declared a national historic landmark district in 1995, little tokyo near downtown los angeles has been the center of japanese-american culture in southern california since the early 1900s. we went on a tour with a docent at the japanese-american national museum. he was born in little tokyo in 1930 and during world war ii was incarcerated by government order with other japanese-americans at wyoming's hart mountain relocation center. watch tonight, beginning at 8:0n p.m. ueeastern, and enjoy amerin history tv every weekend on c-span3.he joining us now is ken cuccinelli, chair of the election transparency m 20 initiative, also served19 as th former acting director of u.s. e citizenship. and immigration services from 2019 to 2021. mr. cuccinelli, thanks for t? giving us your time today. >> my pleasure. >> can you tell us about this initiative, what does it do, jo what is its purpose, and who

supports it? >> so the election transparency, initiative i lead is a joint effort between two groups, the american principals project, which is a pro family, social conservative organization, and the susan b. anthony list which is the largest pro-life women organization out there supporting pro-life women. and they have heard loud and clear from their members two ab. things. one, why should i bother anymore if these elections are so unreliable, that's on the negative. and then sort of in the h affirmative, they've heard that -- a demand by their membership that these organizations weigh in to boost confidence and what they would view as accuracy and reliability of elections. and marjorie danfield who leads the susan b. anthony list, says the biggest abortion gains by those who support abortion have been made in the courts which is

not the democratic institution ofof our three-branch system, whereas the pro-life movement done very well, pointing out the truth of life from the ectin moment of conception to the public and moving the culture is and laws in that direction overt a number ofhe decades.lectio so fair elections and confidence that they are fair elections, something that i hope would matter to everybody, is viewed as a cornerstone from those organizations' standpoints. and we're after, we say it all the time, easy to vote, hard tol cheat. and wewe wantpart to see electie that are not only fair but that all parties can see are run t, e fairly and honestly and accurately and produce an ion vo accurate teresult. the accurate result being what legal voters in that election voted for.i would and we've -- you know, georgia

has been in the news lately. in 2018 i would remind people that it was democrats that were complaining about issues in f georgia. and in 2020 you saw republican a complaintns spearheaded byin 20t swearing in the right president next. in 2020, that was 31%. that's pointed out by scott rasmussen in one of his recent articles. we've had in the last three, four, five years on both sides of the aisle major concerns. and what i find encouraging in all of this is we have proven we can fix things. and when i say we, i mean americans. we can do it effectively. you look at florida from bush v. gore in 2000. they were a joke, they were a laughingstock, they weren't even running their election badly the same way in different parts of the state. what do they do? they set about over the course of years on a bipartisan basis

to clean up those election. and come 2020 when there are complaints all over the place, there are no complaints in florida. if he counted quickly, smoothly, both sides perceive it to have been accurate and fair. so we can do this better. and the states, as laboratories of democracy have proven they can do a good job when they put their mind to it. >> so is there then a plan or a template as far as changing the way voting is done, particularly not only on the state-by-state level, but on the national level considering this is being considered in congress as well with their legislation? >> so there is a two-level approach. all for 230 years plus since the constitution was put in place, states have run elections. the constitution references this in article i, but it also gives the congress some authority to play a role as well. but congress has never done that on a broad scope. they've done things like pass

the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, changed the voting age to 21. so there have been single sort of surgical targets by congress. but at the federal level it is the hr-1s1 that i hope we'll talk about today, which is the focus of our effort on the federal level. it is a really just terrible bill. it puts an awful lot of very bad practices into place for the whole country. and we can talk about that in more detail. so we focus on that and educating americans about it as they learn more they like it less. and then at the state level, working really with basic principles in mind. things like voters should have to be -- to demonstrate they're citizens, to be on the rolls. dead people should be cleaned off the roles. people should provide voter identification, something supported across the board, you know, regardless of your race or party or gender, people support that across the board. so working with those basic

principles, we work with allies in about a dozen states, ten target states, to improve their systems. and they're all different, every state being different, so we don't have some prescription that we walk into every state with. we just work with partners to try to improve on a common sense basis the security and transparency elements and preserve accessibility in each state. in a way consistent with their tradition, law, and history. >> our guest with us until 10:00, you can ask him questions about this effort on voting the election transparency initiative 202-748-8001 for republicans. 202-748-8002. and you can text your questions to 202-748-8003. you said there were a list of concerns. what's the chief among them? >> well, it's an 800-page bill.

