repair it so that you can then work on your vision. >> particularly i'd like for them to talk a bit more about antitrust legislation and corporate control. another thing is also freedom of speech, particularly protection against -- protection for whistle blowers and just the patriot act and that kind of stuff, yeah. >> i think the biggest thing that i'm looking for is just to return to a sense of normalcy. i feel like so much of our government and our institutions have been dismantled. they have kind of been really taken apart and broken the last few years. >> i would like to see the candidates focus on climate change and antitrust laws. yeah. getting money out of the government. specifically antilobbying and those sort of issues. >> voices from the road on cspan.

next, state officials discuss the steps being taken to improve the security and administration of 2020 elections at federal and local levels. the bipartisan policy center hosted this event. >> so welcome to the bipartisan security center. thank you for being here today. my name is matt weill. i am the director of the washington project here. it's 2020. we've all made it. it's very exciting for my team. this project is very ready for 2020 and i did some tabulations, 293 days away from election day. that means iowa is having its caucus in 19 days. new hampshire is having their primary in 27 days and super tuesday when 15 daze states are having their primaries is only 48 days away. what does that mean for election administrators?

it means the election isn't two or three days away, it's here. for those voters covered by the uniform and overseas citizens absentee voting act, those ballots have to be in the mail 45 days before the election. starting on monday there are going to be a lot of ballots out there going to our american citizens over seas. election years are very fun for me. a lot of people who i don't get to talk to a lot during the year are very interested in the work i do. it's also the time when everyone becomes experts in elections and they have opinions on how to do that process. not unlike how i become during the olympics and i have comments about every single sport that i know everything about. if you are in the wrong event and you ared fr interested in t olympics, that starts in 191 days. this is the culmination of a year's worth of work of my team bringing together 21 state and local election officials to agree upon logical election

policy. what makes our group unique is that it was made up of only state and local election officials. the ones who have to implement policy. there are a lot of good ideas out there, but policy doesn't happen in a vacuum. the greatest policy implemented poorly isn't going to serve america's voters that well and isn't going to improve the voting experience. american voters expect that if the voting process is going to be secure, successful and accurate, an individual should have convenient ways of casting the ballot. only those eligible should be able to do so. elections are very complex. they involve many federal and state election laws. they have to be everything from logistical election experts to cyber security experts and everything in between. that's why the bipartisan policy center created this task force. our goal is simple, to create a roadmap of policy makers to understand their options when they're doing election reform but also to highlight the upstream and downstream effect

to making policy in one area. i'm going to leave the specific conversation about recommendations to charles stewart who's moderating our second panel and the great task force members who are able to join us today. i appreciate that. i want to take a few minutes to thank the people who made this possible. certainly all 21 of our task force members, we appreciate all the time they gave to this effort. they attended events in person throughout the country three times last year. i don't know how many times we had conference calls. a lot. i don't know how many times we had conference calls with me and my staff individually and they all provided their alliance with the report. i appreciate that. i want to point out our team here. they've all made this absolutely possible. brenna has been our program associate on the team for 3 1/2

years now and really making sure everything we want to do can happen. today has been a black day. it was sad but slightly terrifying for me when she told me she had an exciting new opportunity because i thought she was leaving then. was going to leave before the report got to the design phase. thankfully she made her last day our event. i appreciate that. thank you for everything you've done. con content wouldn't look this good without our communications team. at this time i want to invite thomas to give a few remarks. congressman gibbs wanted to be here to give remarks but he had to vote. >> hold your applause please. please. hey. thank you. matt, i really appreciate it. i actually was looking forward to the back and forth like we had last year.

wanted to hear some questions and be able to respond. i had the opportunity to address this group during -- about a year ago now, and it was a great back and forth talking about what our views were. what we look forward to addressing when it comes to election reform and election security during this congress. really disappointed i don't get a chance to sit with secretary rathmusberger and sit and cheer lead what you guys are doing or, of course, like we do here in congress, complain if we disagree with you. but i really appreciate the bipartisan policy center for having me back. election policy matters. it doesn't make the front page. it's not in the 24-hour news cycle but since becoming a ranking member of the house administration committee, which as many of you know, it oversees federal elections, we've held three markups, four of election policies, we've had five election-related hearings including a hearing just last week where we had voting machine

ceos come in and testify in our committee of nine. house administration, i think it's very important, but we have nine members on that committee and it's become a committee that's become more of a legislative committee. this congress more so than it ever has in its entire existence. i introduced two election security bills over this congress, hr 3412, the election security assistance act and the honest elections act. both of those bills take aims at addressing some of the types of interference that we saw in 2016 and also focusing on assisting states like georgia and others, my home state of illinois, bolstered their election security measures, too. we think they're good bills. we think they ought to be able to get a fair hearing. some positive things that we've already done. they've recently passed national defense reauthorization act, the ndaa. we've included many election security provisions that were asked for by folks like our

secretaries of state. by folks that are in charge at the eac like the commissioner in implementing changes to ensure that our election system's more secure. we will make sure that we have better intraoperability to provide state, local, national officials with instances of possible intrusion. communication matters. one of the big things that we can do here in washington is to make sure that all three levels of government talk to each other and make sure it's not just about money but make sure that money goes to areas that we're going to see real results. there's not many areas in government that have seen such bipartisan cooperation in all levels to address a problem that existed in 2016. that's great. we want to continue to allow that to happen. those are our priorities. those are chair loughlin's priorities and those should be america ae's priorities in my

opinion. we have worked to give $425 million in hava grants. spend it wisely to secure your elections. so we see cooperation in a city that is not known right now when you turn on the tv for any type of cooperation whatsoever. things are happening in this arena that should be tauted and that's what i think a group like yours, the bipartisan policy center, you know, you recommended that states enact meaningful election reform. we're helping them to do that, we believe, and that's a direct result, i think, of efforts by groups like yours to make sure that this was an increased -- this was an issue with increased scrutiny and we also want to make sure that we highlight what we've done that has worked. remember we had historic turnout in the mid term elections in 2018. anybody hear of any instances of foreign intrusion? i see none. i'm going to take that as a no.

