then we will hear from ground zero of the 2012 elections, the secretary general of ohio, john huston, who has had served as a speaker of the ohio house and senate and finally, michael pitz, a law professor and expert in voting rights and related matters. he is an attorney in the voting rights the sector of with the justice department. >> good afternoon, everyone. it is good to be here and i must say i was here four years ago and honored to be back again and have the opportunity. we are talking about insuring integrity and access and i was

asked to talk about what va. -- west wets -- what west virginia does. west virginia does have identification laws and many of them follow what many other states to as far as when it comes to the health of america voted act. i will give you a brief of what it takes. since we had our discussions today, this is a very bad thing from what i am understanding. i am trying to get rid of this in west virginia. this is your mail in voter registration application. this costs about $6 and i would like to be able to have on-line registration. the help america vote act -- if you register by mail and not provide some kind of photo identification, you have to provide that by mailing it in or the first time ago but, you need

to show that identification of who you are or if you go in person to the clerk's office, you show identification for showing a copy of the utility bill or other government document that shows your name and current residence address. we require that in west virginia and when you go to go in west virginia, time and again, you cannot show a photo id but you have to state some verification like your name, address, and then you sign your name as your voter verification. is that enough? is that enough of what we require? i say yes it is and it has been for the last 10 years or so. some might ask if west virginia has a reputation and i say yes, we have this reputation of election fraud. as a matter of fact, we have three elected officials from southern west virginia who will

be serving and are serving in federal prison. in those cases, strong for both for identification laws would not have put a stop to what took place when they tried to manipulate the process of absentee voting. this is the interesting part that comes together -- i was up for reelection in 2012 and i did not push for a photo i.d. and west virginia. because of that, my opponent accused me of being soft on voter fraud. i had to laugh a little bit. i am learning something. they will say anything in a political race, while today? i laugh about that because here i am, the toughest secretary of state and west virginia has ever seen when it comes to more investigations and more convictions for election law violations than any other in state history and not just talking about this one particular county.

we have a county commissioner that tried to vote twice and went after that person also. how can they say this about me? what is the distinction? they say i am light on voter fraud when i say i am very tough on election law violations. as has been stated before, we see that voter fraud is the very small when you go to the .00% that has been talked about. from the 2010 election where we had these investigations, we had fraud. i tell you this to give you background and tell you all of this because, for me, this is where insuring integrity and access to the ballot mate. i have said before that you can

be pro-voter access and anti- election fraud at the same time. i have shown that and it is the history that we now have in west virginia. for me as secretary of state, for me as a chief election official, i see the big picture what needs to be taking place when it comes to integrity for elections. there is not just one aspect. it is the larger picture we have the comes into play. this is how i approach it, as the most transparent office holder -- i approach it as integrity is knowledge or knowledge is integrity when it comes to the elections. i put that into plate for the many aspects, through training of election officials, you have heard that talked about today. if you have that knowledge and understanding and well-trained election officials from the ground up, you will have that

and make sure they follow the process. we have put on line worker training for anybody going in to vote. we have put videos and our website about the canvassing process because that is another step in the checks and balances that takes place. boaters and citizens of west virginia also have the knowledge that if you are trying to manipulate the process, you have a serious secretary of state who will look into that and of pulled -- and uphold the integrity of the process. all that together, comes together. we do online and web cast of our preparation conferences. we have liaison's that are out and about on election day. the reason that i want to know

how the process takes place is there are 55 counties in west virginia by 1800 precincts' and it is the voters on the front lines and have to be armed with the same knowledge where we work together and have a bigger focus of the election process. that is where i am on this. i will sit down and take questions as we go along, thanks. [applause] >> good afternoon, i am john husted and i am the ohio secretary of state. this idea of balancing access and accuracy is what i will talk about my best piece of advice is if you want to find that balance and run a good controversy-free election, do not become a secretary of state in a swing state. [laughter]

it presents multiple problems and, frankly, it is politics that stands in the way of achieving that balance, not policy. it is the process of getting there that has that been -- that has been the biggest impediment of where we should be in our state. i will explain the ohio experience. not long after i was elected in 2011, i made a proposal that included a balanced approach that had ideas from local boards of the elections, ideas from might democratic predecessor, even some ideas from pew, and we took this legislative package and called the election modernization. as a former speaker of the house, i can't tell you, i know how to run a bill through the legislative process. i checked all the boxes and we know what to sell a reform package by going to the legislative leadership of both -- both parties.

