line their pockets. that's really what we need to be outraged about and focused on. >> our guest was acting labor secretary and the obama administration seth harris, now visiting professor at cornell on public policy. we appreciate your input this morning here on washington journal. >> thank you, bill. less than three months to election day, we're joined by the chair of the public interest legal foundation to talk about election security,. welcome to "washington journal." tell us about your foundation. what's its mission. >> it's dedicated to protecting the integrity of your elections and to serve as a counter to the myriad leftist groups that are very well funded and have existed for many years who are filing lawsuits all over the country to try to upend the election laws of the state and

to try to serve as a balance and a counter to the increasing demands of leftist groups to challenge our election process and really to eliminate -- their goal appears to be to eliminate all of the safeguards in election administration that have been put in place in the early part of the 20th century to shift the responsibility for conducting elections to the states from the political parties and to protect the right of individuals to vote, to not be intimidated or harassed in voting. our foundation is dedicated to trying to get election officials to clean their voter roles so that only eligible voters are on the rolls and to ensure that the laws are carried out and that every citizen who is eligible to vote is able to vote with

confidence that his or her ballot will be counted. and those who are not eligible to vote, will not spoil the integrity of the elections. >> you talked about those other groups being very well funded. how is your foundation funded? >> we get along. we have been doing good work. i think the -- i'm a volunteer but i think that our little foundation has grown and it's done a lot of good work. it's done a lot of good studies to show how dangerously out of date the voter rolls are in many, many jurisdictions across the country and with filed amicus briefs in different lawsuits filed by democrats and leftist organizations, we try to intervene when we can and make sure there's always a voice in the process for those of us who believe in election integrity and election administration

being carried out properly so we have a system that voters can feel confident about. >> let me ask you about an editorial that you co-wrote, a fox news piece in april. the headline said coronavirus and elections changes increase risk of voter fraud. in that piece you wrote that no one should forget that absentee ballot voting is vulnerable to intimidation. not to mention, prolonged counting and potentially lengthy delays in certifying questionable results. you wrote that piece back in april. a number of primaries have happened since then. what do you think the evidence of those primaries and the various types of voting have born out.

>> when you increase voting by mail, you increase the odds of fraud and intimidation among other things. in fact, in 2005 the partisan carter-baker, co-chaired a commission looking at election systems across the country. in their report, here's what they said, absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud. they said that in 2005. the "new york times" in 2012 wrote an article about the fact that mail balloting was a huge concern and source of potential fraud. and so when i talk about the system of election administration, what we're talking about is people going to the polls, casting ballots in an orderly process where individual voters can be assured that they're not going to be -- there's no electioneering inside

the polling places. that's not allowed. in most states there are so many feet campaigners have to stay away from the polling place so voters can cast their ballots away from political partisans. when you have people voting in nursing homes or senior homes, you don't have those protections. those who are most vulnerable, senior citizens, there's a huge concern about whether or not those people are going to be subject to partisan political actors going into those group homes and influencing and in fact practically voting the ballots for those citizens. and that's a huge concern and if you look at what's happened insofar as the delays, we have an election in new york, what, six weeks ago, they just finished counting and started certifying the elections yesterday. the problem is that -- i

can't -- i will get into some of the studies that have been done by the election commission and by the u.s. postal service which have documented just in recent weeks and delays that when you vote by mail, you don't have any assurance that your ballot is actually going to be delivered to you on time and delivered back to the election officials on time. and, in fact, there's a huge number, according to the commission, of ballots that have been lost, undeliverable, of those that were sent by mail -- >> let me ask you about the reuters reporting on mail-in voting and the investigation they did. their piece said fraud is rare in u.s. mail-in voting and here are the methods that prevent it. with the number of americans voting by mail on november 3rd expected to double, election experts see little reason to see