but that should be celebrated. we should be talking a little bit more about what we're doing right in this field instead of always going back to instances of 2016 where we know we had a problem but we worked together to help correct those problems. the secretaries of state can tell you that. our local election officials can tell you that. the eac has now been entrusted to ensure that those -- that those efforts continue to move forward. those are the things that we should be talking about in washington but instead we're talking about other issues that are much more partisan. last year our committee marked up three bills. remember i said we have nine members of congress on the house committee. i have three republicans on that committee in the minority. we had three major election bills marked up through that committee. won a 600 plus page bohemoth hr 1. there are good things in all of

these bills, there were also some major areas that i disagreed with. those are areas that i think as we move together we've got to figure out which areas of those major pieces of legislation the democrats tried to ram through our small committee and had a partisan vote on each of them on the floor of the house. we ought to be able to come together and get things done in the areas we agree with, and that's why i'm glad to be here and working with folks like the secretary and the kmilgcommissi too. we want secure elections. very much so. that's our goal. we're getting secure elections. look at 2018. look at the investments that we've made. these things matter. and that's why we're going to continue as we move forward, we have some ideas where i think we can work together. we need to help it at the bpcc to make it happen and the sos, the secretaries of state, too. make sure you tell secretary larose i said that, too. we've got to reform pava. it's been since 2002 since that

bill was implemented. we have so many more issues, not just in the election security arena but the election technology arena that we have to in a bipartisan way update hava so they can get the funds that we're investing out to our secretaries of state, the state boards of elections so let's work together. we need your help helping us lead a reform of hava. we also need to look at securing more voting. centralized voter election databases. look, the programs and the security protocols that we make our election voting machine vendors follow through the vbsg, standards administered through the eac, they don't apply to voter registration databases. as we all know, as we move into the future, we're going to have more equal books. we're going to have more electronic technology at the voter registration portion. maybe we start to look at

putting together some guidelines that our voter registration databases are going to have to follow. think about it. where was the intrusion in 2016 in my home state of illinois? was it at the electronic voting machine with the paper backup that i use each time? did somebody hack into that? did the russians do that? no. but they did try to hack into our state board of elections voter file. that tells me we've got to do something better because if that's an area that doesn't have as much scrutiny, maybe that's where government can come in as republicans and democrats and get things done. we're doing things right in illinois, too. just last week being on the committee, even though it's a small committee, i get a chance to choose some witnesses every once in a while in hearings. i had the chance to pick a witness to come and testify at the election vendor hearing and i chose my home county clerk, my local election official. he's a democrat. i'm a republican.

republicans don't choose democrats to sit in as their witnesses, right? if you turn on tv you would never think that would happen but i did because you know why? i know mike because i grew up with him. i went to school with him. i graduated high school with him and i know there is nobody in my home county that wants to run a fairer and faster election process than mike. i don't care if he's a democrat. he's my friend. he's doing a good job. our local election officials aren't partisan. our local election officials shouldn't be partisan. our local election officials should care like mike does about getting elections that are fair, getting elections that make sure people don't have to wait in lines and making sure the technology works. so bipartisan support at the local, state, and federal election -- the local, state, federal levels is essential for mike to be able to do his job. but illinois has a cyber navigator program. they're making sure that we have policies in place that our local

officials know that if they think there is an intrusion on their voter registration system or by the -- you know, by chance maybe an election machine, they know who to call. simple things like this in washington can be done to make sure that our local election officials are able to do their job. i think the national initiative marrying illinois's campaign could be something that we could have bipartisan support on so we stop cyber threats before they get to our precincts. look, at the end of the day our federal government and our role in the federal government is to ensure that the states have every resource possible to run their elections and that's an area that i think we're going to continue over the next congress. the next few years. the rest of this congress to continue to push forward. i'm glad election security is getting more scrutiny because it gives us a chance to make things better and i look forward to working with each and everyone of you. sorry i can't answer your questions. that dastardly thing of doing my

job and i have to go and vote i've got to do. thanks, everyone, and good luck. [ applause ] all right. so our first panel is entitled, defending elections at the state and federal level, but it's much broader than that certainly. what i really want to have a conversation about today, it's still on that topic, don't worry, is broader. it's more how can the federal government help in federal elections. what do we need? where are there some comparative advantages? where are we not being most efficient. let me introduce my panel. we've all met congressman rodney davis here.

commissioner ben hugland. he was put in by president trump and confirmed in 2019. he's currently the vice chair, soon to be the chair of the commission in february likely. >> we have to vote on it. >> we have to vote on it but, yes, likely. he serves as the designated federal officer which helps to create the vbsg, voluntary voting systems guidelines. ben and been in and around elections for 20 years. he was serving as the acting u.s. chief counsel for the senate committee. he was a driving force behind getting $300 million to the states in 2018. >> a driving force. sorry. >> earlier in his career he served as deputy general counsel for the missouri secretary of state's office where he focused on voter registration, statewide database matching, voter education resources and ballot

initiation. welcome. next to him is georgia secretary of state brad rathensberger. he is a ceo of tendon systems. they have nearly 200 employees which operates in 35 states. he has served two terms in the georgia general assembly from 2015 to 2019. you were elected secretary of state in 2019. welcome. >> thank you. >> the first question is quite broad. i'd like to get your initial thoughts. what is the appropriate federal role for -- what is the appropriate role -- what is the appropriate role for federal government in elections? >> i assume you're asking me? >> i'm asking you first. >> i think one of the real challenges in elections, particularly for people who haven't really worked in the space, is figuring out that balance. you know, as you mentioned in my biography, you know, i feel privileged to have worked at various levels.

i still haven't done local, which i should, but i worked at the missouri secretary of state's office so i've had that viewpoint. i worked at the senate to have the legislative perspective and now in an straigadministrative capacity at the eac. what i've seen over that time is finding that balance where, you know, i think what you traditionally see in federal administration, it tends to be floors, but it really leaves the states to be the laboratories of the democracy here. you see great innovation in the states. so i think where we can ensure that, you know, people have the right to vote, that they're able to vote but leave the flexibility for the states to innovate is really a great balance that we've seen work in a lot of places. >> secretary, same question. >> i think that the federal government, what brings some resources that we don't have at the state level and the capacity, one of those would be obviously cyber. from foreign anchors in

particular. because they just have, you know, larger resources. that's really important for us. then i think also to have a standard for testing of new voting equipment so we have a common standard. that gives voters a sense of calm, peace, it's been tested and there's some standard the systems have. i think those are two areas that are at the federal level you can really help assist the states. but really at the end of the day, you know, elections bubble up at the precinct level to the county level to the state level and i think that's the appropriate form that we've had for 200 some odd years. i think we need to continue on. >> so you mentioned voting systems. i'll talk about that. commissioner, you served as the liaison to gdbcc. there are a lot of concerns about the voting systems in the public, security, feasibility. we know that in many states they're going to be using new voting systems this time compared to 2018 or 2016. how do you assess where we are

