had high voter turnout. >> i will point out, senator king did not wear a feather bowa at his inaugural party. >> well, you don't know that. o, i have -- >> i reserve my comments and look forward to hearing from the witnesses. >> we thank our witnesses. serving as as in co-chair, he is a partner in a law firm. he is germ counsel to the democratic national committee in the 2008 and 2012 election cycles. was general counsel to obama for president. his credentials are strong. mr. ben ginsburg. as serving as co-chairman, he is a partner a law firm. in 2012 and 2008, he served as

national counsel to the romney for president campaigns and i won't get into it, but he has had a profound effect in our electoral system. you changed america, not in a way that i liked but amazing with what you did. and we would ask each of our witnesses to limit their statements to five minutes and additional statements. without objection, additional remarks, without objection, will be read into the record. >> senator schumer, senator roberts, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity testifying today with my co-chair. we discussed in advance how we would organize it so i'm going to open with some general considerations identified in the report that we asked our readers to keep in mind as we laid out our recommendations and the best practices we identified. and then i'm going to illustrate

the approach we took by talking about the signature issue, the issue most associated with the commission and that is the problem of long lines at the polls. there are a number of other issues that ben will cover that we addressed in six major recommendations along with as i said, highlighted best practices. but let me say first that the commission was structured and its membership was selected on the theory that election administration is a topic of public administration and needs to be treated as such and that the voters ought to be considered very much as we would consider any other recipients of services provided, that is to say, elsewhere in their lives, americans think a good bit about customer service and how customer service is rendered to them in their roles as consumers and other walks of life and our view was and the president's intention was the commission consider the voter as entitled

to that level of customer service, providing the service in the voting process that we all believe as the drivers of our democracy the voters deserve. so this theme of public administration was essential to our work. one illustration of the importance to the commission and the approach the commission took in this thought-about public administration and this emphasis on public administration is our reliance on data. our view was we ought to look at election administration as thoroughly as possible through the lens as the best possible information, social science and research that was available. and we were very fortunate that some of the witnesses who came before the commission were able to fashion fresh data for purposes of their testimony that the commission could rely upon and that included an extraordinary survey of several thousand state and local election administrators conducted by the state's political scientists and survey

research experts and we gleaned very significant information about some of the issues we addressed from that survey. overall throughout the report, the effort was to look very closely at the evidence, how the electoral system was performing. and in that connection, one of the recommendations that we make is that we need in this country much more collection and analysis of data to enable us to pinpoint the strength and weaknesses in the performance of our electoral process. beyond that, there was a few other and i will go through them, considerations that we discussed at the outset of our report. does one size fit all? we have many different jurisdictions. some believe that you cannot generalize all reforms across jurisdictional lines and to some extent that is true, there are enough common features across the united states that one size in many respects can fit all in many of these recommendations

and the recommendations we have made, we have made on the basis that they truly fit all. issue of resources. election administration costs money. and too often we heard from administrators that budget priorities are such, the fiscal pressures on the states and local jurisdictions are such that too often the needs of election administrators, the fiscal needs, are shuffled to the bottom of the deck. we don't make specific recommendations, that was not our charge, but it was important to note that we cannot have elections without money. thirdly, the technology challenge, and i leave it to ben to discuss in greater details but one warning bell that we rang here was the impending crisis in voting technology. enforcement of existing law. it's very important that even though we don't make legislative recommendations, for us to call attention to problems in compliance with existing federal statutes that were enacted to

protect certain voters, minority, disabled voters and voters among our overseas and military population. some of these statutes had significant effect, but there are some gaps in compliance, compliance with the americans with disability act, compliance with the voting rights act and the provisions that protect language minorities and performance of public assistance agencies under the national voter registration act in supporting the registration process. so those are fundamental points that we make. and let me say a point about lines. there are many factors that feed into lines. we tried to analyze what those factors might be. they raise a whole host of issues that each can be i individually addressed and the problem with lines can be substantially resolved. and we also, and this is something we call attention to,

