to the report that we have in front of us begin? >> it began in june of last year. >> after the disclosures? >> yes, after the disclosures. a number of members of congress and the president asked us to conduct the study of the 215 program, and we embarked on it almost immediately. >> you were aware of the 215 program at the time? >> prior to the unauthorized disclosures? i only joined the board in late may -- >> was the board aware of the 215 program beforehand? > as i recall, senator whitehouse, we learned of the program shortly before that. i can't give you an exact date, @month or d put it several weeks before. -- put it at a month or several weeks before. >> why was it that you were not aware of this until just shortly before that?

our agency consists, before mr. madine was concerned, our agency consisted of four part-time members who could work about one day a week with no staff. we were struggleling merely to -- struggling merely to get it up. we were nowhere near the volume of intake we'll be at in the future. that was part of it. >> so as far as you're concerned, nothing was withheld from you. it was you didn't have the a perfect ture to grind through -- aperture to grind through all the different programs. >> literally, senator, we had a beforeg scheduled on 215 the snoweden -- snowden leaks, and literally the person was hit by a bus the weekend before he was due to brief us and we had to cancel the briefing. he was in a car accident. >> we have seen no indication

there was an effort to withhold information about this program either prior to the disclosures or subsequent to the disclosure. >> i think we learned -- >> the gap is actually on your end in terms of having the capacity to look into the breadth of various programs. >> i would just add that i think during this fairly tumultuous year in which the four of us with no staff went racing around trying to learn as much as we could about a variety, wide variety of programs by many different agencies, not just n.s.a., the one question, or the one thing i learned most was that you have to know how to ask the right questions. if you ask the right questions, the information is forthcoming. we had no incidents where they said we won't tell you or we absolutely refuse. you do have to know how to ask a second round of questions. so we were just getting, i

think, to that point of sophistication. >> as a body had you gone into operation on what date? >> we got sometime in august we were confirmed in the prior august. >> august, 2012. >> shortly thereafter we were sworn in. >> there's an idiosyncrasy to our statute i would point out. only the four part-time members were confirmed in august of 2012. only the chairman has the statutory authorization to hire staff or an executive director. and mr. medine was not confirmed until may of 2013. we did not actually have the capacity to hire staff or executive director, to say nothing of our attempts to find office space, internets,

everything that needs to be done for a fledgling agency. >> so, that takes me to the question of indpend advocate who could appear in -- independent advocate who could appear in the foreign intelligence court . presenting a public interest i think there was pretty broad agreement that that's a good idea. when you get into the details of how that individual gets managed and supervised, i get more anxious. i think if the person is an appointee of the chief judge of the court or chief justice of the united states, they risk becoming the pet lawyer of that individual. i think if the court can call on

hem or not at its discretion there's the risk that they get completely marginalized when they may have something useful to say. if they are not supervised by somebody, there's the risk that you just created a sinny cure -- syncicur for a small group of individuals and as long as they appeal to the political galleries that are watching their behavior adequately, they stay on even long after they have become ineffective and not noteworthy to the courtney longer because they are ineffective. there are all these dangers of how you keep that focus and how you keep that task properly done. make the case for why you all should be the oversight in the context of those dangers. >> i think we have not suggested that we should be the oversight

for the special advocate. i know some have suggested that we be the body to appoint the members, a pool of special advocates or appoint a special advocate. we intentionally did not recommend that in part because we have an oversight function of the agencies involved -- >> i misunderstood i thought that was your suggestion. >> we recommended that the court choose from private attorneys to act as a special advocate in appropriate cases, and that the reporting as to when the court exercised its jurisdiction to bring those parties in. >> how do you avoid the pet lawyer effect in that circumstance? >> we thought long and hard about where to put the special advocate. we thought first about the executive branch. we were concerned the executive branch that's approaching the fica court for the authority, it didn't make sense to have it arguing against it sefment we thought of a judiciary, and again the judiciary is supposed to be an independent arbiter. it didn't make sense to have them be the house special advocate. we thought having a private

outside attorney who would have the independence to come in and make those arguments and hopefully with some transparency about who is chosen as an advocate so the public can know who is involved and transparency about when they are chosen to participate struck the right balance between independence and accountability. >> i confess i don't have an answer to it in mind myself, but when you dive into something that is so inherently private and classified as this kind of activity, a lot of the ordinary controls vanish. that leaves some sort of small political dynamics that can take over and i think every one of us at some pont in our lives have had the experience of seeing somebody move into a position akin to this and dine out on it wore the rest of their lives without producing much value. >> that's where we hope the rotation of the judges will play a role in that.

we have also tried to empower the special advocate to take cases on appeal. there is greater oversight of the process. there is certainly a challenge there, but again we tried to strike what we felt was the best balance between the competing concerns. and also i guess worth keeping in line, the cases which are the special advocate don't happen all that often. a you institutionalize person, they are trying to figure out how to get involved. >> i think what we tried to do is to create incremental improvement in the current structure, a relatively lightweight system, and to surround it with some of the reporting that's already inherent in the fisa oversight process, that is already the government is required to report to this committee and the intelligence committees on significant opinions issued by the court. we would say, well, supplement

that by saying, was there the special advocate invoked in that case? we recommend that that reporting come to us as well. and we did think that the judges generally wanted this capability . in our discussions with the current and former judges of the court, former judges of court we talked to, it seemed that they genuinely wanted the ability to call upon a special advocate in certain cases. so i think our recommendations -- some that kind of internal checks and balances on the system. the government is currently required to notify the court when there is a significant issue posed in a case. that's one sort of triggering point. the judges them selves -- themselves, we did conclude, are generally alert to those, they