today, where we still need to go and how we're going to get there? >> so this is -- how long do we have? >> yeah. >> there's a lot to unpack there. i do think as the secretary said, you know, some of the work at the eac on the voluntary voting system guidelines, i really do think there is a natural benefit and economies of scale to having a federal program, you know, why should there be 50 different voting certification programs. that doesn't make sense for the states. that would be costly for them. that doesn't make sense for vendors. you know, but we have to have a program that works and as you know, we've had a history that also been bumpy, but i think we are on the way up and i think we are working on the vbsg 2.0. hopefully that will be done soon. i think what that has done is ensuring that the next generation of election equipment is better and that we build a program around that that really is focused on customer service

and good governance and being a resource and a value add to the space. i think doing that ensures that election systems continue to improve going forward. >> georgia is one of those states that has a new voting system. how did you settle on what you did and what are you looking for in 2020? >> we are going through our second statewide implementation. the first one we ever did was in 2002. that's when we made a decision long before my time that we have a uniform system in the state. that was a dre system. it's aged out. we're implementing a new system with touchscreen technology, ballot advice so we'll have that implemented, 33,100 machines throughout the entire state. we have 159 counties. even though we're not the second largest in population but the second number in counties. so we're really moving fast. so it's a big lift.

the largest and fastest implementation that's ever occurred in this country. >> one of the things that congressman davis mentioned was the $425 million that was appropriated at the end of the year for the states. i mentioned the $380 million that you were one of the driving forces behind in 2018. by my calculation that's $805 million that the federal government is providing to states. from when i talked to state and local officials, they're looking for clarity on how to spend it well, how to spend it quickly so it can be impactful for 2020. so what does success look like when it comes to how to spend this federal money well, the good sturts of the taxpayer's money and to secure the elections going forward? >> absolutely. so with a little bit of my former hat on i can talk more about the 2018 money. the 2020 money looks a lot like it. the reason that congress

provided so much flexibility is because each state does look so different and each jurisdiction does look so different. so when you're looking at increasing security, those needs really vary. you know, some states we've seen replace aging and paperless equipment. other states we've seen either replace their statewide voter registration database or harden that with things like multi-factor authentication. congressman davis mentioned the cyber navigator programs. i think these are one of the best things out there to really help provide the technical expertise that a lot of jurisdictions, frankly, don't have the resources or capacity to have. i think that has been a great model. i think with the $425 million, i think for certain states like an illinois who -- backing up, the 2018 money was five-year money. so some states have budgeted out

that money. we're going to get the 2020 money out the door quickly. for states bumming getting for five years, knowing the money is coming, they can start spending some of what they already had immediately. the reality is where we are in the cycle, there's only certain things you're able to do. so much of this is really about i think of elections as an infrastructure. you know, it is now critical infrastructu infrastructure. it's building in the process and the strength in the long term. it can't just be about 2020 election. it has to be about 2022 and 2024 and building systems that are strong enough moving forward. >> one of the things that was different is a significant rise in state match. so the states are going to have to put up some more money to access the federal funds. how does that impact how quickly you guys can get out the door?

does the legislature need to get involved? what are you planning on doing to them? >> we have two key thrusts. number one, we've said to everyone that security is our number one goal. it's our highest priority. we understand how important the cyber and the back office voter database is. and then voter registration and we'll be doing social media interviews. georgia public television has done a little bit of video on the website. we're looking at voters and how do we get prepared. it's similar and different. that's the mantra we're out there with. we want people to have a great experience. the whole idea, when you show up to vote, we don't like lines, voters don't like lines. we want them to be able to navigate through there. after they made all of those selections, press the button, they still have a vote until they drop that paper ballot into the scanner.

so that's real important so we can have an efficient election so people have fun with it. it should be a great day. it shouldn't be misery, it should be fun. >> one of the other complaints that we've heard about the federal funding is that it's just not getting down to the front line election integrators. what can states ensure to do to make sure that more of the local administrators are getting access to the funds that they could use to improve that experience for the voters? >> you know, we've definitely heard that from a number of jurisdictions and states. it really varies across the country and i think, again, some of that depends on what the needs were. you know, if you needed a new statewide voter registration database or you needed to harden that system, number one, we saw that that was where a lot of focus of 2016 activity was. that's also something that benefits the entire state. so we did see some states that passed most of the money down. we've seen states that kept most of it up top and i think with the additional 2020 money, it will be interesting to see what

that does in the sense of if you had an initial investment in a new statewide voter registration database, now maybe you're in a position to award more local grants and we're certainly hopeful to see that. >> what's happening in one state certainly impacts what's happening in every other state. i think you go back 20, 30 years, maybe states could really run their own elections separately. since florida -- i'm sorry, brian. certainly, you know, the mantra has been we don't want to be the next floor darks whi next florida. which is not fair to florida. voters hear stories but what they're hearing is different from what's happening in their states. you have very long deadlines for certification of results, places like california, very short ones. back out east, it's leading to misinformation among voters. what can the federal and state officials, particularly the secretaries of state really, do

to make sure that their voters are getting clean beings accurate information quickly during a fast-paced moving media environment around elections? >> i think for us, a lot of it is just we're upgrading our equipment. we're expecting to get election results on election night a lot faster. better technology. right now we were using equipment that's 18 years old. we're exciting to be updating to something modern and we'll establish to do risk limiting audits. people at the end of the day i said i understand things are contentious at times. we want people to have the confidence that election results aren't accurate. if you have the confidence that the results were accurate, that's what we're called to do as election officials. >> i think some of the other things that are happening, the secretaries are involved in a

collective effort, trusted info 2020. i think that's a great effort to help drive voters towards the trusted source of information, which is state and local election officials. you know, we at the election assistance commission have recently partnered with gsa on vote.gov. we're looking to enhance that and again have government sources, state, local, federal sources where people can go to get trusted information. i think that's a big piece of it. and then i think simply for voters, you know, engaging early. checking their voter registration. making sure it's current and updated. i'd hate to miss an opportunity to make a plug as a poll worker, an election judge. it's a great experience. for anyone that maybe wants a little more confidence in the process, i think actually being a part of it, you see all the checks and double checks that go

into it. you see all the pieces that go into making election day great. i know for me, it's been one of the more valuable experiences i've ever had. it is a long day. it isn't easy. >> it is. i've been at it many times. >> but it is worth while. >> i will warn everybody we have five minutes to turn to you as questions. otherwise you have to listen to me. i want to ask two questions to you. you both answer them. you're an elected official, you've been here for 20 years as a lawyer. what are the positive stories that aren't being told, voters don't understand, and the flip side of that, going into 2020, what's keeping you up at night? >> well, coming from georgia, i guess the story is is that many people don't realize we have a great story to tell. we are one of the first states