publicizing online tools on our web site and to be hosted on the voting technology web site that administrators can use immediately and improve upon to allocate resources within the polling place and plan for long lines and address them. this is a report but also a project and our work begins now to work with you, the congress, state legislative leaders, community leaders, election administrators around the country to see their effective implementation. >> thank you, mr. chairman for having us here today. it's been a pleasure to work with bob on this. it is fair to say we are both proud of the work of our commission. we were charged with making recommendations to the state and local officials who actually put on our elections to remove barriers to dualy qualified

citizens being able to cast their votes easily. elections can be conflict between republicans and democrats but a subject where republicans and democrats can agree on the basic principle and on commonsense solutions to make the voting experience better. bob and i were fortunate to work with eight other commissioners in a talented research director from whom we learned a tremendous amount. we were reached to reach bipartisan and unanimous agreement on best practices. we found that the basic principles on which republicans and democrats agree is that every legally registered voter has the right to be able to cast his or her ballot easily and without impediments. as to the details of voting, bob and i had history. we have been on the opposite side of many partisan battles over the years and will be again as we go to the path of the elections.

among those battles have been a lot of recounts. all those recounts were instructed to this exercise, because they provide an unparalleled view of how the system works. we'll both tell you there are problems with our system of voting. the commission presented a unique opportunity for us to address some of those topics to both republicans and democrats. and which we need to do something about. that is not a partisan issue. it is trying to get right something that very much needs to be gotten right. in fact, it's so important to get it right, that it deserves doing even if it doesn't satisfy everything to one party or another, believes need to be fought in this area. as for fixing these problems, the commission recognized elections are administered by approximately 8,000 different jurisdictions largely using volunteers who don't receive much training. achievinging uniformity in our

elections has proven challenging. let me turn to a few big picture issues that jurisdictions face. the state of our voting equipment and technology is an impending crisis. the machines being used in virtually every jurisdiction purchased 10 years ago with funds after the florida recount will no longer be functional within the next 10 years. voting equipment has not kept up with technological advances in our daily lives. the current equipment is expensive and unsatisfactory to virtually every elections official with whom the commission spoke. that is due to a federal certification process that is broken and must be reformed. this is a subject to which few are paying attention and will not end well on its current path. one of the issues we heard about consistently was having adequate physical facilities for polling places. in most communities, those facilities were schools. but officials in an increasing

number of jurisdictions cite safety concerns as a reason for not making schools available for voting. adequate facilities to vote and safety for our children cannot be competing interests. the commission called attention to the problem and to recommend security concerns be addressed by making election day an in-service day for students and teachers. bob already talked about long lines. let me touch on some of the other subjects that the commission specific recommendations and best practices to the state and local officials. early voting was one. our commission charge was to make it easier for eligible voters to vote. a majority of states with both democratic and republican state officials leading the way now have early voting and told us that early voting is here to stay and increasingly demanded by voters. the details of the number of days and hours will vary by state, county and locality and

the decisions are best made there. whether to help ensure that only dualy qualified voters vote were to facilitate more people to vote easily, the commission found agreement and support across the political spectrum for more accurate voter lists. we make two recommendations in that regard. one is the adoption and use of more online registration to support the voter web site and secondly, we recommend that all states join two existing two programs, the interstate voter cross check or kansas project and election registration and information center. both allow states to share data in ways that will make their lists more accurate on their own initiative. the report touches on a number of subjects that are summarized in my testimony. military and overseas voting,

dissabled policies and law that require accessible polling, a group that is growing larger with the baby boom generation, recommendations that entail state and local voting officials meeting with members of the disabled community and those with language proficiency issues to work out solutions for local polling areas. and data and testing. there should be testing of our machines after each election to see how well they performed and share information among jurisdictions. and there should be more uniform collection of data, because as our political scientist friends led by our research director at stanford university told us, more data leads to better solutions. with that, thank you again for having us and i know bob and i would be happy to answer questions. >> thank you both for your report and excellent testimony. i'll start off.