so there's lots of room for concerns. most of the focus in the public discussion has been on the election parts of the bill. and i'll focus most of my comments on that. but i want people to at least know that it also creates a public financing for campaigns. it gives a six-to-one donor match, would then go to fund campaigns. and those dollars could be used for candidates' own expenses, personal expenses. it would change the fec to be a partisan majority instead of a bipartisan body policing including prosecuting perceived offenses, and, of course, that's really a radical change. there's also free speech elements and criminal elements in there that are so bad that even the aclu finds many of them to be unconstitutional, and it has expressed concerns. but on the election part of it, which is the main focus of my

concerns, they do things first of all like wipe out all state election law by and large. they dictate to states what they can and cannot do or must do. and it includes things like forbidding voter i.d., which i noted a moment ago is popular across the board as a common sense security measure. stutdies show it doesn't suppress voting despite some of the rhetoric about there out it. and americans seem to know this because they support it across the board. it requires -- it bans states from requiring anything more than signature verification to identify who someone is. the problem with that is if you don't have to match it up to a voter database, you don't actually know if the person in front of you is anything other than a person who can write a particular name. it mandates, it orders every state to implement same-day

voter registration. and some states actually have this, but they have systems set up to do it. and they typically have it with a requirement for voter identification and with a way to filter for those who are not legally allowed to vote like noncitizens. it mandates the use of ballot drop boxes, which really weren't a thing, if you will, until covid in 2020. and if you go back six, eight months, states were trying to figure out, okay, how are we going to run this election well in a covid environment? and what this bill does is take all of those things that were at the time supposedly one-time changes to accommodate a pandemic, including some very loose practices and makes them permanent. it forces the states to do this. another thing it forces the states to do is that for every

adult eligible individual, they don't say citizen, the bill says individual, in their state databases, they must register them to vote. so, that includes states that give driver's licenses to illegal aliens. your public health department that they may give vaccines to noncitizens. one would expect that. those names go in the database. they must be sent over to their state voter rolls and enrolled. and the other side -- the bill doesn't -- >> is that since the voting or a mandate to voting from these agencies that are involved? >> so, it's a voter registration mandate. so the voting of course is a next step. so the bill does not change the law from requiring that only citizens may vote. but it sets up a system that i just described where all of these names get dumped into the voter roll, and it adds a

criminal felony for state and local officials, and it's very vaguely worded, and i believe this is one of the elements the aclu has expressed concern about. very vaguely worded federal felony that says, any impairment or impediment of folks registering to vote or undertaking voting will be prosecuted as a felony with significant penalties. and so if you're a state official, if you're in the department of motor vehicles and someone presents to you for the first time, they're not in your databases, they're an adult. and part of the transaction will result in them registering to vote. if there's a federal felony hanging out there to challenge you if you are perceived to impair their voter registration, are you going to even bother saying, hey, you know, are you a citizen, are you going to ask

questions like that? and the purpose, i believe, of the criminal provision is to deter that. so the combination of those things results in or will result over time in millions of people who are not citizens including people here illegally being registered to vote. >> okay. >> that doesn't mean it's legal for them to vote. but if you can't require voter i.d., if you can't undertake basic security provisions at the polling places or for mail-in voting, there will be nothing to stop those folks from voting. and having been a state attorney general, i can tell you that you can't pull ballots out of the ballot box very easily if there is a problem. because you don't know which ballot was the problem. so, elections are unique in that we have to perform our security on the front side because we don't get an opportunity to cure on the back side, particularly under the time constraints we work under. >> let me roll in some calls. our first one is from richard in

new jersey. democrats' line, you're on with ken cuccinelli of the election transparency initiative. he serves as their chair. richard, go ahead. >> okay, hi. that's really the spontaneous abortion. and if you believe in god, then god is really the biggest abortionist around. second point i want to make, do you ever go to a funeral for a fetus? never happens. maybe once in a billion, i don't know. in fact, all throughout history, people do not consider people until it was a live birth. sometimes a week after because so many infants died. third part i want to make, if you look at the bible in genesis 2:7, it says you don't get a soul until you take your first breath.