an increase in fraud. the heritage foundation which has warned on the risks of mail voting found 14 cases of attempted mail fraud out of roughly 15.2 million ballots cast in maryland since that state started conducting elections by mail. the most predominant cases involve campaigns, not voters. north carolina invalidated the results of a 2018 congressional election after state officials found that a republican campaign operative orchestrated a ballot fraud scheme. do you think the oregon example is typical of mail-in experiences in states? >> no, i don't. i would take issue. i didn't hear you said wrote that piece -- >> that's reuters. >> well, you know, we found that the media is hardly unbiased on this issue. but that's a topic for another day. but the -- every year -- after

every election, the commission s surveys all of the states. of the ballots that you sent out, or absentee ballots that were requested and transmitted, what percentage of those were returned to you undeliverable or not utilized or spoiled for any reason? oregon, in 2014 and 2016 did not answer the question. they didn't even respond. in 2018 they did respond. and they admitted that 2% to 3% of the ballots that they sent to voters in oregon were not returned. i think that if i were in that 2% to 3%, i would be very concerned about that. there were about 2 million votes cast in the election in oregon, the presidential election in 2016. so what is 2% of 2 million? is that 40,000 votes? i think it's really important to

realize that even in a state like washington or oregon, both of which their legislatures decided that they would have mail voting, it took years, according to the election officials in washington state, it took years before they were able to get their voter rolls cleaned up and make sure that the ballots they were sending were people who lived where they said they lived. even at the that, i know a family where the two daughters haven't lived in that family home in washington state one in eight years and one in ten years. and every election, even though they have told the election officials stop sending us ballots, the parents get a ballot for the parents and each of their daughters. i'm just telling you, when we have a situation where the voter rolls themselves are a mess, all over this country. that's been well documented. there are dead people on the rolls. there are noneligible people on the rolls. we found -- our foundation did a study in one county in

pennsylvania and found one person who was actively registered seven times in the same county. and he would get seven ballots. yes, that's what would happen if you send the ballots to every name on the voter rolls which is what these left wing groups are trying to make sure happens. it will clog the system. the post office has said its goal is only to lose 4%. it's goal is only to lose 4% of the ballots that are sent out. and yet they didn't even reach that in the 2018 elections. they only got to 95%. >> our guest is chair of the public interest legal foundation, the lines are republicans 202-748-8001, democrats 202-748-8000, independents and others 202-748-8002. just a breakdown of the states before we get to calls.

voting in the u.s., mail-in voting, seven states allow vote by mail. eight states mail application to vote by mail. seven states you can mail a ballot. seven states require an excuse to absentee vote and 21 states require no excuse for an absentee ballot. we go to steven first in wilmington, illinois. democrats line. >> caller: hello? >> good morning, you're on the air. >> caller: she tap danced around that question on who funds her group. if the mail is good enough for the census, i don't understand her position. >> let me say the census uses all of the above. they use mail, they use door to door, they're using online. they hire an army of workers whose job it is over an extended

period of time to know who has responded and go back to people over and over again and using various methodology. i don't think you can compare the methods employed by the census department, by the commerce department for the census to voting. what i'm concerned about is the idea that we're going to flood the system, which is ill prepared, to handle a massive influx of voting by mail when more than half of the voters in the previous elections have voted in person, either early or on election day. and it's really problematic when you suddenly shift in the days leading up to an election, you shift the entire system to mail when the post office has already said that they are not -- their goal is not even to be able to deliver timely the ballots of 4% of the people and they haven't met that in some of the states. in a study, the post office,

office of inspector general just released it showed that in some states, fewer than -- only 81% of the ballots were delivered on a timely basis. now, if i'm voting, i want to make sure my vote is received and cast. when i cast it, i want to make sure it gets there and it's counted. and i don't think the voters have that assurance unless they have a -- >> and -- >> an expert tracking system. >> do you care to expound on the question of funding that the caller asked about? >> our foundation receives contributions from individuals and from grant-making foundations, from people who -- it's not nefarious. we're not getting tens of millions of dollars. we don't have 500 groups all well funded by george soros and all of those. there's always this, you know -- where is your money come from? it comes from foundations and individuals who are concerned about election integrity. it's not much of a secret.