the report recommends that states adopt online voting registration, reform that improves accuracy and saves money. 19 states have done it, so that means 31 have not. why -- what is the barrier to the other states doing it and is there anything we can do to overcome those barriers? we are not seeing barrier so much. sometimes it takes a while for the discussion to take place within the state and ultimately decisions to be reached in favor of online registration. we are optimistic that is one of the developments. a key flukes of the technology into the electoral process that is going to move across the

country. and one of our goals in keeping with the project is to go out and as we have been invited to do and make the case wherever we can and whenever that case can be made, whether by federal legislative leaders, state legislative leaders, voting rights groups, community leaders, that case does need to be made. >> is there an upfront cost? >> there is an upfront cost. >> how much is it? significant? >> it is not significant and overtime, states that have adopted online registration, it is a net savings. >> we have a lot of instances in our government where an upfront cost is recouped but because of budgets, people don't want to make the expenditures in year one and year two. that is not a barrier in your eyes? >> no. >> second, the report states that electronic poll books have

the potential to solve election-day issues that election officials want this technology. can you discuss how electronic poll books make a difference and what is delaying the adoption of that one? >> much easier how to describe how it makes a difference than to describe why it's been a problem. the information that can be put on an electronic poll book takes care of a lot of the old paper that's in a polling place. you can call up much more information, including signature verification and photo i.d.'s and can cut down on the traditional line problems that have plagued some jurisdictions on election day. so they are a low-cost, simple solution to putting a lot of paper in one place where poll workers can access it easily. >> their implementation?

>> this goes into what we have fallen into with technology. part of the problem is that certification program for new ballot systems is kind of broken and new systems are having a great deal of difficulty coming online. because the certification process now takes so long and is virtually impossible to get through, some of these solutions are medicalsome for industry to put them in place. >> next, delaware is highlighted in your report as a national leader in implementing the national voter registration act. delaware seems to seamlessly transfer from motor vehicles to the election rolls. can you explain why it is better than what most other states do and again, why aren't more states doing it? >> delaware, in particular,

because of our concern about the inconsistent performance of departments of motor vehicles across the country in implementing their responsibility under the motor-voter act, this is a significant issue. one of our commission -- commissioners has really called attention to this as a major, major shortfall in compliance with federal law and we are calling attention to the fact, that a, there is no reason why these d.m.v.'s performance cannot be improved and models like delaware to which states can look, really illustrate how it can be done and what a difference it makes. there really needs to be major consistent attention to the fact that this is a serious, serious problem in the operation of current federal statutes, that is to say compliance with those

statutes. >> my time has expired. senator roberts. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to talk about the long line problem. and we often hear about long lines are the result of some kind of a real plan of some sort that certain areas are being targeted and the lines are a result of a deliberate effort to disenfranchise certain groups. my question is, did you find any evidence of that? second, are these lines resulting from management problems or deliberate schemes to disenfranchise people? almost we saw is that exclusively -- >> turn the microphone towards you. >> that this was a management issue, that there are any number of solutions that we put forward in the report to deal with the

specific problems of long lines. we held extensive hearings with the jurisdictions in the jurisdictions where long lines had occurred and we found that there are -- the problems are all identifiable and solveable and no plots of conspiracies that caused the lines. we spent time in florida and what we found in the polling places where there were long lines in those counties, that occurred in less than 1% of the polling places in that particular county. that would suggest resource allocation issue and way to look at management techniques and facilities to be able to improve that. and one of the things that bob mentioned in his testimony was the providing of online tools for precinct officials to be able to gauge the flow over the

course of the day and allocate the equipment they have within a ounty. >> testing, one, two, three. your report argues in favor of expanding early voting. do you think the states who have -- adopted that inaudible]