so even according to the bible, you're not a person until you take your first breath. >> okay, caller, but our topic is elections and their integrity. >> he said it was okay. >> okay. i'm going to leave it there. there cuccinelli, you can respond, but being our topic -- >> well, yeah. you know, i wouldn't be working for a pro-life organization if i didn't agree and support those principles. and i think even in just the recent decades since i've been born, science has demonstrated that a human being with all 46 chromosomes when things happen healthily is there at the moment of conception. so follow the science. but, as you pointed out, we're supposed to be talking about voter integrity. i work for a pro-life organization that believes the ability to make its case fairly and publicly in clean, fair, transparent elections is what it needs to succeed. so, i'm not here specifically to

advance the cause for life. i'm here to work to make sure there's a level, fair playing field for everyone to make their case on whatever issue it is, whether it's abortion or guns or taxes or paving the road in the neighborhood in clean, fair elections. and i think every american can at least agree on that. how we make that happen is something that if we talk about in terms of nuts and bolts instead of in terms of republicans and democrats, i think we would find massive agreement across the american public. polling shows that, and it's something that, as i said earlier, i'm very encouraged by the opportunity to do. >> let's hear from robert, lynchburg, virginia, independent line. >> yes, mr. cuccinelli, my thought is a couple points i'd like to make. if they wanted to make elections for everybody across the board fair, why not make election a

holiday? and also, if the law in georgia wasn't changed during the trump administration years in office last year -- was a safe election, why would they want to change it? and also -- a national holiday that the congress needs to make everybody. because when the states get it, the states pick and choose who they want to win. whereas if you've got a national election, that means that it's going to be across the board from every state. >> sure. so, robert, i appreciate that. i agree with you about making election day a holiday. i think that would improve accessibility. virginia for many years, you had to have a reason to vote absentee. i live in virginia. and one of the reasons in our --

we have 13 hours to vote. 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. one of the reasons was, and you're in virginia as well, i noted, in lynchburg, that you were going to be gone for work for 11 hours. so from door to door 11 hours. so, if that wasn't the case for as many people. and of course even on a holiday many people have to work. our police officers, our firefighters, healthcare. there are people who have to work. but an awful lot of them, most would be off if it were a holiday. so i agree with you in terms of accessibility. and i also think one of the areas that there's a level of disagreement across the board, there's nothing partisan about it is should we have no excuse early voting, which really means we have many election days. should we have one election day where campaigns sort of work up to? or should we have a week or 17 days, like they have in georgia? we had a caller from new jersey, they just started early voting.

they added nine days of early voting. so georgia has more early voting than new jersey. and i think those are legitimate questions. i think a better route is to make the national election day a holiday, like you suggest, robert, i agree with you, to improve accessibility. i also, having been a candidate, believe that there are a few issues you want to cover, you want to deliver messages constructively. and if the finish line is a moving target, because you don't know when everybody's going to vote, it makes that a lot more difficult. you look in the presidential this last go-around, one of the things we discussed particularly for the 2nd, which didn't happen and third presidential debate, is that those debates were taking place after people had started voting. that is one of the things that i think every state gets to decide that. but there are factors that really matter there in terms of

how do you want your election to run? and i don't think there is an absolute right answer. but i agree with you, robert. i think that election day should be a holiday to make it more accessible to everybody. i think that would be ideal. and it wouldn't surprise me if out of all of this rigamarole where there's a lot of disagreement that that becomes a point of agreement before that's all said and done. >> mark, democrats line, go ahead. >> yes, good morning. i'd like to mention the fact that georgia laws will enable someone like trump to find extra votes, per se. do you feel like he should be prosecuted for harassing people to trying to change and steal the election? thank you. >> i certainly don't think he should be prosecuted for harassing, to use your word, folks to update their voter laws. in georgia, as i noted in 2018, had concerns. i also pointed out in 2016 at a

national level there were concerns about whether the outcomes of the election were appropriate and whether the process was followed and so forth. georgia, look, georgia had problems. and they've had problems. and they're taking steps to fix that. i'll use a simple one that doesn't draw a particular conclusion but raises questions. my understanding, and i'm rounding off the numbers, is there are about 18,000 people who -- i say who voted, whose names were used to vote, in georgia in the last election, who were either dead or registered to vote at a vacant lot or registered to vote at a commercial address. and that 18,000 votes was a relatively small fraction of the total. but the margin was around 12,000. it doesn't mean it changed the outcome. but it does raise the question,

did we get the right outcome? and we don't even have to go into an argument about whether the answer to that is yes or no. if all we want to do it is fix it and make sure we don't have this problem in the future. there were problems we saw in different parts of the country, no question that covid and judges responding to covid really complicated things in 2020. and i would also note in virginia we have elections every year. we vote in odd years. there's always some problems. but what hasn't typically happened is enough critical mass of people saying, you know, we need to turn and face this and deal with it. clarence thomas, justice thomas not too long ago in a dissent when the supreme court decided not to hear a case, and i don't even know exactly which case, he said, look, we get these election cases all the time, we say the election's over and so it's moot. and so we never give these people any guidance. that's the court version of what often happens in legislatures.