most of our foundation grants, those foundations published in their annual reports that they've given us money. >> john, republican line in virginia. >> caller: your guest spelled out a couple of the problems that we had that -- washington and oregon have been in the business for quite a while and still they have problems. secondly, you got this problem of vote harvesting which is north carolina a republican was -- had to resign because some of his supporters vote harvested and in california they do it all the time. there's no universal application to that and there's a suit now to allow vote harvesting which is a real problem. when you go to vote at a voting booth, there's republican and democrat poll watchers. vote harvesters are a whole different animal and it's just dangerous to democracy. and i go along with her on the

mail-in problem. i voted absentee ballot occasionally. that's okay. but, you know, to do this on a mass basis when the country is not ready for it yet, just by example and by practice, i think it would lead to a disaster, especially if you have a problem of when do the ballots count when they come in. is it election day? five days later? a month later? you got all the stuff out there and it's not been regularized. >> john mentioned the term "voter harvesting," what is it and how prevalent is it in the united states? >> it has been -- it's illegal in many states and the democrats are filing suit to make it legal and that is where -- look, i'm a firm believer that -- in fact, i serve on a task force that our foundation put together to establish standards for voting

by mail. one of the things that we are -- one of the standards is, that the ballots, the application, and then the ballots themselves should not be handled by third parties. it should go from the election boards through the postal service, to the voter, back to the election boards via the mail or via a delivery spot where the voter or an immediate family member is allowed to deposit those or to help and assist with those. but not to allow partisans and campaign operatives to go door to door collecting ballots and have third parties after the election going to certain places to try to generate more votes where they know they need them. that's what happened in california in 2016 and 2018. and so it seems to me that their arguments are completely contradictory. they say we have to have mail

voting because of covid and people don't want to leave their homes. on the other hand they're saying, we want battle harvesting to be legal so perfect strangers can come to your home and collect your ballots. to me, that makes no sense. and it's very dangerous. there are too many instances where -- patterson, new jersey, just recently, when they went to mail voting, the attorney general has indicted four individuals for engaging in voter fraud in their primary and that's just happened recently. and there are other -- many stanc instances where campaign operatives determine where the votes are and go get them and maybe your ballot is picked up by somebody, they know you're a republican and they don't want your vote delivered, your vote may get cast aside. it's a big problem when you let campaign workers and third parties and strangers put themselves when the law allows

them, put themselves between the voter and the election officials. >> we'll go to marion in grove town, georgia. democrats line. >> caller: good morning. if there's a bank teller and it's a corrupt bank teller, one of the large banks, would you close down the entire bank? no, of course there's going to be some people that do stupid things. but they're a small minority. let me read you something i just saw. if it's safe to mail tax refunds, social security checks, prescription drugs, passport, your driver's license or actual i.d. you use to vote, it's safe to vote by mail. don't try to scare people. this is a small minority. there are problem people in every aspect of our life and that doesn't mean that you destroy the entire system. this is a good idea. i'm a senior citizen and i by god am going to vote -- i've

never voted by mail. but i'm going to time because i'm afraid. and i want my vote to count. so i would appreciate you not trying to scare everybody. thank you. >> i'm not trying to scare people. i'm telling you what the facts and the statistics show. the government reports from the -- from the u.s. post office, hear what i'm saying. the u.s. postal service just issued a report in the last month showing that their goal is to be able to timely process 96% of the ballots that are -- the mail -- what they call political mail. that's their goal is to only loose 4%. let me just say this, let's imagine that you had all mail voting in ohio in 2016. would you like to know how many ballots -- in ohio, in 2016, i looked this up last night. there were 5.6 million votes cast in ohio in the presidential