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>> several issues come up with regards to the campaign and the voters who voted 45 days early have no chance to factor that in with regards to the election day eriod. there are two points i would make about the early voting and the issue you raised about whether or not it cuts off the opportunity for citizens. the first is that without seeking out to be the amount of early voting a state may provide , those actively resist the notion that they all need to be funneled through on one day from 7:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. the traditional election day model has not only broken down from the standpoint of

administrators, but less feasible and runs up against the grain of voter expectation, that they should be cramped into this one day to vote and creates a whole host of problems. the second point i would make, senator, is that the studies show that the voters who vote early who are the voters who are the most settled on their choice. they have made up their minds, whether you call them the most partisan or idealogically committed but one way or the other, they are most likely to be least moved over the remaining days of the season. on balance, when you weigh what voters expect and what they ought to be offered against the risks that they will be denied the opportunity for information they need for deliberation, our commission concluded that early voting in some form or another

wins out. >> i believe this is an area where the individual states has a feel for how much early voting their voters want and we did hear across the political spectrum from officials of both parties who say that voters in many jurisdictions really appreciate, expect to be able to have some options at the time that they cast their vote. and in terms of resources, it can be more efficient for jurisdictions to have early voting and not have to jam everything on to election day. that's not always true. but i think this is one of those areas where we aimed the report at state and local officials and they are the ones who end up deciding. >> i thank you. there is an article by norm

orenstein and back in fwouf but i think it is very real van. early voting necessary, but toxic in large doses. the article details the dangers inherent in early voting and the points he makes are at least worth considering. i commend it to the attention of all of my colleagues. i have some other questions. but my time has expired. maybe we can get back on another round or i could submit them for the record. >> i agree to continue to chair the hearing. no problem with the second round. senator klobuchar is next and we have an executive session to nominate two people to the election assistance commission, and we will do that off the floor at about noon when we have a series of votes. with that, let me call on

senator klobuchar and thank senator king for agreeing to chair. >> i want to thank you for that consumer model that you have developed here that people shouldn't be waiting in line and you can look at it in that simple fashion, but i wanted to ask what senator roberts was asking of you, when you look at these things, you said there were management issues and i could see it in our states where mistakes are made. but i think some fft efforts that are going on right now in some of the states, you have come out for early voting, north carolina and florida have enacted laws that would cut back on early voting and north carolina stopped same-day registration. what i'm concerned about is the effect to disenfranchise voters whether done at the individual precinct level.

these are laws that are being enacted with stringent requirements. do you think some of that is going on? and number two, just to get the stuff done that you want to get done and have the political will to do it in these states and congress when we see the kinds of things that are going when so many states are back-tracking from this idea that we should allow more people to vote? >> two quick responses to your comment. we were surprised -- not surprised, but we were struck, i'll put it this way, by the testimony around the country, democratic and republican, in jurisdictions that might be more red than blue or more blue than red, that when the lights were off and the doors were closed or in hearings where the agenda was well-defined, wished to see election administration, in fact, be first-rate public

administration for the benefit of the board voters. and that is what we heard. we had the opportunity for anybody who wanted to be heard to be heard. we might have had the pportunity for very many voices. it was the opportunity for people to voice their wish that we had an election system we could be proud of. outside of many of the issues we discussed, there are controversial enactments that the parties are quite divided about. and i assure you if ben and i went off into a room, we would brawling about those issues. it's painful, but we are holding out as long as we can. but that's not the whole story. and the second point i would make and this is the critical point that if we strengthen some of the key administrative sort of features of our electoral

infrastructure, if we have an understanding that we are going to strive for the 30-minute wait time maximum that we articulate in the report and address some of the issues that lead to long lines, we are going to risk the vulnerability of the system to partisan mischief. senator roberts said could you have plots to create long lines? there is more vulnerability of the system if the system is weak and will break down. if it's strong, less likely it will break down. those would be two of the responses i would offer you. >> i think this area is fraught with partisan feelings. i think that is unfortunate. think you could not equate cutting back hours in early voting with trying to disenfranchise people. in north carolina and florida, as an example, no one has