to do online voter registration. many people don't realize that. we did it right when we did it. we also have opt out. when you go get your driver's license, you will be registered to vote. so we have huge numbers. we think that this year we'll have 7 million people registered to vote. we expect 5 million voters this year. we've got a great story to tell. we have new voting systems being implemented. at the end of the day we have at our county level what i call personal integrity. the county election officials want to get the job right. they might come from this side, that side, down the middle. they want to do their job. they don't want to be on the evening news. they're working hard for clean, fair, accurate elections. that's all we can ask for. >> one of the privileges i have in this job is i get to travel around the country and see how folks are administering elections, the work that they're doing, the work that they're putting in. it is truly awesome. i really -- i probably should

just take a video camera around and then i could produce a documentary that no one would watch but would undoubtedly give anyone that watched it a lot of confidence. it really is amazing to see the work that state and local elections officials have been putting in. it should give voters confidence. as far as what keeps me up at night? i have a 2-year-old that doesn't sleep as much as i'd like him to. but when i'm awake with him, i think about, you know, what his democracy will look like in the future and the thing that worries me is that people do lose confidence in it. and, again, you know, for the most part, you know, the average american just wants to show up and vote for the candidate of their choice and believe that it will be counted as they intended it to be. and i am fully confident that that will happen. you know, i know that i've been at conferences with cyber security experts and, you know,

they have talked about the various vulnerabilities in our system because all computers have vulnerabilities but there's so much of that that has been mitigated. there are so many threats that are addressed by the hard work that election officials do. when you ask those folks, do you vote? they say, yes, because they have confidence in the process. that's important for americans to know. again, as i said, if they want a little more, they should consider being a poll worker. >> anything keeping you up at night? >> well, cyber security. back office. because we know hackers don't sleep so -- but we do need our eight hours, we wondered if they were in their parents' basement or wherever they are. we don't know where they're going to come from and that's what keeps us up. >> there are some microphones in the auditorium. if you have questions, please find one of those. right there.

>> hi. thanks. cameron joseph with vice news. question is for secretary of state. when are you guys going to announce the conclusion of your investigation into whether your statewide election data system was hacked in 2016. i know you've been worked on that for a while. >> it wasn't hacked. i know that there's attempts on that, but it wasn't hacked. there's never been from what our understanding is anywhere where any databases -- there were attempted penetrations and florida and -- >> there's an ongoing internal investigation. >> some of that is litigation. on the litigation part we can't comment on. >> obviously with the new system there's some concerns, complications. i know there's a lot of litigation flying around in your state. when are you guys going to issue the rules of the road for

automating 20-- auditing 2020? >> this year the audit process is really a pilot audit. so we already began risk limiting audits for the municipal elections in the fall. we did six county elections. that's the process we started with. we had several officials that went up to virginia and watched and opened their process. we've already had a task force around audits. we'll have that defined and we'll be codifying that in the state election board meetings i believe next year. this year our big lift will be having statewide implementation in the system and doing audits wherever we can. we're not required by law to do that, but we want to implement that as soon as possible. if you look at colorado, again, their process i believe in 2010 and then they kept on adding additional counties. so we have 159 counties.

we'll do it fast in colorado because we can learn from states that are a little bit ahead of us on this. that's our goal obviously. >> the auditing, we endorse a culture of auditing which we're talking about in the second panel. i want to make sure we have time for other questions as well. in the back? >> all right. tom hix with eac. secretary, chairman, vice chair hoglund talked about people getting involved. can you talk about ambassador program. >> yeah. we have a program in georgia. it's the student ambassadorship program. my hometown, john's creek, won that two years in a row. i had nothing to do with that. really, it's to encourage high school students to become engaged in the project. you can become a poll worker if you're 16 or older.

we give them points to volunteer. we want students to be involved. we have an ipad as the poll book. we think students will appreciate that it's not your grandfather's way of voting, it's a new system. we've added that to encourage young people to become poll workers. we've had in the past two programs down in the is a sflan area and also up in forsythe county to encourage young people to come out and be poll workers. it's a new system and we're expecting a big turnout. we are going to need more poll workers than we have had in the past. thank you for your question. >> in the front. >> retired federal employee. you had referenced 18-year-old election systems as being very outdated. what is the average life expectancy when you purchase an election system?

>> life expectancy or what it should be or how it is used? in the sense of i think one of the historic issues, obviously a lot of what we've talked about today has been the $380 million from fy '18 and the $425 million but, you know, part of the reason that that money has been so important is the underfunding of elections. you know, we had to help america vote act and it was essentially $3 billion and you had a nationwide replacement of equipment and, you know, that was sort of the first time that you had that broad scale equipment change across the country. you know, we've seen a lot of that equipment start to age out or be replaced and so you had that vantage point, but one of the things is that is really challenging is you've had jurisdictions that have had to patch that equipment together or

find spare parts where they can because they don't have the funding to replace it in the most timely manner. so i think a big piece of that, frankly, or addressing it is, you know, you hear people talk about that we need a whole of government approach for cyber security and election cyber security, and i think that's true, but i also think it's important to talk about a whole government approach in funding elections. state and local election officials, you know, absolutely run elections and absolutely should be responsible for paying for it, but there's a federal portion of the ballot and there are -- there is a federal role as we were discussing earlier. so i think, you know, figuring out how to best fund elections will change the time line for what is realistic to expect out of your election equipment going forward. >> question with our new system, the one advantage that we had with this system versus the old one is that we're going to start

at the front end with the electronic poll book, it's an ipad. as apple updates the software, we'll get the software upgrades. the ipad will not become obsolete. if the ipad falls apart, you break it, whatever, we can replace it. it's almost like plug and play by piece. when you o come to the ballot marking device that's on windows. you don't end up with the dated. our pribter we're using is a hewlett packard. it's not big but looks like something you can buy at an office store. it's really not the whole system that you have to replace but parts if they do wear up will be to upgrade that and the software as we move through will be to upgrade that and the voter database on the backside, we want to strengthen that for

cyber threats and make sure that stays current, update that. we won't believe in that same situation, and we have to end up in what we end up in 2025, 2030, some great new ideas on how to vote and look at how to incorporate that in. >> hi, done wolfenceberger. mention was made of a program that voters could access to get accurate information about election and i assume about candidates. what role if any can state election officials and the federal government play in countering misinformation that's put out over social media, especially about candidates? i would say, you know, to be i guess responsible to my jurisdictional issues,