election in 2016. if the postal service was -- is unable to deliver 4% of those, that's a quarter of a million votes. that's a quarter of a million votes, of ballots that are not delivered on a timely basis. to me -- and that's if you're using the goal of the post office. there are jurisdictions in america, according to the u.s. postal service, where they could only deliver 81% of the ballots. so that's nearly 20% of the ballots in a given area that were not timely delivered. >> given the increase in mail-in voting because of the pandemic, does it make sense then to increase both resources, funding and personnel for the post office so they can process and deliver those ballots? >> well, the post office in its

operations are a subject for another program. but i will say this, i believe very strongly that one of the things that would help is if every jurisdiction were required by law to run their voter rolls through the national change of address system and to remove people who have moved from their addresses. the postal service does maintain the ncoa, the national change of address registry. and election officials ought to be using that regularly because people move. they're moving in great numbers because of covid. and the postal service should be required and election officials should be required to coordinate and keep running those voter rolls through the ncoa registry to try to keep from sending ballots to people who no longer live where they may be registered to vote. so there are a lot of things that need to be done, but the

federal government -- congress has made several billion dollars available in these first two c.a.r.e.s. act and covid relief bills, has made money available to states to clean up their voter rolls and prepare for the election. there's no excuse for voter rolls to be such a mess. but the democrats also sue to keep election officials from maintaining the integrity of their voter rolls. there are dead people and people who have moved, people who are not citizens who are on the voter rolls. sending a ballot to everyone on the voter rolls is a huge problem. it clogs the system and gives people to vote ballots that they're not legally qualified to vote. >> another view on that from linda, the only reason someone should be purged from the voter records is because they're dead. what right do you have to purge them no matter how infrequent

they vote other than voter suppression. >> can i respond to that? >> go ahead. >> that's ridiculous. there are dead people on the rolls. but people who have moved, who live in another state, they shouldn't still be receiving election -- they shouldn't receive applications for ballots at an address where they don't÷ live. and every state has a provisions as to who can -- who is legally eligible to vote. if someone wants to vote every five or six years, fine. but expect to go vote a provisional ballot, remove from the active rolls and maybe they can call you up and say, here's your battle. a lot of states have same-day registration. to say it's voter suppression to enforce the law and to make sure only citizens, only living people, and only people who live where they're registered to

vote -- that somehow that is voter suppression, that's ridiculous. >> brian you're on the air from new jersey. >> caller: actually, it's minnesota. >> my mistake. >> caller: i voted over the years i worked on the road all the time. i'd get an absentee ballot and vote. but when i voted, i had to find -- somebody who had an oath sworn to -- well, i had to find them, find one of them, they had to put me in a room where i could vote and they verified my identification and stuff. they sign that ballot and i put that in another envelope and mailed it in. now, mail-in voting, from all i understand, all you got to do is sign it. nobody has to verify your signature, verify who you are.

i just -- you know, i -- it doesn't seem like there's security in the mail -- i don't even know if absentee ballots -- >> in terms of that mail-in voting, what are most states requiring if someone requests a mail-in ballot. >> it depends. it varies by state. i can't begin to tell you all the litigation that has been filed by left wing groups to try to preclude any kind of verification. there have been a lot of suggestions about possibly issuing people a -- an identification number that would have a combination of your name and the last four digits of your social security number so that's on the voter rolls and that's a number that you would include on your ballot. and some way to authentic that the ballot is actually been cast -- or is being returned by the person who is listed on the

voter rolls. it's very difficult. a lot of states use signature verification. it's a difficult process to ensure that there's authentic si. let's imagine a scenario, if you're not honest and you get four ballots at your house or at your apartment, let's take multifamily dwellings, apartment buildings where maybe on the ballot, this woman who called moments ago said it's suppression to remove people from the rolls. let's think about apartments for a moment. there may have been 10 or 20 different people who have lived in your same address over the course of the last 10 or 15 years. if ballots come in all of those names and i live there, i can sit there and vote everybody's