suggested ended early voting. what people have suggested is that there are administrative concerns about having unlimited early voting. that is a fair debate to have. nd does not entail voter disenfranchisement and we get into detours on this issue all too often. in all the studies we saw, early voting does not increase turnout. that is an unproven assertion that having more hours increases turnout. >> a little bit harder to say that the states you mentioned as having early voting do have a history of increased participation. so i think the laboratory of the states to see if same-day registration works or not is not yet been taken on and i think in some of the states where there is although turnout, same-day

registration would create all sorts of problems for the administrators that might, in fact, deinvolve into problems like longer -- did he involve into longer lines. it is an untested area. >> for eight years i enforced our election laws and looked back through every single count of double voting and some of them were father and son with the same name and saw so little fraud in a county with over two million people. and someone might have been mad vote ted twice or a felon who was on probation and voted. i'm glad about what you are doing. i don't see as the major problem as much as it is it has become

hard for people to vote or they don't want to stand in these lines because they hear about the lines and don't want to go out and vote. i appreciate what you are doing. one more question about your recommendations. on the schools. i wanted to know about what they identified what security issues. have there been incidents at schools? we have a lot of voting at schools in minnesota and central place where people feel comfortable to go and how do we fix it? >> i think this area was one of the greatest areas of surprise to us when we heard from so many local officials that it was a problem. the concern is that since the incidents at schools with shootings and violence, that having strangers walking around in the schools and on the campuses was a source of concern. and that's the reason that some states, some localities are cutting back the use of schools. it's a tremendous problem.

because in the majority of jurisdictions, schools provide the best facilities for voting. there is a.m. will space, accessible, all the things you want in a polling place. so the conflict between the interest and safety to children and voters is a conflict that should not be allowed to exist. >> you suggest about having volunteers or something? >> to have a school holiday on election day so it would be a training day for teachers. >> you are not changing the school calendar, because they would take the in-service day -- >> and have a voting day as well. that makes sense. >> i'm sure my kids would vote for an extra day off. >> it's an in-service day. senator schumer mentioned laboratories of democracy and the states are laboratories of

democracy and we don't do a good job of sharing information. because what you have done here is that function of collecting data and information across the states and sharing best practices. this is principally a state and local issue. i will in echoing senator roberts, we had a situation in a maine election where we had very early voting. it was a month or more before the election, the dynamics of the election changed in the last several weeks and we actually had people going into their town offices trying to retrieve their early vote to change it because of developments in the election. so i do think there is a legitimate issue about how far in advance, because elections do tend to sometimes come into focus in the last several weeks and we actually had that experience. i knew people that went to their town office and said how can i

get my vote back, i want to change it. and they couldn't. and it was a very distinct situation. the long lines issue, how widespread is it? is it a national problem or is it extremely localized? you mentioned in one district, it was 1% of the precincts or something like that. are we searching for a federal solution to what is really a very isolated local problem that needs to be dealt with by local officials? mr. bauer, you want to tackle that? >> he aren't realming a federal solution but realming a series reforms by state and local governments can keep the wait lines down and comply with the 30-minute standard that we have articulated. condly, it is a problem --

obviously, it is going to be scattered throughout the country. long lines, some have some real problems with long lines. but the best data indicates that in the united states, five million americans waited more than an hour to vote and another five million between a half an hour to an hour and 10 million americans is significant number of people and other jurisdictions who haven't had that experience could be significantly at risk if there are not if they are not ajudgments to the electoral process to address problems, like for example, weak voter rolls or inadequate voting machinery and then you would have lines where you didn't have them before. >> is this a truly national problem or is this something that is very localized? >> i think in our experience, it