we visited with all the committee members in both the house and the senate and we eventually got our package. to be endorsed by every major newspaper in the state. what could go wrong? this is what happened -- we had this bipartisan plan and as a began to travel to the legislative process, partisan bickering broke out and both sides wanted to see the scales tilted in their favor with claims of voter fraud and charges of voter suppression emerged, a separate photo id bill emerged out of those harsh discussions that excited the situation and amendments were introduced. at that point in time, it eventually passed along party lines. the legislature was controlled by republicans in ohio and immediately after that, the democrats for obama for america

campaign filed petitions to put up to a referendum and got enough petitions and eventually, the republican legislature repealed it at my suggestion because it was becoming - the rhetoric was too heated and the need to start over and avoid the cost of the referendum. that is what happened during the course of the year-long battle of trying to find the battle -- balance between access and accuracy in ohio. eventually, we had no reform. the damage was done. it set off a partisan flames that continued through 2012 and even -- if there was one moment a bipartisan agreement, we did pass that military voter bill during that process that had an amendment that shut down early voting during the saturday, sunday, and monday before the elections of the board of

elections would have time to accommodate all of the early votes they expected to be cast. it passed on a unanimous basis and eventually it blow up and became the first of life -- a federal lawsuit weeks. in ohio. even our moments of bipartisan agreement ended up blowing up in the end over the desire for both political parties and their allies to achieve victory in terms of tilting the scales in their favor. finding that balance -- balance on a policy now is not that hard. both people and find a way to balance access and accuracy. the hard part is political. election reform efforts, the partisan forces, have stood in the way of this in our state and i think they will in every swing

state because it is not just people in your state that get involved, it is people across the country that decide from places in washington and elsewhere that because of your swing state status, they don't like your rules and they participate. voting is really the culture of a state for if you want to have confidence in it, it has to come from both sides and with it and and people have to believe in the process and it is different in all of our state. s. therefore a lot of outrageous claims that appeared during the legislative process and our elections process in ohio but if you're talking about the balance, what are the two big charges? suppression and fraud are the two charges of you here. charges of voter suppression in ohio, i will give you a few of them. it is said that we were

preventing -- our rules prevented people from having easy access to those. here are the rules -- for the first time, every single voter in our state received an absentee ballot request mailed to their room that was nearly 7 million voters. every voter had nearly 35 days to vote without ever leaving their house. or wherever they might have lived. over that 35 days, the dissenters were open weekdays from 8-5 for the first three weeks, 8-7 the last two weeks. three of our neighboring states, not west virginia, have zero days of early no-fault voting and it is easy to vote in ohio with more than one month to do it. when you consider the schedule and a record 1.3 million votes were cast, reasonable people would conclude that it is pretty

-- pretty easy to vote in ohio and suppression was not an issue. what is fraud? you have the legal definition and the political definition. if a student from kentucky is going to college in ohio and decides to vote tonight presidential election. what about the guy from massachusetts that drove his rv and lived in his sister's trial in decided to register and vote 35 days before the election because he decided he wanted the and a resident for a while. is that illegal? not under ohio law. what you show up with your sticker and received free pizza or food for casting a ballot that day. is that voter fraud? under ohio law is not but yet there been a people who believe it is or should be. what if you vote twice?

is that frogs? under ohio law, we would declare it to be fraud. most people think it is. we have had hundreds of people where this happened or are being investigated or reviewed right now. the important thing is that they did not actually have their vote counted twice, they tried to vote twice and our system caught it. there rhetoric does not match the reality of what the rules are in many cases. it is very easy to vote in our state. fraud is a very rare occurrence. for us to move forward in this situation we are in ohio, we need not overreact to stories and we need to seek ways of getting all the participants in the political process to admit

that it is easy to follow and that fraud is rare. until we can overcome those misperceptions, i think it will be very hard to get that balance of a swing state like ohio. thank you. [applause] >> with such an esteemed panel, i feel like i should announce my candidacy for indiana secretary of state. [laughter] then i think about all the academic writings i have does it law professor and what the opposition would do with those. i think i will not. i work in indiana and i will talk about indiana and our experience so far with photo identification. indiana is important nationally