ballot. who is to stop me? that's a big problem if you don't have proper verification and it's difficult to have the verification and transparency methodologies in place so that you can make sure that the election officials are in fact taking the steps necessary to authenticate that that ballot is from that actual voter. >> we'll hear from jerry next in western maryland who used vote by mail in the primary in that state. good morning. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. the board had problems up here. our mail all has to go 200 east of baltimore and 200 back again. my ballot never got to me. my wife's did. but i called the local election board. he said yours is not an isolated case. i'll mail you another one. the way they set it up in maryla maryland, each county has one

polling place. we took our ballots up to the armory and put them in the ballot box that day. and that's the way we're going to vote if we're allowed to this time. this system has so many flaws it's not funny and it starts with the post office. we got -- like i said, we got to send our mail 200 miles to baltimore and back. a lot of it gets lost from birthday cards on down. that's my comment. >> well, you know, that's a very important point that this gentleman is making. and i'll give you an example. in arizona one of the things that we witnessed over the last several election cycles really going back more than 15 years is the increase in the number of mail ballots that -- as of election day, it takes them weeks to count all of the ballots in the county. you don't the results of the elections in arizona for days and sometimes weeks after the election. and the reason is, i'm told, that the processing center, the mail processing center for the

u.s. postal service for arizona is now in idaho. so their mail has to go from arizona to idaho and back to phoenix. and so that causes a lot of delays. just throwing some money at the post office when they have been closing -- have been losing money, been closing mail processing centers. what this gentleman is experiencing is not unusual. i live in a small community in north carolina and our mail used to be all processed within this little village. however, now it goes from here to an adjacent city where they have a big processing center and it comes back. it may take four or five days just to get something across town and they get lost. that's what the postal service has acknowledged and this isn't something that president trump caused. this is something that's been

happening with increasing frequency over the years. if we flood the postal system with mail ballots this year, i don't know how we could possibly know the outcome of this presidential election in time for the electoral college to meet. and i think that may be part of the plan, to create such chaos that the electoral college will not be able to meet and the house of representatives can choose the president. >> what is ms. mitchell's proposal for dealing with covid. we're at risk of bringing disease back to families. does she support greatly expanded early voting? >> well, i don't think you have to have greatly expanded early voting. most states have early voting. i think what we do have to have and this is one of the things that the federal government made available in terms of funding, we could follow the same kind of cleanliness and sanitation and disinfecting protocols, social

distancing, wearing a mask, disposable pens, there are all kinds of things that can be done that will protect workers and the primaries where we have already seen voting this year since covid, we haven't seen a spike in covid cases as a result of in-person voting. these are scare tactics. you talk about scaring people, trying to scare people into not going to the polls, to me that's voter suppression. so what i -- the federal government has made funding available to the localities, the local jurisdictions, the local election officials billions of dollars already appropriated so that election officials can hire more workers and can train them and can make sure that they are the proper sanitation and disinfectant, same thing that allows us to go to the pharmacy or the grocery store. >> one mail-in experience who said i voted by mail in primary,

my vote was recorded and listed as such on my state's voter page. it had a bar code. no problem. it worked fine. let's hear from ed in houston, texas. democrats line, good morning. >> caller: yes. i've been an election judge on and off for 30, 40 years and i held the primary runoff of the democrats in my precinct july 14th. and 75% of the people had already voted early or by mail and so we faced very little turnout actually at the polls, maybe 25% which was like 300 to 400 votes. the problem i have with ms. mitchell, she seems to feel that less voting is better. >> no. >> caller: does she have a philosophy that only the people who are rich and well educated should be allowed to vote?