was pretty localized. any time you have 10 million people voting for long periods of time, that would suggest you need a solution to that because it shouldn't happen. we had 130 million voters roughly in the last election and that is a significant number, but it is localized. and what we saw is there is not one reason that there are long lines. in fact in different jurisdictions there are different places. you know some jurisdictions will have 100 polling places and put 10 in each precinct and not take into account a rush to registration in a couple of precincts so you have machines in one place standing idle and a line at another. place where people are voting is too small and creates a line. there are a number of commonsense solutions to the

problem that we heard about from both our friends in the private sector and from election administrators and bob discussed them in his testimony. and we lay out solutions that can be used on the local level to solve the individual problems that will occur. >> i'm particularly concerned about something that you mentioned, phrase was impending crisis in election technology and you went on to mention about federal certification. could you expand on that, what the issue is and what we can do about it. >> yes, there are a couple of points to be made and i suspect bob will want to add some as well. the current certification system is using standards that were developed in 2005 and 2007 to approve new technology. well, that was before anybody had an ipad or tablet or many of the devices we use today.

because the standards have never been updated largely because of the election assistance commission. e whole thing that a machine manufacturer has to go through to get new equipment passed so it can be used by the different states has become extremely time consuming and extremely expensive. so it's a federal certification process? >> it currently is, yes. but there are two jurisdictions, los angeles county and travis county, austin texas, that have decided that they are going to build their own systems because things aren't working on the federal level. before the process of certification became federalized, it was handled by the state election directors, and that seems to have been a process that worked better and in fact, may be a solution going forward. so it's not necessarily a federal solution that's needed

to the problem, but something ertainly needs to be done. >> is it to undo the prior federal solution? >> perhaps. it would not be the first time. >> mr. bauer, your thoughts. >> i agree, we did not choose to be prescriptive, we didn't say it needs to be addressed a particular way, but we did point out -- and this by the way, is t intended as an adverse reaction to the commission. our report is replete with references to the top flight work they have done developing best practices and december imnaturing them to the jurisdictions. but here, knowing there is going to be continued conflict about its role, there is a structural blockage that needs to be addressed and we can't wait for someday we might hope for when partisan fevers will subside and

the the commission will experience a new dawn in this particular area. the problem that ben has identified is too urgent and some answer has to be found. >> senator roberts, second round. coming back o me at this point that as usual, you have focused on the very questions that i was going to ask and our witnesses with their expert knowledge have already answered them. so the question is, do i simply repeat the questions you have asked and have them do it over ain or simply ask permission o put this article by norm

ornstein, early voting necessary but toxic in large doses. not going to read it to you but commend it to the attention of everybody. i think it is still very viable today. and i thank the witnesses and everybody concerned with this and since my questions are a duplication of the questions already asked, i yield back. and i thank you, sir. >> senator klobuchar. >> i have a few more questions about some actual individual recommendations you had. first i thought that was interesting was the internet feed idea. we put a camera on rising waters on the river and everyone in the community tunes in to see what is happening so they can see it or we use this all the time for weather. people are constantly checking today, right, when the storm is coming in tonight and the simple idea that people could with

simple technology check to see what is happening with voting lines in their precincts. would you be turning a camera on the people or just giving reports? >> i think what we had envisioned is that the administrators would be continuously assessing wait times and posting reports that citizens could result if they sort of plan out, when it would be most reconvenient for them and efficient for them to vote. and as you pointed out, this is fairly straightforward. it is one of the ways in which we believe we have to be continuously thinking about the introduction of technology to support the voting process. >> put election administrator saying no wait time -- >> half an hour, 45 minutes, correct. >> then you have another one on poll working and training and discussed the importance of that