they just say, ah, can't we just move on and go to the next thing? so here the florida example i gave earlier, they clearly were motivated to act. i think a lot of other states are motivated to act now. and we should make the most of getting ourselves the most modern up to date, clean, fair, and obviously sown system. >> you said your partners described the election as unreliable, going back to the last presidential election, did they refer to that? and do they go as far as saying it was stolen, and is that your contention as well? >> uh, no. i'm not prepared to make that contention. i certainly think that when you have a situation like i described in georgia just in terms of numbers. i was an engineer before i went to law school. so i'm a numbers guy. that raises very serious questions. and i don't think either side can say definitively how that

changed the outcome because we don't know which 18,000 ballots that was. so, for either side to say, no, it absolutely didn't change the outcome or it absolutely did is an unprovable statement. but it clearly mathematically brought into question whether without those 18,000 ballots that were not properly registered, the outcome would've been different. and our goal is a forward-looking goal, my goal is to eliminate as many opportunities for those kinds of doubts regardless of who wins, whether it's georgia or connecticut or the whole united states, that we possibly can. and i think we have the opportunity to do that by putting in some basic common sense laws, and we're seeing that happen in some states around the country. and really the arguments against them so far have been largely rhetorical. they haven't engaged so much on the substance. and you see that, obviously i'm

a conservative, i'm right-of-center. but even "the washington post" is giving joe biden four pinocchios in their fact check for some of his comments about the georgia law, his jim crow language, and the suggestion that it suppresses voting hours when it expands them, and other things like that. we're just seeing this war of words. that's why i keep going back to the point, when we as just fellow americans talk about the elements of an election, we have really broad agreement, robert from lynchburg was an example. doesn't mean we'll have universal agreement. but the difference is don't have to, nor do they normally break down on party lines. even chuck schumer said, you know, 18 months ago, election security is absolutely necessary, and there's nothing partisan about that. well, you know, if we can keep it out of the partisan realm, i think we can be very constructive. >> this is from claudia in

wisconsin, republican line. >> yes, hi. one of the things about voter i.d. is that it's been a contentious issue even long before covid. and often think of having an i.d. as voter suppression. yet, at the same time, many conservatives don't want to recognize that having to go to the dmv to get an identification means for some people very long lines, some dmvs are in more remote areas outside of the inner city because, for whatever reason, they're going to be taking people driving or whatever it is. and why must a regular i.d. be associated with the dmv? many people need an i.d. for employment, to apply for

government benefits. and it has nothing at all to do with driving a car. and i long thought that identification really should be located somewhere other than the dmv to make it more accessible such as a county's workforce development office. many people are going to go there seeking employment, other services for which they also need identification. not a driver's license. if you want a driver's license, go to the dmv. if you need an i.d., go somewhere separate. that then takes away the obstacle to getting identification. >> okay, caller, thank you. we'll leave it there. thank you. >> yes. so, i think a lot of states, there is a sort of misnomer that it's only a driver's license. and i don't know of any state that requires voter identification, that limits that

to driver's license. that list is getting longer and longer. setting aside all the potential for jokes about dmvs that seem to play well in every state, in georgia since it's been in the news, 97% of their voters have either driver's licenses or dmv i.d.s or free state identification. but that isn't all that's allowed. military i.d. works, passports work. the list of what goes on, and you mentioned, the caller mentioned employment. and those i.d.s in many states are acceptable typically in combination with, say, a recent utility bill that, you know, shows you're still at your registered address, those kinds of things. so there are all sorts of combinations that states use. and i have not seen anything except a sensitivity to making sure that straightforward it is never in american history been