>> well, that's a crazy assumption. i haven't said anything suggesting that. what i'm worried out, i started out talking about, the people i'm concerned about, are the most vulnerable voters, the elderly. they're the ones who are most at risk of being pressured and having their votes stolen. i'm concerned about those. i want everyone to vote. i want everyone who is eligible to vote. i just don't want people who are not eligible to spoil the system for the rest of us who are legally eligible to vote and i don't want to see a situation where somebody thinks that he or she has cast a ballot but somehow it's lost and not recorded. i think that's tragic and so i think people ought to be aware of what are the tracking mechanisms if you vote by mail. the woman from georgia said there was a bar code and she tracked to make certain that her vote was actually posted and counted. if you're going to vote by mail, then you should do what that gentleman in western maryland said, you need to keep track and

make sure that if you apply for a ballot and haven't gotten it, that you follow up and make sure that you're -- that you get your ballot and that you track it and it is delivered and counted. and so i just want to make certain that people -- people seem to think that there's no big deal, why not mail everybody that's on the voter rolls a ballot. that's a good way to ensure millions of fraudulent and lost votes and i think that we need to be concerned about making sure that people who are legally eligible to vote are able to vote and have the confidence that their vote is going to be concerned timely and counted. that's what i'm concerned about. and this business of accusing me of not wanting anybody to vote is just poppycock. it's another liberal lie. >> caller: good morning.

i received my ballot, put it in on monday in front of the town hall. i voted in every election in person, but unfortunately due to covid and some severe health issues, i'm not willing to take a risk. but i'm not going to give up my right to vote. it's frustrating to listen to this conversation in some ways because if people like your guest and others, regardless of party, would spend this ratime d energy on educating people how to do this right, to clean up our voter rolls and things like that, someone in your family passes, go to town hall and let them know. when i was divorced and went back to my maiden name, i took the documentation to the court, to the voting office, corrected it, my name is now back. when my daughter moved out of state after college, i took her down to town hall, she unregistered from our town here, took the letter and registered

in her new place. the this is our civic responsibility. this is our duty. we get what we pay for, basically. >> civil responsibility, voter engagement says our -- >> i absolutely believe that. absolutely 100%. i agree and i wish everybody would remember to notify their local election officials if they move. most people forget to do that. but that's why -- there are a lot of things that the voter rolls -- there are so many problems with the voter rolls because the officials do not maintain them in the way that they should. but both of those young women notified their election officials that they had moved and they continued to receive ballots. so sometimes even when citizens are engaged and notify their officials i no longer live at this address, sometimes it still

does not translate into a cleaning of the voter rolls. that should be as big of a priority than anything we do is keeping the voter rolls pristine and accurate. we fight a battle on -- from our foundation, the public interest legal foundation, we fight a huge battle because every time we file a lawsuit to get an election official to clean up the voter rolls in that jurisdiction, we're faced with an onslaught of left-wing groups and big law firm lawyers who swoop in and defend the right of the election official to keep the voter rolls as screwed up as they are. and we actually had that experience in 2017 when our foundation brought a suit against the election official in broward county, florida, because those voter rolls were a mess. and we sued, had a trial, there were 17 lawyers and lawmakers who came in on the other side from labor union lawyers, aclu,

the usual suspects and argued against cleaning up the rolls in that county. and guess what, guess who had a problem in the 2018 election in florida? broward county. to the point that it was -- they finally decided, she was removed by the new governor because of the mess in that county. we tried to prevent that in 2017. and the democrats and the left wing groups stopped us. >> let me ask you about florida in relation to president trump. he's tweeting this morning first about nevada saying this this morning, nevada has zero infrastructure for mail-in voting. it will be a corrupt disaster, if not ended by the courts. it will take months or years to figure out. florida has built a great infrastructure over years with two great republican governors, florida, send in your ballots. the president was asked about his comments on florida and why he approves of absentee voting in florida and not mail-in voting in other states.