for a couple of reasons. we were just about first -- is there anybody from georgia in the room? if there isn't, indiana will take credit for being first in line on photo identification. as a requirement. also, india has served as the model -- indiana has served as the model for photo identification laws that have been passed and litigated in the court system. one of the things i have been doing for the last few years is trying to assess how many folks get caught up by the indiana up photo id requirements. there are two major issues in this debate that call out for empirical analysis. there is the extent of voter fraud, in particular in person voter fraud, what i call voter

identity theft on election day. the second is how many folks are actually disenfranchised or not capable of having a ballot they casket counted because of the photo identification requirement that indiana has. ? in indiana, if you don't have a photo identification on election day, you get to vote provisionally. if the poll workers doing their job correctly, they will check off on the provisional ballot form the fact that the person did not have an id. what i have been doing is going county by county in the indiana in the 2008 and 2012 election cycle to find out how many folks went into a polling place in indiana, cast the provisional ballot because they did not have

an idea, and how many of those votes were counted or not counted? here are some numbers for your consideration -- this compares the 2008 primary and the 2012 primary. the 2008 days of from the 92 counties was survey data. we called up the election officials ask them how many provisional ballots of they had over all and how many id-related ballots they have over all and then the count on each of those items. speaking of transparency, one of the nice things that has happened recently in indiana is that a law was passed that compels county election administration to turn over provisional balloting material for public consumption. the 2012 data from the primary

is based upon my actual review of all the provisional ballots that were cast throughout the state of indiana. this has been tough to compile because you have to go county by county, all 92 counties, and stay on folks to produce them. you can see that there is a fairly significant number of ballots that were cast in the 2008 primary and the 2012 primary and not that many provisional ballots were cast, about 2700 in 2008 and 600 in 2012. even below that, there were not that many provisional ballots related to identification and most of the identification- related ballots were related to the photo id requirements, a few of them are related to the help america up votes to act

requirement. those are the numbers, about 400 to to people had provisional ballots cast in 2008 and 129 in 2012. so you can get a sense of the rates in relation to the total ballots cast and there are some other statistics - indiana is one of the few states where you could do a trend between 2010 and 8 and 2012 -- is that there is an overall reduction in the rate to a provisional belting in the state of indiana and a reduction in the number of id-related provision of ballots that were cast. the rate at which those id- related provisional ballots were actually counted has remained about the same, roughly one in every five id-provisional

ballots actually get counted, about 80% of them do not. this research comes with some qualifications. we don't know about the folks who cast provisional bells because they did not have an id or from here. i cannot prove that. i suspect that somebody who is intent on committing fraud is not likely to create a paper trail of provisional gallatin that would lead -- provisional balloting would lead them to be caught but i cannot say that all those folks were legitimate voters. they said they were. it also does not account for ways that folks that might get caught in the photo identification requirement. we don't have really good data on how many people are deterred from going to a polling place in the first instance by the existence of foe identification

laws. -- photo identification laws. with operao an issue and acceptance of provisional ballots. they may not be -- there's also an issue with acceptance a provisional ballots. voters may not be accepting them. if they don't have an idea might walk away from the polling place. i love poll workers, they are wonderful folks, but in indiana at least, they have an awful tough time getting the paperwork filled out right. there is often provisional ballots that are in envelopes and you have no idea why the provisional ballot was actually cast. provisional balloting and how we

come up with good practices of about it should also be a part of the conversation going forward from the 2012 election cycle. this research suggests that maybe photo identification does not have the mass of disenfranchising impact some folks might think. i think you got a sense of that earlier on the stage when the democrats were open to talking about some kind of voter identification system. it might suggest that since there is a reduction in provision of ballots and id ballots that there are less photo id problems but it could be just that the -- those folks are staying home. i think it suggests that provisional ballots are more likely to be filled out by folks

who voted democratic and they are more likely to have id problems. the biggest difference between 2008 and 2012 in india and that is what percentage of the electorate cast ballots in the democratic or republican primary? in 2008, about 75% of the voters in the 2008 primary cast a ballot. in the 2012 primary, it is almost reversed, 75% cast a ballot in the kind -- in the republican contest. it suggests that provisional ballots skew in favor, if that's the way to put it, of democratic voters. i think we really need to find out how many folks are being deterred from going to a polling