candidates are a bit outside of my purview, but, you know, again i think we do see, one, i think the way that you see some of these foreign adversaries acting is mimicking certain traditional divides or ways that voter suppression efforts have been happening. so you see efforts to potentially talk about, oh, certain people vote on wednesday or a day that isn't appropriate. and so i think educating voters to know again where that trusted source of information is, know who their state election official is, know who their local election official is, and know how to get that information, is a big piece of at least ensuring their ability to participate in the process is there and they know when their registration deadline is, they know when if they have an early vote period, what their options are in their state. et cetera. i think nasa's efforts with with

trusted info 2020 are great, and i think we need to see more of that. i think our decentralized system is great in a lot of ways. but one of the areas we can improve is in communication and ensuring more people know the right place to get the information. >> time for one last question. >> i was going to answer, from the standpoint when one candidate is throwing mud at the other, that's not the office of secretary of state. our job is to administer the election process. that's the job of the political consultants of both sides. they do what they do. i've been in run-offs, several races, i get that. i never called and asked for help from the office of secretary of state. our role is to make sure we have clean, fair, accurate elections. the candidates do what they need to do to get elected. it would be nice to raise the level of discourse in this

country but such are the times we are in right now. >> final question here. >> thank you, i'm leon wine chart, a retired member of the foreign service. to what degree are you concerned about polling stations as far as the number and the location in the state or in the county, in the jurisdiction, so that all members who are eligible to vote have adequate opportunity to vote. >> well, in the state of georgia, we've already put out to our election officials, please expect 5 million people to come out and vote this fall, and plan accordingly. expect big numbers. but you also have to really just run quick numbers. i'm an engineer, i start running numbers. if you have this many people in a precinct and look at how people can move through the line and what you're expecting, you better make sure you have enough machines to handle that. you may need to redeploy people in your county. we increased our purchase by 10%

in our county. now it's the county election officials' job to make sure they're deployed. you don't need 20 machines here where you have 100 voters. you need to plan for uniform line flow. it's something i guess i'm good at because i'm an engineer and we're trying to help the county election officials administer as best they can. thanks for your question. >> a grateful way for us to highlight the bbc work. we put out our report in 2018 election last year. we have work on that as well. thank you guys for being on the panel. i'll call up the second panel. [ applause ] all right, well, this is an exciting day.

and there is the tyranny of the timer so i i'll try to juchl into it. i'm charles stuart from m.i.t., science lab. this panel, with three exe experts who i'll be introducing in just is a second is going to be focusing on the report released today by the bpc that matt was mentioning a bit ago. i'll highlight proposals in that report. i'll introduce the panel in a second. i think a few things to introduce the panel. the first thing about the report is it does help to illustrate that while there has been great strides in improving administration earlier in this decade and before, there's always room for improvement. one of the things that i've noticed in my 20 years of studying is increasingly there's a sense of continual improvement

in elections. i think that's a reflection of the report. it shows what the administrators have to offer in providing suggestions about how to make things better, reflected in the report, and the people on the stage embody that personally. we'll hear from them in a second. another point, when you look at the report, there's 21 recommendations. we don't have time to talk about all of them. they're about registration, castering ballots and counting the vote. on the panel list will highlight a few of the recommendations, but there are other things in the report that they can talk about. and so with that in mind, let me say a word about who's up on the stage. we'll get going. immediately to my left is mandy gran gooin who is the ohio election official and secretary of state-director of elections for the colorado secretary of state. we figured out, should we let

loose about the order of the panel? let's not. ryan corley, next to judd, is the supervisor of elections for pes koe county in florida. and then the next is a fellow with the bbc's democracy project. without further ado we'll go down the line. mandy i know m some things to highlight about erik particularly, maintenance. and so please. >> absolutely. it's great to be here, matt, thank you, and to the bipartisan policy center points fantastic to be here and representing ohio and secretary of state frank law rows. ohio has been a member of erik, and that stands for the electronic information center. it's a recommendation for the

task force report. we are proud members of eric in ohio. member states of which there are 30 members, so 29 states and the district of columbia. and the recommendation itself is that all states should join eric for security data sharing and le less maintenance. it is a fantastic organization run by fantastic people. georgia recently joined. florida is another notable state that joined erikic, kentucky and vermont as well. ohio uses it in the secure transfer and data to do many things, and secretary larose is passionate about max mooigsing access and data sharing. one of those ways we plan to do so is increasing our eligible

but unregistered mailing frequencies. that's sharing the list of folks that are of eligible voting age but unregistered. sending them a postcard and saying, we noticed that you're eligible to vote bub but are unregistered. please visit voteohio.gov. all states should join eric. and a few stats to share, the total voting eligible registration is 127.5 million. that's a lot of people, which is great. and 34 million voters have been identified as eligible but

unregistered. so it's a great way to identify folks, it's a great way to increase civic engagement and really engage with the voting population. so we're thrilled about the task force recommendation there. . less maintenance can be a political thing, and that's really why, you know, we love the bpc and the task force recommendation, because of the polarization that we're in right now. it's great to sit next to judd, it's great to interact with secretary of states and directors of all different political affiliations to do what's best for the voter. that's something that secretary larose is passionate about. you may have heard of a u.s. supreme court case that was solely about ohio's list maintenance process, that, you know, ultimately our process was upheld by the u.s. supreme court, but secretary larose

settled that case in 2019. if any of you find frank larose on twitter or facebook or instagram and watch the video of andre washington, the ohio president of the a. philip randolf institutors, they had sued the previous institution, thanking secretary larose for his work in less maintenance, doing the right thing, settling the case and moving forward in a positive, bipartisan way, if it doesn't bring you to tears, it will bring you really close. finally i'll say last year in 2019, the previous administration and in 2015 had started what in ohio is our clock of canneslations, and what secretary larose was unprecedented transparent and published the list of those

individuals who were set to be canceled. ultimately what we did is he worked with the ohio laelg of women voters, the a. philip institute, the naacp, a ton of groups to find these people, get them registered, engaged in that process, in that democratic process. again, it actually, we hope it serves as a nationwide leader. our friends in georgia did the same thing with their list naints process this past year. we're really proud of our transparent efforts to get as many people in ohio registered adds possible. >> thanks. >> judd, from colorado, your state has already been invoked. the colorado way involves mail ballots and roas and there's a number of recommendations replated to that. >> thanks for setting this up and for engaging in this year-long process to identify these recommendations.