easier to register to vote ever. and in most states that require voter i.d. have sort of government accessibility features to their law. i don't know of a single state that does not have that. and when you look at what the american people think about this, the polling is, you know, numbers vary from poll to poll. but every category of people, however you divide it up. today we're calling in on republican, democrat, and independent lines. but libertarian, vegetarian, black, white, hispanic, man, woman, polls show they all support voter i.d. because it is a basic common sense protection. we have to balance how we run our election with the security of the election. that's one of the elements of it. and polling consistently shows americans value that security very highly. and when you get to the back side of an election, all of those elements give us lots more

confidence in the outcome of those elections. and given that they're the cornerstone of our governmental system, that doesn't seem like too much to ask. >> from brooklyn -- >> oh, one other quick point. this has been an issue for a while. studies have now shown that the question about whether it affects voting turnout is that it does not. there is fairly extensive academic regime of studies now that this has been used for a number of years and been a point of focus that support that. so, it isn't just policy people. >> stephanie in brooklyn, new york, democrats line, you're on with ken cuccinelli. >> yes. good morning. >> good morning. >> everybody's talking about voter i.d. we know we have to show voter i.d. but the problem is what the gop is doing is the integrity, because they are giving control of the gop to control the

election. and they're doing this in all 47 states. what it is they want to take control because they see that people of color are now voting more than ever before. >> caller, you're going to have to watch the expletives. we'll leave it there and we'll let our guest respond. >> so give or take three states, i would disagree with you. i joke with people that i'm a republican because they're wrong less. i don't agree with my fellow republicans all the time. and i don't think there is anybody that agrees with their party all the time. but the fact of the matter is i can speak for myself and everybody i know. i welcome more voter participation, especially within the party, you know, starting at the earlier points in the political process, that's

something that i and many others have encouraged over the years. and i think one of the things that was surprising to some folks in the last election is how well donald trump, as rough-edged as he is, did with black and hispanic voters. part of that may be the performance he achieved economically of lowest black and hispanic unemployment ever. and we spent more time under 8% unemployment for black americans in his presidency than the rest of my life combined. performance pays dividends. so i don't think there's any fear of that -- of all sorts of folks voting by the gop. i mean, i can certainly attest to that. and what i would complain about with respect to the caller's comments, in addition to 47 states, is that it just assumes it.

she didn't give any evidence of it. she's just accusing people of being racist, frankly. and that's not consistent with the evidence. so, let's talk about facts. let's talk about evidence. and, you know, you're talking to someone who has never had those inclinations, and my own hiring and my own career demonstrate that. so, you're tossing those allegations at the wrong person. and if that's all you've got to try to argue against substantive changes and improvements to the voting system, high school logic says if all you've got is an ad hominem argument, you don't have much of an argument. so why don't we talk about what works, what works well, what doesn't work, and recognize we're going to have areas of disagreement. but, you know, it's exactly the kind of rhetoric that that last caller threw in that isn't constructive, and that keeps getting repeated. it's still being parroted about

the georgia law, and even liberal outlets have identified it as untrue. so that does make things more difficult. again, that's why i separate out the partisan discussion from just talking about the nuts and bolts about how an election should work. >> we have a viewer off of -- >> we started talking about the federal law. it wipes out a lot of this stuff, which is why we have so many problems with the proposed federal law. >> we have a fewer off of our text service saying this is miguel from brooklyn, saying, based on your claim regarding same-day registration, if there was a problem with thousands or millions of illegal noncitizens voting, how come there hasn't been a mass arrest of these individuals? >> mass arrest doesn't happen. having been in law enforcement, you find a person, however that happens, who broke the law. and the case is about that person. so, one of the challenges, as i noted earlier, with elections is if there is a large-scale problem, there simply are not

the personnel or the time to deal with all of that after an election before a certification, before it's finalized. our courts aren't set up that way. our law enforcement isn't set up that way. and part of the challenge of this discussion, this debate, is that we're dealing with proving or disproving a negative, which is a theoretical impossibility. what are the things that haven't been caught? that's why when i used the georgia example of the 18,000 improperly registered voters voting in the 12,000 vote margin, i don't declare how it would've affected the outcome or whether it affected the outcome. only that it is a problem that i think anybody objectively would say needs to be fixed. if we are talking about 2018 and stacey abrams lost a close race, the shoe would sort of be on the other foot on a partisan basis. why don't we get rid of the shoe by fixing the problem.