place at all to find out the disk and frightening impact of photo id requirements. -- to find out the disenfranchising impact a photo id requirements. now the provisional ballots are subject to public access, we could actually perform a census of folks in indiana went to a polling place and did not have an id and figure out what is going on with these folks and why this is happening. the hardest is to figure out how many people were offered a provisional ballot and how many people did not accepted. with that data, i will turn it back over. [applause] >> that is a nice set of perspectives and maybe we can synthesize that and find out what common ground we have. let me start with secretary husted to follow up on the west

virginia practice which is photo id to register but only a signature to vote. is there a problem with that? >> honestly, there are a dozen ways you can do this and it would be perfectly fine as long as it is accepted with in your state. if you can get political peace within your state and people generally agree on what the rules are and you have that balance, every time you add something that makes it easier to vote, you have to balance that with something that makes it secure. the more secure you make it, you need to make sure you are not denying access. i think it is a formula that needs to be accepted state to state. are a number of ways you can do this. i made a proposal when photo

i.d. was being discussed in ohio and it had the value of being ignored by both political parties. they wanted what they wanted. they did not want what was a balance. there are any number of ways you can do this. it is about getting people -- for me, it is not the policy. the policies can be worked out. there are a number of ways to run a good election. it is about setting aside the partisanship and the people who are constantly driving for political advantage at every turn with rules for voting that is the biggest problem. >> do you have something? to follow up and push back on the methodology, in the current climate, where voter id news stories and talk of voter suppression is in the air

whether there might not be a substantial number of people who stay away and therefore the provisional stuff does not capture that. >> i think it is possible. i think it is unlikely based upon the data we have that exists. for instance, -- there are surveys of non-voters that have been done. the problem is finding causation between lack of a photo i.d. and not going to cast your ballot because people will say that i did not vote because i did not have an id but i also was not registered. is that a person voted because they were not registered or because they don't have an id? even if you give them the menu like the weather was bad or they did not let the candidates, only about maybe 7% of non-voters say

lack of id, at least in indiana in 2008, only about 7% of voters say that was one of many possible issues they had to. i suspect there are not that many folks who are out there at least in indiana who are deterred. >> let me ask the two secretaries -- there was so much this current system, so much coverage, on both sides repeating charges by partisans about either voter fraud or voter suppression that you have to think that it entered the public consciousness and perhaps had an effect on turnout. for the life of me, i'm not sure what direction that was. >> for west virginia, we had a voter identification photo id bill introduced in march. that had ramifications. it did not go anywhere but there were phone calls, more phone calls than usual, for that may

primary election and because of all the publicity about photo id laws that we were having people say they needed to bring a funnel id? we sent a press release out that said no follow aideed law required the voter verification required. there were some ramifications in the air during this period >. >> ohio was discussed as a place that had a controversial new photo id law. we didn't. we did nothing new on this in this election. nothing had changed from previous elections. where we had people scratching their heads and asking questions was with early voting. early voting in ohio is done the

same whether it is by mail or in person. you felt the same five fields and that's what you do and we got inundated with calls and i got e-mails and phone calls personally that said the board of election did not ask me for id and they're not doing their job. in early voting you don't have to present identification, that is only on election day. there is just a lot of confusion about what the rules are. if you look at the facts on voter turnout in ohio, we had a record early vote turnout by 1.8 million, 100,000 more than in 2008. our alternative, when you batted in election day, was 100,000 less. -- when you ed in the election day, it was 100,000 less per it is not for lack of information in ohio, is a lack of good information. >> i want to make sure i have this right --

you don't need id if you vote early in person but you do need id if you vote on election day? >> your fogle id and utility bill, you could use all of those things or when you are voting early, you write your name and address and date of birth and driver's license number or you could provide one of the 13 additional items under signature. they cross check that against a voter data base and that's how it works in our state. >> are you voting early at your court house or in different areas? >> it is your board of elections for the designated voting centers. >> in west virginia, we have early voting in the court house and we have satellites. i am trying to figure out how you guys do that. how can you not ask for ied? >> because you are using the driver's license number or the last four digits of the sole