and professional workers operating in the polling places and training standards for poll workers. how would this work? >> again, it's something that really can be talked about by the state but implemented by either the state or local jurisdictions. poll workers are the point of contact for most voters. so having well trained poll workers is extremely important to the smooth functioning of the system and just the way voters feel about voting. it comes down to training. and whether that is a top priority or not with local administrators to be able to recruit poll workers. one of the laments we heard is how difficult it is to recruit poll workers, to find enough to be in the polling places. so we have some suggestions about using college students and even high school students,

apparently high school students are more reliable in showing up than college students. go figure. and to encourage businesses to allow their employees to be able to help out as poll workers on election day and then have sufficient training. >> your report talked about the importance of access to information and languages other than english, including ballots in other languages, outreach to language outlets, there would be some efforts. we made efforts in minnesota with asian and pacific islander groups and why is access important to these groups so important? >> we want to say that the broader theme that the commission struck and i think it's well within its charge is improving the voter experience for language minority voters to go to the polls and find there

is nobody there to help them who can speak their language, not consistent with offering the same experience to all of our voters that all of our voters deserve. and there is support that by federal law, this congress has tendered to these voters and the statutes that provide for this protection are not drawn compliance. in a variety of ways in the localities recruiting poll workers with language capability and then on the more -- on the next scale, next point up the scale, devoting their efforts to comply with protecting language minorities. it is absolutely critical to have respect for the voter. >> one of the things you talk about in here is people serving overseas in our military and having online registration materials would be so helpful to them. i think it makes a lot of sense. do you want to explain that.

>> we found inconsistencies among the states in the sort of usefulness of their web sites for people serving in the military, especially people serving in the military overseas or living overseas. and so there are some states that seem to have morrow bus sites than others. websites is the easiest way to communicate if you are overseas or in the military, much more so than postal service or even a direct delivery system. and so, we would encourage at least the provision of registration materials on state web sites to be enhanced in the states. >> ok. thank you very much. >> i want to follow up again on the question of certification, because you have both identified -at-us s a kind of coming wave of replacement machines with new technology and if the

certification system is broken, that could be a real problem in six to 10 years. is the problem the structure and lack of functionality of the e.a.c. or the idea of federal certification itself? i see those two separate issues. if the e.a.c. tomorrow became fully functional, would this open the process and we would take care of this in an expeditious manner or should we consider saying this is a state and local responsibility, why do we need federal certification? thoughts.rg, your >> it's an area where federal certification makes sense where the states desire it. there needs to be a central body to be able to judge machines and give the states some comfort in

the quality of machines. >> like u.l. underwriters laboratories for appliances. >> the state directors forming a group was the model before the e.a.c. i would agree that the e.a.c. and its functionality is a complete separate question wrapped up in a lot of other different regs. >> but it's a question that's important because if it doesn't get fixed, then we don't get the certification, correct? >> yes. i'm partial to the state election directors' solution for it. i think that could happen much more expeditiously with a greater need. there would be a federal rule in terms of the expertise and in terms of the expertise that would need to be brought to it. but that's not necessarily through the current certification process. >> mr. bauer, your thoughts on my question.

>> i think you posed the question correctly and it is possible to confuse the issues. we would not have arrived at this conclusion i don't think and made this recommendation if the e.a.c. in this particular area hadn't been in some what in a state of paralysis and this never developed and the e.a.c. was correctly functioning could it discharge its role? the answer is yes. that may not prove to be the case and can't wait for a solution that may not be available to us in the political atmosphere and other alternatives have to be developed. >> would it take legislation for those alternatives, the certification is just behind the dam, right? it can't happen. what do we do? this is a problem that is going to come at us in the next two to four years.

