me. this was about a year ago. dismissing 30 coordination cases. in other words, in the new era where expenditures are free for incorporated organizations and coordination remains as the doctrine that keeps corporate expenditures illegal if they're

coordinated because then you have an illegal corporate contribution, people were criticized us for not enforcing strenuously enough. well, i scratched my head and we pulled up the approximately 30 cases where the accusation was made and in approximately 28 of 30, i may be off by a number're or there, the office of general commission within the commission which is a fairly reflexively pro-regulatory group by and large had recommended dismissal of those cases because there wasn't enough evidence to go forward. i can tell you that the republican commissioners do not adhere to guilt by association. we do require a very concrete showing of direct coordination in order to find reason to believe and even open an investigation into coordination because all of us who've ever defended coordination cases know

that they're the most invasive investigations because they go far and wide into every e-mail, every association, everyone who knows anybody. and so, they're highly invasive investigations into associational rights and privacy. so, i know that the office of general counsel has been pretty fair with these and does -- requires a fairly high level of evidence before it recommends proceeding and i can tell you that the three republicans also require a high level of evidence. and we do not accept mere guilt by association. >> can i add something to that? let me add something to that. because you're talking about trying to criminalize what's happening there. this is a general trend of people on the left and the reform community. they want to criminalize constitutional political activity. and they also -- look. the whole listen there's a big

push, you know, the term dark money, this is something a focus group came up with. you know? because it sounds terrible. the whole push in this area is because, look, they want the donors disclosed of advocacy organizations. pro-life groups. pro second amendment groups. for one reason only. not so the public can make its own decision when a pro-life group runs an ad or the nra runs an ad. they want to get the donors disclosed so they can harass and intimidate the donors and dry up the resources of these organizations. it is the modern version of the classic supreme court case naacp versus alabama when the government wanted to force the naacp to disclose their members and donors in order to try to weaken the organization. that is what's going on today and what people don't understand today with our disclosure rules

is that social media has made it extremely easy to run campaigns that really hurt people and harass and intimidate them in a way that was never able to be done before. and, you know, the classic example of this is brandon ikes, former head who helped start the company driven out of the company that he owned. why? because he made a totally legitimate legal contribution to a referendum. a referendum in california on the gay marriage issue. why in the world would you require disclosure in the referendum of proposition area? you can i guess justify disclosure coming to contributions to candidates getting into office and can affect legislation. but when you're contributing a referendum on one side or another, what?

that's going to illegally influence the people of the state you're in? i mean, there's no legitimate reason for it. and the only reason for this push and the dark money area is to that it makes harassment and intimidation campaigns easier to mount. >> if i -- as long as hans is going there, i just want to add to that because this is one of the great debates in campaign finance era of, you know, in this era. two book that is treat this book, the silencing by kirsten powers, fox news commentator. and the intimidation game by kim strassel of "wall street journal" both document chapter and verse plan "b" that's really ramped up since citizens united. i call it plan "b" meaning if i can't absolutely prohibit people from speaking, well then, i'm sure going to out them and shame

them and attack their businesses. and attack their careers. and we're going to try to run them out of the political process another way. and i want you all to think back. today this is largely a left on right strategy. but it was just 60 years ago that it was a right on left strategy when you think about the anti-communist efforts, whether it was dalton and the hollywood ten, the writers, members of the communist party being subpoenaed to come to washington, d.c. and testify before the house un-american activities committee. to name the names, disclose all of your associations. right, larry? name all your friends who you get together and meet with to talk about marxist economics. and it's a very interesting jurs

prudential development that led to the naacp case in 1958 but it really started in 1947 when dalton trum bioand other liberal communist writers in hollywood were subpoenaed to come to washington. and they were so sure that they had a first amendment freedom that many of them jousted with the committee. they didn't take the committee seriously. they were -- they would not name the names of their fellow members of their associations. and for that, they were arrested. for contempt of congress. they then challenged their arrest under the first amendment in the u.s. district court for the district of columbia. which did not rule in their favor. they appealed to the u.s. court of appeals for the district of columbia and they did not prevail. they then petitioned to the united states supreme court. sure that they were going to be