security number and checking that and before that envelope is opened, they check that against a statewide voter database where your signature and all that information exists. that is the same thing if you vote by mail. we have an entire buffet of options and built-in safeguards for doing so. >> that discussion just got extremely technical. >> it did. >> but there is a point to be made from how technical that discussion was. who are the people who are going to be implementing an id requirement on election day? they are poll workers who were once or twice a year and get paid very little money and it is tough. to be a poll workers. it is tough with all these roles

and the more technical they get, the more mistakes will be made. i wonder if there is something that cries out for simplicity in terms of the id requirements, may be no id requirements, because it adds another layer of complexity to the process that maybe we don't need. >> their simplicity would be great. every time we provide some new access, is accompanied by some new controversy. i absolutely agree with what you say about poll workers but let's take a step further -- it is also at our board of elections. we have boards of the elections -- the federal government was the one thing to help us, send us more money to buy new machines. our machines are old and are maimed as contras are wearing out and this is done at local level. we got addicted to the more

expensive machines in our missions are getting old and there is no federal dollars to replace them. by the way, budgets are being cut, it is going from the federal to the state to the local and we just had an announcement where the county where cnn was at, they said the board of elections laid-off 1/3 of the work force. they might be able to replace them with temporary workers down the road but it is talent and training and all of those things we continue to go on the we cannot run a world-class election system on the cheap. you cannot ask a system to do more and more and have fewer resources and less-trained people. that will not work and that is

something we have to embrace and have a discussion about rather than the shiny objects that people want to talk about that are interesting and political pundits have an easy time talking about them because it is boring and highly technical. these are the things that matter when you are administering elections. >> let me follow up on something you mentioned in your presentation. i think your office sent out absentee ballot applications to every voter in ohio. what was the thinking behind that and held was that experience? >> it was very simple, we did not want to have lines on election days of the more people that voted early, the less chance that there were going to the lines on election day. i liken the election system to a highway -- in the morning, you have a traffic jam and in the evening. you feel that -- you either

build more or high was that we tried to expand people to vote during a longer period of time or from home and that creates -- that lessens the chance for lines of the polling location. standing in line in ohio was an option because you could vote from home. even after all that, on that first morning, from the time the polls open until 9:00, there were lines in certain places because that is when people want to vote. we have been trying to push people to early votes in presidential elections specifically because that is when there is a time when you run the potential for long once at the polls. >> does voting by militarized to the different ballots -- does voting by mail give access to

the different ballots? >> people say now that everybody gets an absentee ballot, what if they don't turn it in? coming out of the category of trying to find a problem when none exists, we ended up having fewer provisional ballots than we did four years before. >> what do you guys think acceptable id should be? think ne should be necessary. >> being a law professor, we can look at the big picture and that is what we are good at. i think it is what a reasonable business person would accept as

id in order to bid -- to do business with somebody. if you want to conduct a business transaction was somebody but you want to make sure that the person you are conducting the transaction was is who they say they are, that's what i would accept. what a reasonably prudent business person who wanted to business -- >> what would you like to see if i want to do business with you? >> that's the question i want answered. maybe a credit card. >> as you cannot run for secretary of state. >> i would pull out things from my wallet. may be a credit card is enough, maybe an atm card. >> and maybe we have established an abstract, do you have thoughts? >> in ohio, i proposed -- i don't want to complicate this

spirit we have a process that is already in place that allows you to vote without a photo id by mail or in person early. we have taken care of the first 34 days and we're down to election day. what would be acceptable then? i said you could simplify it and use a photo i.d., whatever they can agree upon, or your name, address, date of birth, last four digits of your social security number, and your signature which would fall -- which would prohibit -- which would answer the question of suppression, because everybody could vote under that scenario and that would allow them to cast a ballot without worrying if they forgot their id or if they were a disabled korean war veteran and did not have a driver's license. that will allow everybody to cast a ballot without being denied the opportunity to do so.