i think there's a pretty remarkable thing about the process and the recommendations that the bpc developed, and that is that there are democrats and republicans on this stage, there are people with a lot of experience, there are people with less experience, there are people from more rural states, more urban states, states that are sort of have that eastern model, which is based more in polling places, the western mod model based more at vote at home, and we were able to come up with 30-plus recommendations that we could all agree to, every one of us in the room, could buy into those recommendations. i think that that is an amazing thing. we should frankly, your legislatures, the congress, should recognize that these are all things that we can all get behind. a couple of things that stood out to me involve vote by mail. colorado is a state where we send every active voter a mail

ballot 22 days prior to the election. we figure that's an easier way to transmit that ballot to our voters than having them get in the car and come see us, and we have to slide it across a counter. we're willing to put it in an envelope and send it to you. the recommendation is all states allow for a voter to sign up for a mail ballot and that they should be able to receive that ballot prior to the election and it should be pretty seamless. there are subrecommendations, if you want to get a mail ballot and sign up for multiple elections at a time, you should be able to do that. in colorado, it's permanent, because we do it for all of our active voters. the other part of that is that if you're in the state where a lot of people are getting their ballot by mail and you have a lot of voters voting those, you should provide opportunities for them to hand off those ballots

in an easy way. and the easiest straight forward way to do that is to have drop boxes throughout your state, where you can drop off those ballots, you know, very local way and not have to go stand in line or go to a vote center or to a polling place. again, colorado we have 400-plus drop boxes around the state. washington, oregon, these other states which have these longstanding vote by mail policies have a lot of drop boxes, and it's very successful. it leads to more voter engagement across more elections. maybe some of the low-interest elections generate a lot more when you hand a ballot to them. that's a really smart way, it's a good policy, one we could all agree on. the other thing is risk limiting audits or audits in general, risk limiting audits in colorado. so i think a very good policy we could all get around at the

bipartisan policy center at this group was to audit your election results. their various ways in which you can do that. the -- at the very basic, though, you should be doing something to show that your voters that you have taken it upon yourself to make sure that the outcome that you have produced, it matches the actual will of the voters. and the way you do that is through one of many auditing procedures. again, in colorado we've developed risk limiting audits. as secretary raffensperger, it is a long process, a big rollout. it's not something realistically they can say we want to and six months later are doing it. that's not realistic. but you can do it, and if you employ the sort of strategy, the resources, and, you know, develop good laws, you can roll

this out. a subpoint is you should be doing audits before you certify results. because if you certify results and then do you an addit and the audit finds there was a problem, you've put the wrong people in office, and then you have a real substantive, perhaps pretty significant, long-term problem that you're going to have to be in court about, and you might even have the wrong people in elected offices. so you really should be doing those auditing procedures before you certify outcomes, which in many states would require changes in law to push out certification. those are two really important areas in which i think the bipartisan policy center and the group of people that we've brought together to do those recommendations really identified very good recommendations. >> thanks, judd. brian, you've been an advocate for harnessing technology and improving elections. there are some things that you have to say. >> first off, i'd like to thank matt for invoking florida for me

earlier. back to therapy for me. >> no one ever does it. >> yeah, thank you. election policy matters, and there's a logical leap to the bipartisan policy center and this committee as my fellow committee member judd alluded to, it was made up of a spectrum of political ideologies, came up with common sense bipartisan approach and recommendations. but with regards to the process and certainly harnessing technology, i think it's important we never lose sight, i think we all agree the most important would be the voters. we must keep that in mind. we do and we should certainly. with regards to harnessing technology, it's truly a necessity. you look at a society where we are, it's -- i often tell groups if you think about it, the smart phone is a thousand times more powerful than what we used to put men on the moon.

people use it for snapchat or debating silly stuff. but you can harness that to make for better election technology. who would have thought we'd have in a good chunch of our nation online voter registration. my daughter is in the military and her fellow members can vote from the sea, be able to change your address, et cetera. electronic poll books. certainly digital scanners, ballot marking devices. we've came a long way from hanging chads. even as amanda mentioned with eric, lec truelectronic is part earic. even websites it's a great way for perspective voters to find out who their elected candidates are.

information is powerful with that. it allows them to check the status of apps. they can even opt in for text alerts for where their ballot is located in transit from their voting by mail or whatnot. social media gets a bad rap and to some degree rightfully though. an author said the internet has pulled us together but is pulling us apart. it's a great tool to disseminate information to your stakeholders. and certainly sometimes sadly refute misinformation and disinformation, and that's going to be huge during 2020 certainly. so, you know, it's a great opportunity to use that technology, to reach out to voters and the stakeholders, but there's a caveat. i'd be remiss not to mention the 800-pound security, cyber. electronic poll books, having a

backup register, in the event there's a power outage, having a robust cybersecurity plan to protect the platform and registration as well. things such as, you know, having that continuation of operations plan. it's wonderful to harness that technology, but you have to have a plan b, a plan c and d to make it all come together. >> thanks, brian. >> sure. >> and then chris, you spent a lot of time in michigan and in elections there. it's known for pioneering really kind of automating voter registration and recommendations in the report touch on that. i know that you have -- you can say things about that recommendation from your deep well of experience. >> thank you. it's a pleasure to be here, and i'd really thank bpc for pulling together election officials.

this is a report by election officials that is voter-centric. there was a time if you put that many election officials together you would have had an election officials' view of the world. they're today very voter centric. charles said i can get on a soap box about motor voter the whole time. i doubt he'll give me the whole seven minutes. i will move along. in the '90s, the national voter registration act was passed that did motor voter, the dmvs and social service agencies would give opportunities to register to vote. 44 states were covered. the remaining states had election day registration, so they were exempt. the presidential commission on election administration in 2014 concluded that it was really

poorly performing up to the expectations that were out there. most states were well below 50% of the transactions coming from the dmvs, which is a place where everybody comes to for ids, for drivers licenses, and social service necessities. so there's been a lot of work in the various states dealing with how to improve that. so when you went to a dmv before, it was an opt-in. they asked you, do you want to register? and the number were so low. why was that? in many cases you never got asked. in other cases, you'd been there long enough that standing around to fill out another form really wasn't on your agenda, so you left. now we're seeing in our recommendation deals with the opt-out. so in other words you're registered unless you opt out. and that's really the big change that we're looking at. now, it's called automatic voter

registration which is a real misnomer because it's not automatic. if you don't opt out, you're in. but the election officials are not going to actually add you to the file until they've taken the various steps to accept your citizenship, residency, age, for example. so there's two types. and our preferred type is the front end, which is at the point of service, you have the opportunity to opt out. and at that same time, you can add your political party preference and whatnot if your state requires that. the other one is a back end where essentially you go through, you are put on a list, this is communicated to local election official, who then sends you a notice and gives you an opportunity to opt out and add your political party. well, as you know most people don't respond to those types of notices. and so what a few states are doing is finding a very few