>> i think that is part of the discussion that needs to take place right now which is what steps should be taken and how could they develop those alternatives. we indicated only in broad brush strokes what the alternatives might be but we didn't grapple with the details in this report. >> the state directors created a certifying agency would be acceptable alternative. would that be acceptable to you or is this a federal responsibility? >> i would be prepared to consider all the alternatives. i wouldn't want any position that we take -- one of the ncerns we have had, be a damning conclusion about the e.a.c. and that's not my attention. but any alternative that is an alternative is one i would consider. >> even if the e.a.c. is

functional, does this need to be a federal responsibility, i guess is the question i'm asking? >> i don't know i would define it as a federal responsibility by necessity but i'm not prepared to say there is an alternative. i'm not prepared at this point because you i have not reached a conclusion which of the alternatives, the one ben suggested, potentially another, with more federal involvement might be the most effective. what we need to do is focus on what would be the most effective and i don't have a conclusion. >> we have to do something. the alarm bells are ringing. >> if i might, senator. the way the system works is that different states have different standards. almost inevitably they say the machines that are used in their state need to have been certified by -- right now the existing structure. it's not that there's federal legislation or a federal role that particularly blesses a particular machine when it gets

done. there's still state legislation that refers back to a central testing facility for the machines to be sure that they are worthy of use. that can or cannot be a federal function that group that is judging the quality of the machines. >> or if i may, senator, it could be a function that is not federally supported. >> well, thank you both for your thoughts on this. and if you have additional thoughts on this important issue, please file them with the committee. any other questions? on behalf of the committee, i would like to thank both of you for your important system and particularly for your work on this commission. it is important -- it's important to the people of america and important to our process and who we are as a country and i really appreciate the work that you've done on this and thank you very much. and this will conclude today's hearing. [captions copyright national

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>> on the next "washington of nal," look at the impact the keystone xl pipeline. and talk to co-host of msnbc "the cycle." and former federal energy regulatory commission chairman will discuss the u.s. electric grid. "washington journal" begins live t 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> although history might make only passing reference to the f-100, it's not because they weren't there in numbers. perhaps not as glamorous as other planes, their contribution to the war effort was irreplace

able. -- irreplaceable. >> beautiful. absolutely beautiful. absolutely beautiful. it just seems so familiar to actually sit here. >> when we put it back together, you will have to come see it. >> absolutely. absolutely. >> from my personal ties to this airplane, this is the airplane i flew in vietnam, tail number. of the 226 combat missions i flew, i flew 180 missions in this airplane. it's my titanium mistress. it's what brought me home at times when it probably shouldn't have, when i abused it and did things to survive, punished it and held together. it is an airplane that i have such strong feelings for. there is no way i couldn't bring it home, if i could. interesting story. i had a painting done by an

aviation artist to paint my airplane in its battle gash and he asked me what happened to it. and when i contacted that person he told me where it was in massachusetts and that got the ball rolling and i said if there is any way we can bring that airplane out of the cold and present it to our museum patrons in the combat form that it was, that would be my goal in life and that's what we are working to. >> this weekend, a look behind the history and literary life of macon, georgia and the aviation museum, saturday at noon on c-span2. >> the context here is that lee enjoys a reputation in the modern day as someone who

counseled acceptance and submission and resignation to the situation. and that has always struck me as -- it's a series that doesn't add up in the sense that we know lee was the most prestigious man in the south and we know the south didn't submit to the political will of the north. confederates began to contest the northern understanding of the meaning of the war and peace and plans for reconstruction and contested them through political means and violent means. and what i found is that in the eyes of confederates, lee was not a symbol of submission but unbowed pride and kind of measured defiance. >> rethinking grant and lee, saturday night at 10:00 eastern and sunday morning at 11:00, part of a three-day presidents'

day weekend on american history tv. >> the senate voted to raise the federal debt ceiling without conditions. ae senate nearly approved motion to advance the bill after ted cruz threatened to filibuster. he was quoted saying that in my view every republican should stand together against raising the debt ceiling without structural reform on our out of control spending. it was added with a vote. mitch mcconnell and john cornyn changed their votes. bill goes to president obama for his signature. for more, we spoke with a capitol hill reporter. >> caitlin huey-burns is joining us. there was a clean bill to lift