i wanted to play that for you and get your response. >> florida has a great republican governor and it had a great republican governor. it's got ron desantis, rick scott, two great governors. over a long period of time, they've been able to get the absentee ballots down extremely professionally. florida is different from other states. in nevada, where you have a governor, he said, let's just send out millions of ballots and the post office cannot be prepared. but i don't know how they could be prepared. florida has been working on this for years. and they have a very good system of mail-in and that would be absentee or even beyond absentee. so in the case of florida, there aren't too many people who would qualify. florida is a well-run state, low taxes, everything. they've done a great job. and the two governors, they've got a great system of absentee ballots and even in the case of

mail-in ballots. the postal services are built up there. it takes a long time. when you look at the carolyn maloney election, i think they -- i'll give you the story. i think you have to do that election over. that election is no good. you have to take a look in new york, they have thousands of ballots. they don't know what happened to them. is there fraud? it's a disaster. that's only for a relatively small number of ballots, but i think they have to do the election in new york over. "the times" wrote a big story about it yet, front-page story. it's a disaster. it's a mess. i think they have to do that election over. nobody can know what the election result is. in the case of florida, they've done a great job. they've had tremendous success with it. but they've been doing this over many years and they've made it terrific. so for florida, you can mail in your ballots. you don't have to go. maybe a couple other states they worked out a system. but this took years to do. >> and they've called that new york race, by the way, for

carolyn maloney. the president saying florida is doing it right in terms of absentee ballots and mail-in voting. >> one of the things they do in florida that is not what is being sought and talking about in nevada, you send an application and request an absentee ballot and then they send you the ballot. they don't just wholesale mail either applications or ballots to everybody on the rolls. but there's a process for obtaining an absentee ballot and then returning that and verifying that you're actually the voter who returns it. the problems arise when they come up with a system to just -- out to mail either an application or a ballot to everybody on the rolls. that's a big problem. nevada has -- it's legislature and governor met and in the middle of the night literally last weekend came up with a whole new election system. we're now, what, sh three months

away from the election. that's not the time to be changing the system. nevada has had a pretty robust early voting system with voting centers around the population areas and voting -- they've had a very -- look, one of the things i think is interesting is when you're voting in physical locations, there are counters on the machines so that you know at the beginning of the day and at the end of every day, how many ballots were issued and how many ballots were returned. when you have wholesale spend sending of ballots, you have no way to be able to determine where those actually delivered, were they delivered to the right voter. as i said, the post office -- they've reported that of the 43 million ballots mailed in the united states in 2018, 28.4% of

those were returned either undeliverable, spoiled ballots, voters had to vote in person provisionally. that's 28.4%. almost a third of all the ballots that were mailed by election officials in 2018. so i'm not trying to scare people. i'm just saying, if we double or triple or quadruple the number of ballot that is are just sent out to voters in 2020, i just don't know how in the world the system can manage it. it's going to be particularly acute in the cities. it's not as big of a problem in the rural areas. but we heard from callers about problems in getting their ballots because of the delay in the mail system. i think the president is right. it isn't appropriate for the legislature to determine in the middle of the night three months before the election to completely upend the system and

i just worry about that. i think he's right to be worried. i'm worried about the conclusion and a prompt to expeditious resolution of our election. i don't like the chaos. i don't like the chaos. >> we have the chair of the public interest legal foundation. thank you for joining us. >> thank you. weeknights this month, we're featuring american history tv programs as a preview of what's available every weekend on c-span3. tonight at 8:00 eastern, a look at the end of world war ii. august 6th marks the 75th anniversary of the u.s. bombing of hiroshima, japan. that was followed by a second atomic bomb dropped on nagasaki three days later. watch a special edition of american history tv and washington journal's coproduction of the hiroshima anniversary. we'll look at the strategic situation in the pacific theater

leading up to the bombings. president harry truman's decision to use the new weapon, and the legacy of these atomic attacks. enjoy american history tv this week and every weekend on c-span3. >> a short time ago, an american airplane dropped one bomb on hiroshima. that bomb has more power than 20,000 tons of tnt. with this bomb, we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction. it is an atomic bomb. it is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. what has been done is the greatest achievement of organized science in history. >> on august 6th,