vindicated in the supreme court. and in 1949, the u.s. supreme court did not grant in their cases. and so, all ten of those writers actually went to prison for not disclosing the names of their fellow members of their political associations. over the next five years, the states got in the game. where have you heard that before? when the state attorney generals decided that they had a role to play in protecting the united states against anti-subversive activity. and people were being called in in states and to congress. now joe mccarthy is getting into the activity. and they're being asked, name the names of your political associates. people didn't have any confidence in their first amendment rights any longer because the supreme court didn't protect the hollywood ten. so, some of them resorted to invoking their fifth amendment right but no one wanted to

invoke a fifth amendment right to admit they had engaged in any subversive activity. so they were in a catch-22. then, in 1954, the attorney general of new hampshire, lewis wyman, under an anti-subversive statute subpoenas paul swezee. paul swezee had been a member of the rosen velt administration. he was a markist economist. he served his country in the united states army. and he founded the monthly review which is a marxist economic magazine that is still in publication. and he taught at the university of new hampshire. and he was subpoenaed by lewis wyman to come in and among other things to name the names of the

other people who founded and formed the progressive party of new hampshire under the theory that they might be subversives. at the beginning of his testimony, he said, i have never supported the overthrow of my government through force or violence. and i don't know anybody who has. that should end your inquiry under this anti-subversion statute. instead, they questioned him for two days and he answered most of their questions about his own political beliefs and conduct except that he would not name the names of the other people who formed the progressive party. he was found in contempt, arrested, let out on bail. took a challenge that all the way to the supreme court of new hampshire. supreme court of new hampshire, of course, upheld the

conviction. he then appealed to the united states supreme court. and in june of 1957, the supreme court struck his conviction. by a vote of 6-2 with one justice absent. the significant opinion in swezee v. new hampshire in the opinion is concurring opinion of justice frankfurtherer joined by justice harlan in which for the first time the supreme court or at least two justices of the supreme court recognized a right of associational privacy under the first amendment. one year later, in 1958, the right of associational privacy under the first amendment is adopted by a majority of the court in naacp versus alabama and the frank furter doctrine became the law of the land.

now, small swezee always understood the inquiry not to be whether he posed a threat to the united states. he always understood the political campaign against him was to prevent -- to impede the labor movement and to impede those liberals who wanted to build on new deal economics and entrenched in institutional them at the next level in american political economy. and today, we are seeing some of the same tactics on the left to prevent capitalists from speaking and capitalists free market ideology from thriving. and i think we have to remember the history to know where this right of political privacy comes and to be able to understand these guilt by association theories in a broader context. [ applause ]

>> well, you certainly got your cle credit for this one. [ laughter ] i would like to thank the panelists. fantastic as i knew you guys would be. these are guys doing great work in their respective fields and i think we had a very robust panel and good questions from the audience and i'm going to turn it over to david. >> thank you, david. >> you're welcome, david. >> thank you, gentlemen. really appreciate it. token of our appreciation, those of you in the audience, i think are used to this by now, but we have got a little something, hans, i think you have seven of these already, but county by county map of the election results and on the other side, our logo with a make america great again cap so thank you very much. another round for these guys. and we're bringing everybody

back together. the breakout panels are over now but we have now got the next plenary session back in here in basically as soon as we can change the table cards. but that's something i think near and dear to all of our hearts. the judicial confirmation process, rules of the senate and its constitutional role of advice and consent and we'll get folks up here for that right now. saturday at noon eastern on book tv, military historians discuss their books on world war i at the 2017 colby military writers' symposium. author is jennifer keen with "world war i: the american soldier experience." "the path to war."

retired colonel and his book "over there: america in the great war." and the recipient of this year's colby award, author david barren and his book "waging war." watch the 2017 colby military writers' symposium saturday at noon eastern on c-span2's book tv. sunday on q & a, the comparisons between presidents donald trump and andrew jackson. our guest, mark cheatem on the book "andrew jackson: southern." >> i don't think he represents the positive values that jackson represented. he certainly represents some of the negative values that jackson represented. but i think i would tell president trump that if he wants to be like andrew jackson, he has to put nation in front of his own parenthood, in front of

his own family, has to put nation in front of his own interests because that's what jackson did for most of his presidency. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's q & a. the house oversight committee held a hearing on a data breach in the online student loan application known as fafsa. hackers used a flaw in the system to steal irs filing information on as many as 100,000 taxpayers. irs and education department officials testified at this two and a half hour hearing. >> good morning. the committee on oversight and government reform will come to order. without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a recess at any time. the chair notes the presence of our colleague congressman bobby scott from virginia. we appreciate his interest in this topic andel