people are selecting a political party through that type of system, which is going to be an issue when they get to a partisan primary. so with this, the full spirit of the nvra is arising here. we're seeing some incredible numbers in the election assistance commission's eaves reports. so let moe just give you a few that i think will underline the importance of this program. so i looked at the 2014 series, which is two years, '13 and '14, and then two more. five states adopted an opt-out doubled the number of transactions. oregon, vermont, alaska, four times the number of transactions

coming through the dmv, just an incredible amount of data, which really lives up to what the nvra was intended to do. and i'll give a shout-out to georgia. they had 850,000 trans actions in 2014 cycle. in the 2018 cycle, 3.5 million. that will give you an idea of how many people are being placed on the rolls in all of these states that have adopted the opt out system. it doesn't just put people on. it keeps them on. so as they move, which 25% of the people do every year, they are retained on the file. and so that takes care of major list maintenance issue, is that you move from one place, they transfer you right over. so you're not going through

notices and whatnot. so on the whole, i would say probably the most incredible thing here is the amount of people that are added to the files who will be in position to vote if they choose to. >> thanks a lot, chris. so i think you all get a sense about the quality of the recommendations in the report. we have time for questions, and so get ready to ask them. we'll do the same as before. i'd like to you raise your hands. we have a couple of people with microphones to bring them to you. please identify yourself. that was a good thing that happened the previous session. and ask a question. ask a real question. so, yes, ma'am, right in the front? >> i'm retired department of

labor employee. about the colorado system, i had two kiquick questions. am i correct that mail balloting is the only way to vote? okay, and then the drop boxes, where are they? what's the security? >> yeah, good question. so colorado, we like to say, is the burger king model, do it your way. so it's kind of a buffet of options. we mail a ballot 22 days prior to the election. then we open vote centers 15 days prior to the election. so there is vote centers in every county, based on population. there's a formula and set a days. as you approach the election, counties have to employ more and more centers. on election day the formula requires one for every 10,000 people. so even though we're handing you a ballot ahead of time, we're still providing you the back-end

opportunities. the second question was -- >> the dropbox. >> dropboxs, yes. so also under state law, you have to have a certain number of dropboxs based on population, and then we require drop boxes on college campuses. if you have 2,000 or more students, you have to have one. and then on indian reservations. we have two in colorado, they're required to have them as well. the drop box formula, you might anticipate, denver county, 40-plus approximately el paso, arapaho, jeff koe, adams, all of our larger counties have 20, 30, 40. and then you'll have very small counties with less population, which might have one or two. >> where are they? and how -- >> they're typically -- security. typically they are on government facilities or government land. they tend to be outside of

libraries or rec centers or sheriffs' offices or postal offices. and under state law they are required to be under 24-hour, seven days a week, 365 days a year security. and then those security images, so the 45 days prior to an election, becomes an election record. and again, under our state law, you have to hold that for 25 months. so that does on occasion become something that ends up in a court case after an election, where they want to pull that record and make sure that nothing did happen or something did happen at a particular drop box during an election period. >> let's move on to the fellow in the yellow shirt in the back and then get to you. >> jason with phelps, a couple of follow-up. is colorado a postmark state or

enharnsed state? do you allow ballot harvesting like california? and how does it work for our primary? >> let me see if i can get these. we are an in-hand state, and the thinking there is that we don't want to have a gap in time in we're we're not pretty confident about who won. we want to be able to identify our winners pretty much right away. >> define terms. >> yes. in-hand means that we have some election official in the state has to have those ballots by 7:00 p.m. on election day as opposed to a postmark which might extend that for three days or five days or into the following week. so that's one thing. i'm not going to remember your other questions. >> ballot harvesting? >> in colorado we allow somebody to bring in as many as five ballots. for me, that's bring in my wife's ballot. we have an 18-year-old.

i might bring in her ballot. so that's the way that that works. we have a longer or a bigger group of ballots that you could bring in, but we changed that in state law. the last question? so we have a pseudo-open primary, the way that our primary works is that if you're unafill kbraited, we're going to send you both ballots, a democratic and republican, in the same mailing. you get to choose which one you vote. if you want to return both, that's fine. if they're both, we have to spoil both. you're not going to get that vote kointed. the thinking there being we want our unaffiliated voters to have some say. if you are affiliated, you have to change your affiliation 29 days or more prior to the election to be able to vote in the other race, the other side.

if you're a democrat you have to change. but as an unaffiliated. you can come in, we'll give you whichever ballot you want. >> thanks. >> right here in the -- >> thank you. colorado -- >> it follows up a little bit, but i'm happy to have other comment. i'm rick laru. you serve on the advisory election. it is about mail balloting. we recall arizona and california having late results days after election night. what is the thinking about how that changes? what needs to be done? so that those problems are minimized? and so -- and the others can comment as well. >> i'm sure judd will talk, but all of the states here actually have issues related to this. so the others can jump in too. >> i'll throw out mine. we're really concerned about that, because it's a legitimacy

question. we want to make sure that the people, our populous around the country and the world, understand that the person that's been elected for a given office has been legitimately elected. and i'm going to go off script a little bit and say, we're very concerned about elected officials around the country and prominent national officials who sort of discount the legitimacy of elections because it takes awhile to do that process. it does. elections don't happen on a day. they happen over the course of time. there's a gap in time between election day and when you can actually certify an election. it's important for people to understand that. but we like to tighten that as much as we can, and that means not allowing for postmarks, but in-hand. >> brian, florida essentially runs three elections. one of those is a mail election. >> yeah. >> so what's your experience in

terms of the special considerations with mail elections in more of a traditional state? >> ours must be in hand by 7:00 p.m. on election day. the biggest issue with he see educating voters, little bit of a delay. we try and educate our voters. we in doing analysis, find a vast majority of those that arrive after 7:00 p.m. on election day, oftentimes were put in the mail before or the day of election day. it's just something -- you can't put it at noon on election day and expect it to be in time. not phil sofically opposed to postmark, but it would take a change in our state constitution and state laws. we have a short timeline in florida to certify elections. that would be a huge issue. voters get their ballots now 40 days in advance. there's plenty of time to mail