>> this person says -- does not allow undocumented immigrants to vote. >> i think i said that, that the bill does not by itterms legalize voting by noncitizens. but it sets up a system that holds up very personal, like, to the individual penalties, felony penalties if you're perceived by a prosecutor in an arena that is getting much more political, political prosecutions i mean, of questioning whether someone is appropriate to register to vote. and they're not going to raise the fact themselves that they're not a citizen, particularly if they're here illegally, i should say specifically, if they're not here illegally. but they're still going to get swept in on the rolls. because the states are ordered to really put any adult in their databases, any database, dmv, public health, you name it, over to their secretary of state or

their equivalent in the state to register them to vote. so the caller or texter in this case is technically correct. but the practical result as had to be known by the drafters of this, would be that hundreds of thousands and ultimately millions of people who aren't supposed to be registered to vote are going to be swept onto the voter rolls because of the terms of hr-1. and i personally think that is intentional on the part of the drafters. i do not think that someone saying what's a good, clean way to run a system would put a provision like this in. it doesn't make any sense. i would note, by the way, that lots of democratic election officials oppose this law. recently probably the most famous secretary of state of all is new hampshire because of its first in the nation primary status. he is elected by their legislature and has been re-elected since the 1970s by

democrat and republican legislatures because they all perceive him to have done a good job. he is a democrat and he was very critical of the new hampshire congressional delegation, which i think is all democrats. i know the senators are. for supporting s-1. because he isn't it can't be implemented, it'd be a disaster, and it fixes a nonproblem from his perspective is that you actually make a good system much worse. he says and i don't see a lot of people saying otherwise that new hampshire hasn't had widespread problems. so imposing this one-size-fits-all rewrite of their laws is not only inappropriate but does harm. and there are other democrat-elected officials around the country who have said similar things, secretary of state in west virginia, very similar. and we haven't even addressed the actual impossibility of doing some of what s-1 mandates

states to do. but, be that as it may, we got to deal with the law as it is. and in an 800-page law, there's only so many provisions we can talk about. >> sean in key west, florida, independent line. >> good morning, gentlemen. mr. cuccinelli, i've listened to you, and it seems to me, sir, that you simply cannot comprehend the fact that you've placed a jar of jelly beans on the table in front of the voter. if you would please address any voting fraud other than by republicans in the last election. and i might add, sir, that, you know, just phoning in the election, phoning in your vote really is more than enough. the object is to get the people involved. if the vote is not sacred, then it isn't really worth having. thank you. >> well, if something is sacred, you protect it, sean.

and americans, again, just like voter i.d., overwhelmingly prioritize the security of our elections. we focus also where i work on transparency so everybody can see the security, all sides in an election. and i'm not quite sure what the jelly beans he's referring to are. but i haven't mischaracterized this law. it is very large, and he questions whether there's been voter fraud by anybody but republicans. i'll quote the u.s. supreme court in crawford versus marianne county. flagrant examples of voter fraud that have been documented throughout this nation's history by respected historians and journalists demonstrate that not only is the risk of voter fraud real but that it could affect the outcome of a close election. that was not recent, it was 2008. but the problem continues to exist. i gave at least a mathematical example in georgia.

again, we don't know whether the outcome would've been changed or not. i would also point out, having been an attorney general for a state, the practical impossibility of policing voter fraud close enough to an election to actually catch all the fraud by the time an election is certified. which is why the security elements of an election are so important on the front end. and, frankly, simple things like having to prove you're a citizen to register to vote, to show a voter i.d., whether you're doing mail-in voting, you send a copy of it, for instance, as i believe the georgia law provides, or show it in person, are just not burdensome undertakings. and we continue to see better and better voter turnout. we, as i noted earlier, it has never been easier to register to vote than it is today. that's something that i think we can be proud of. though it's different in every state, and as long as sr-1

doesn't pass, the different states will be able to learn from one another. one of the elements of having the states run elections is they are, in addition to just being responsible, they are also a laboratory of democracy for the other states to view what works or what doesn't in each of their sister states. i would note, as deputy secretary of homeland security last year, the election security responsibility we had at homeland security wasn't internal, it was facing foreign threats. and one of the things that was an advantage in avoiding their ability to manipulate our voting system on a large scale was the fact that we did have 50 different states and the district of columbia with their own voting systems. that decentralization is actually supportive of security. we ought to preserve the states' role in these elections and help them improve here at an opportunity when we're all paying attention to the issue