i will come back and say that what ever you can get agreement on within your steak is the most important because it is the controversy you don't want. you need to have reasonable voice is try to sort of those issues out. >> what i presented with what we do obviously has worked. you are showing some form of identification with you are registering in person to the county clerk and showing who you are in person with your address. that has been quite consistent. >> you can have different options. >> what would the bush v gore

decision say about that? >> when we talk about -- when we talk about what other aspects -- i am the type of person and you look of the initiatives we have, you look to try to find a solution. has this been a question in west virginia with the same thoughts? is it a process that works that everybody agrees on? i think this process we have in west virginia works. there will be others in the legislature that will counter that. you will see various ied come into play. stand said that i don't so strong and hard but as long as someone is not disenfranchise, as long as there is not any cost to it or

arbitrary barriers were unrealistic regulations put on it that then you can have these requirements. how do you get to that? i think poll books might be an answer to that. there is a thought that minnesota, before their recent constitutional amendment voted to place, my friend of ross miller -- he was considering vests and this is what i have been talking about in west virginia. i talk about some of our vendors offering me electronic poll books that can store a photo or take a picture so that no one is disenfranchise and they don't have to pay even $5 for a photo id. you think that is not a lot but that is the $10 in dazzling money to run here and a $10 more to run here to get the other

ideas. that is what we cannot have. what i show is what is working in west virginia and that's why it is a bigger picture. it is not a panacea that a photo id will solve all problems. i have to play zone defense on all of this, on every different aspect. we have to stay vigilant with what ever bought a set -- foes system we are using. >> what do you think of that? >> i did not add to your question before and i still will not answer your question. you are asking the right question - [laughter] >> you, professor. >> that is from a big picture perspective. it has been an on/off switch.

are we going to have it or not to? maybe the conversational mode the next few years to a best practices -- what are the best idea practices? and the amex folks come back within 10 days to show -- indiana makes folks come back with intended to show photo id but florida is a signature matched with their poll workers. what is the best way of achieving the best results? i hope maybe the conversation will move in that direction over the next few years rather than toward this yes/no attention we have. >> not all fogle id laws are created equal. there are some that restrict photo id loss and some better called photo id + but you don't really need a photo id lot to cast a bballots. i heard a lot of this from people who say the democrats in this state passed a photo id

law, it is not really a photo i.d. low. it is a photo id-light. the details matter in this about what looks like before we get caught up. what does it really mean? >> the question we should be asking -- >> i thought i was asking the right question. >> we have a solution to something but do we have a problem to go with a solution? >> i promise the audience a chance -- >> some say we don't have a problem for some solutions. >> in person voter fraud by impersonation maybe a problem that does not exist. let's let the audience have a chance to ask some questions. there are some microphones if

you want to come up. >> there is a lot of debate but not a lot of facts. >> we don't have a lot of time, so let's keep the questions basic. >> there is impact of voter i.d. but the real -- is real impact about a voter registration deadline. have practices changed enough that we can get rid of the 29- day deadline? that stops people from casting a ballot. [laughter] >> you are doing as good a job getting answers as i was. >> i agree. i want to talk to election that minister is and how they do with this because they have to still deal with paper. at some point, i thought -- i think 30 days will be declared unconstitutional.

maybe in 10 or 15 years it will be. we will be able to do things for people everywhere in every way. >> we have same-day registration in ohio for five days of our early voting. there are examples of people who are registering -- it is currently being investigated in cairo of the county with addresses that are vacant homes -- cuyha - cuyahoga county. that is a place you will run into fraud. we are already running into it and it is a problem. >> west virginia is 21 days and clerks will tell you they need that amount of time. that is an ongoing debate. >> we catch it if it is 35 days

before the election but if you do it on election day, then you have a problem because you will hold up the results. as a check against those issues. maybe 30 days is too long but i don't think you can do it on election day. >> i would love to split the difference with you. >> i am part of the team that suits you - that sued you and the details are what matter on this. why did you try to eliminate the 35 days that you now harold and why did you try to end the last three days of early voting? >> first of all, i don't heralds the 35 days. that is what it is.

a period shorter than 30 days would be a good reform in ohio. i don't know the difference between 28 and 35 days should cause people problems and my recommendation on that was 28 days that we would have early voting. the last three days was a bipartisan recommendations that came from a by sarah's -- bipartisan group of election officials that said if we're going to have all this early voting, we need time to synchronize the voter rolls so we know who voted and who didn't on election day and whether that needs to be three days are not. it probably does not need to be that long but that is what they ask for and that is what bill legislature voted for in their bill. they voted unanimously on a bipartisan process and i have to defend laws they pass.