it. they can drop it off to one of our drop boxes, early voting or at offices. we don't -- it's not that much of an issue. voters are getting it and getting it back, those who decide to vote ballots. >> mandy. >> we're both in-hand and postmarked. we haven't -- of the many issues that exist in elections, that is not one of them in ohio. >> we found one. that's good. and there's a question over here. i'll go to this side next if somebody has a question. but over here. >> there's a concern after 2016, some of what we saw with attempts at hacking election systems. couple folks were talking about aud uts. can you talk about how that could aleavelate those concerns on whether you're worried about states and localities that don't have audits set up for what that

means? >> we, secretary larose and it was signed in law a bill that increases the frequency of audits that need to be done in ohio. we're proud. liz howard, i see here in the background there, also in that bill is the opportunity to perform a risk-limiting audit. we're also increasing the types of audits, the variety that can be done at the local level, which is fantastic. liz and her team actually did several pilots in ohio for risk-limiting audits. but we are very pro-audit. i think it absolutely -- we came up with for our local counties a template press release for them to engage with folks like you to legitimize the results of the election and say, hey, media, we did an audit. it was great, 100%. please publish that. we've had a good relationship with our media, to publicize the

results. points one thing to say that you do it. it's another to show the work, if that makes sense. we're really proud of that and it's gotten great results. >> yeah, audits are absolutely essential. you must do an audit. if your state isn't doing an audit, there's still an opportunity for you to do one. you've got to pass a law, do a lot of work right away. or there's a great alternative which is what maryland does. after an election is complete, you can take your ballots and rerun them with a different system, and actually look at the images, so you get like a picture image of each ballot. and put that stuff online, let people look to see, hey, do i believe in the outcome of this election? i can look and do my own count if i want to. so auditing an election is essential for voter confidence, and i absolutely think every state should do it. >> absolute necessity, nothing says fun like florida and

recounts. if you ever want to have an audit on steroids do three statewide recounts because you're feeding them through different tabulators. the results better be the same. you're looking at every one in the state. it doesn't get much more than that. it solidified the results. and you're doing testing on the machines as well. i agree, it's a necessity in this day and age. >> and michigan has jumped into the risk-limiting audit. our challenges that we're a home rule state. we have 1,500 cities and townships run the elections. we don't have the benefit of mail ballots that judd has, where at the end of the night they're all nicely stacked and then when you come in to do the risk-limiting audit and doing random sam mgds, it's easy to find. when they're distributed out, that's more difficult.

we've worked with folks and that's coming along. as important are performance audits. those really need to be done over a whole myriad of very detailed yierk detailed requirements, to make sure it's done. >> in the report, they spent a lot of time on issues of auditing. one of the things that the report tried to do is think not only about the recommendations themselves but the knock-on effects of recommendations. you'll find in the report not only a recommendation that states, do more sophisticated audits but think about the certification periods and think about the other, and when the auditing is done, before rather than afterward. it's not just that you flip a switch and do auditing. you have to think comprehensively about how you run from casting the ballots to certifying to making it work. that's not going to happen usually overnight. i think we have time for one

more question. going? going? and if not, i think matt is going to -- oh, did we -- we do have one. sorry, matt. >> hi, tim harper, bipartisan policy center. one thing i think is important to discuss is there are important upstream and downstream effects from making modifications to elections, the timeframe for which things happen or the effects that they have unintended. so can you talk a little bit about the ways in which the reforms in this package are structured? and if there is a reform what does that mean for when it happens? if not before, are there other parts of the report speaking from experience i can say there are, that account for that? >> so one thing i would say is that you have to think wholistically about what you're

trying to employ. so if you walk away from reading the recommendations thinking, hey, great, we should really employ an earlier voter registration deadline, and we should try to go with mail ballots, okay. if you have an earlier voter registration deadline, colorado has same-day registration, and you have mail ballots, how is that going to work? if somebody registers to vote the day before or on election day, i can't mail them a ballot at that point. those are incongruent. i have to come up with a way to make that policy work. you have to be strategic in the way that you think about that. by the way the way we do that is we cut off at eight days whether we'll send you a ballot. if you register inside of eight days, great, we'll give you a ballot. come by a poliling place, no problem. we can't mail one at that point. it's not going to get to you, or it can't get turned around and back to us. so you have to think about it

wholistically and piece it together so it makes sense. >> i would add that the election calendar for each state is obviously so unique, and it's a snowball effect. you change one thing, it changes everything else. i would encourage public policy makers, lawmakers, election officials, wholistic is the exact word. you have to think about unintended consequences when you are changing something. it's not that it shouldn't occur, it should. but thinking hard and deep about what the impact of that change is going to be. i think that, you know, it sounds like congressman davis really and his team are working hard to think about those things wholitically. we encourage state lawmakers to do the same. >> that's a good note to end on. i was going to remark, congressman davis talked about the need tore cooperation. somebody lurkd on the edges, i

was impressed with the cooperation with the people who came in with a variety of ways. they gaifb out options that everyone should consider. i'd like to thank the panelists who did a great job and turn it back over to matt. >> thank you, thank you for both pands and congressman. and thank you for all coming. that's the end of our session. [ applause ] ♪ saturday on american history

tv, honoring holocaust victims. >> it did not begin with auschwitz nor should it be solely defined by it. it begachb with words and small acts then larger ones that resulted in the murder of 6 million jews. >> we offer words that reaffirm our faith in a higher power, a power that endoes us with the ability to learn from the past and to choose good over evil. >> from the holocaust museum in washington, d.c., a saermny to honor victims. saturday at 5 p. eastern time. on american history tv on c-span3. sunday, book tv features the latest books from journalist andrea bernstein and author and

professor deirdre murkowski, starting at noon, a live conversation with deirdre mccloskey. her most recent book is why liberalism works. other titles are the rhetoric of economics and the bourgeois trilogy. join with your phone calls, tweets and facebook messages. and at 9 eastern on afterwards, andrea bernstein chronicles the trump and kushner freedoms in her latest book, american oligarchs. >> where the president as a private businessman was extremely adept at fending off criminal investigations. so he made sure that he understood who his friends were and they understood who he was. and he was able to make it work for him. he was never charged in any criminal case. it is interesting to have that background sort of in the rearview mirroror as we go into this impeachment situation where he is being called to account

and there is a public reckoning and in some ways even those he's president, he is not able to make things go away as he once did. watch featured authors this weekend and every weekend on book tv, on c-span 2. c-span's campaign 2020 differs from all other political coverage for one simple reason. it's c-span, the people who've brought you your unfiltered view of government are bringing you an unfiltered view of the people seeking to steer that this november, your future. see the biggest picture for yourself and make up your own mind with c-span's campaign 2020, brought to you by cable television provider. up next, the