i just want to run an election and you tell me what the rules are of let's not fight about them until the election. >> a lot of fighting in florida. do you have real id in your state? >> yes, in west virginia. we are one of the first state to start implementing that. >> florida is a real id state. for those of you don't have it, that will be fun for your female voters. you have to show up with your court records showing your name is yours under marriage and men have no such problem. >> maybe same-sex marriage will change that. >> florida has no match, no vote at the front and and you are not eligible to be registered

unless you are in the database and match up with the department of corrections. you might match up with highway safety and we concur robert the last four digits of your souls such security and then you are allowed to be registered. that is south florida allows for an individual that has no idea to sign a provisional ballot and sign the signature because we will take best thing mr. back to the office and compared to the database to confirm that this is the same signature of the person we have cleared 10 years ago. we know you are eligible. this is a different model depending on the picture i.d. on election day and that is checking before we put you on the rolls to confirm you as a voter that should be part of the discussion as well, it seems to me. >> this has to do with

uniformity -- a lot of the conversation over the last couple of your fall -- years focused on uniformity. i agree on the premise but we disagree on what the definition is the problem we saw it is to strive to uniformity. uniform days and the process of mail and absentee ballots resulted in non-uniformity in voting for certain candidates. the mail boat was predominantly used by -- the male vote was used predominantly by white voters. we know the number of voters in an urban county are significantly higher than their rural county region >> not agree with your

conclusions. you rascal a question about uniformity. i want to make sure the rules are the same so that betty jones voting in one county has the same access to the ballot as betty jones voting in another county in ohio. the access is not about county, is about a voter. what accessed is that voter have? for the first time in ohio history, we set uniform rules and laws of every single voter was treated equally. the county's use to set their own days at all hours and some voters that absentee ballot requests and i said everybody should be treated the same peri. every registered voter should receive an absentee ballot request. this is so that it that individual voter has the same access within every county. that is what we had and i believe that is what we should have in any election system. >> if the rules from a county of

5000 differs from a county of 400,000, the number of voters are different. >> they have an ample number of machines they can use to accommodate that or they can move to a new site that is even bigger that accommodates all of that. it is just as hard for a rural voter who lives a long way from their county seat and is not have access to public transportation to actually get there and cast their vote than it is for any voter in an urban county who has public transportation and has a number of ways they can get there. >> more question -- -- one more question -- >> this is the second time we have heard from the states that because of voter i.d. only

affects a minority of people, it is not something to be concerned about and that is what we have heard. only 7% of people named as a factor to vote. equating that is a small number with at not being something to be concerned about, i am interested in hearing the perspective on small verses important. i got to work on the pennsylvania voter i.d. case and interview people in pennsylvania about the experience they were having. the stories are harrowing of people did not wear a colostomy bag for a day because they did not want to use it and people in a wheelchair is being sent to three locations, veterans who showed up with their ideas and were disabled and waited for 10 hours and people with misspelling of their names --

i am asking about implementation. even if we believe that these laws are correct and we should have them, can we implement them in a way that is fair? >> i think you could look at the numbers that are generated from the primary elections and i of numbers from 2008 that show about 1000 votes not being able to cast accountable ballots because they lack id. look at those numbers and say that against the amount of voter i.d. says we should not have voter i.d. laws. i don't think the numbers prove the point that i'd be lost on matter. they do matter to individuals, that's for sure. >> thank you and join me in thanking this terrific panel. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> as the population of senior citizens continues to grow, spending on federal programs for

older americans continues to increase republican senators on the aging committee will hold a briefing on the issue at 10:00 eastern where you can watch live coverage for the senate is in this morning and will work on the loan guarantee program of the fdic at 10:00 eastern on c- span 2. on c-span 3, an examination of some of the fiscal problems facing state governments live from the u.s. chamber of commerce at 9:00 eastern. up next, today's headlines and calls live on "washington journal." in about 45 minutes, we will continue to look at the so- called fiscal cliff and the budget cuts that take place in january. after that, we will examine the po