might not see all of them but alert to thefment then the reporting to this committee after the decisions are made and the question was the advocate, so you don't institutionalize it . i think you could have a good enough workable system that would significantly increase the credibility of the process, add to the credibility of the process without some kind of institutionalized weighty structure. >> i have gone well over my time and i have two distinguished colleagues here who i'm trespassing upon. i would be delighted to have another round to continue this discussion. i yield back. >> thank you, senator whitehouse. i first of all want to come back to a point that mr. medine made that we should be immensely grateful to our intelligence community nor the courageous and able contribution they make to protecting our national

security. and i said it yesterday when the armed services committee heard testimony from director clapper, we frequently emphasize the failings because we don't all see the successes. we should be mindful of the courage and dedication that they demonstrate day in and day out. ome of them in harm's way. i may be the only person on this committee who feels this way, that the ve disclosure that only 30% of these records are actually collected, and that the proportion has plummeted since 2006 is a real game changer. it calls into question the entire rational -- rationale for the metadata collection program. as a matter of process it really

raises the question of credibility for the united states government in the representations that it has made to the fisa court, its failure to correct a representation that evidently it made in 2006 that 100% of these records were going to be collected. representations made to the district courts that are currently considering this issue. to quote the deputy attorney general in testimony that he congress, deputy attorney general james cole said in justification for this program, if you're looking for the needle in the haystack, you have to find the -- you have to have the entire haystack to look through. end of quote. i'm just a country lawyer from

connecticut, but if i went to a judge as a prosecutor, i did, and i said we need a search warrant to look at the whole house because we believe there may be incriminating evidence in this house, and we need to search through every room, and that's why we are asking for the warrant to search the whole house. and then the police under my authority went to the house and only looked at maybe a few rooms and decided either they didn't have time or the rooms were dark or some were locked, i would feel an obligation to go back to the judge and say, your honor, we need to at least tell you about the search. and i could think of a number of analagous situations comparable to it. and the question of whether the whole house needs to be searched.

is in question. in this instance the rationale for this program is that all of the data has to be collected so that connections can be made, algorithms can be applied, analysis can disclose whether or not there are communication that may raise national security concerns. so i guess my question to the panel and particularly to the dissenters, ms. brand and ms. cook, doesn't this disclosure that only 30% of these records were actually collected because of the explosion in cell phone use, a legitimate reason perhaps that the government wasn't able to collect all, raise questions not only about the efficacy of the program, but also about its legal foundation. >> i think for the reasons the

chairman explained, it's touchy for us to talk about this because i'm not clear exactly on what's classified and what's true. so we can't get into that here. i do think if there were on a perspective basis, if there were an institutional reason why the government would only be tible collect 30% of the records and that's it, forever, that would diminish the value of the program from what it would be if they collected 100% of the records. i agree with that. another thing that i want to point out is something i said in my separate statement and i think others on the board agree is that for any program like this the government should be continually assessing the value of the program and whether it has diminished or could increase, whether it's diminished over time because of changed circumstances, change of behavior of suspects or the public, additional legal tools available, or other changes in the law, everything and they should continue the program. i think they do that already on

an informal basis, but i think a more formalized involvement would be good. >> we certainly all agree there should be ongoing assessment of the efficacy of these programs. if i could return to your first point with regard to the dedication of the workers in the intelligence community. again just to restate that. we found them extraordinarily dedicated. i just want to make clear that our recommendations about the legality of the program has nothing to do with the good faith in which they have operated and the administration's operated and the courts have operated with regard to this program. our effort is to take a look at -- our mandate is to look at privacy and civil liberties and what protections are available. section 215 does have protections and we think on a prospective basis, even to the extent the program continues for a short period, it should be in place. we are not to impugn at all the good faith of anyone who has relied on constitutional issues or statutory issues. >> because we are running out of time i'm going to cut short my

questions but just make the observation that i believe the constitutional advocate far from being a lightweight institution has to be a real heavyweight to protection the constitution -- to protect the constitution, and i would err on the side of giving that person or office the resources, the authority, the personnel, and ultimately the credibility that will enhance the trust and confidence of the american people in the constitutionality of this process and its legality. senator frank. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i'm just a little confused from my first set of questions. it seems a little at odds with the report. any of you can weigh in on this, please. page 205 -- let me first go on the recommendation nine says the government should publicly

disclose more details to provide a more complete picture of government surveillance operations. and then on page 205 you say if the statute such as section 215 continues to be used as the basis for individualized collection and bulk collection, the mere number of section 215 orders could be misleading. so when i asked about transparency before and putting out the number of -- right now this "washington post" article is speaking to the issue of how many numbers are -- how many phone calls are being collected, that's collected, it just seems to me, and since the number of orders is, as you say, misleading, i don't understand

your answer. i don't understand why revealing numbers that are quite up in this collection isn't more transparency and doesn't give americans a better idea of the dimension of this so that americans can decide for themselves what this program is and whether it's legitimate. or whether it's proper. >> senator, you have been the leader on this issue and i don't lose sight oft to i think substantial agreement between us and probably between all the members of the board and you on a, the importance of transparency, and the value of numbers as a component of transparency. i think i would simply -- i was

simply responding to what i think is an important but in some ways narrow question, which is how do we handle numerical reporting on bulk collection programs? as opposed to numerical reporting on targeted programs, which i think everybody agrees and some progress has been made and more could be made on transparency of the numerical reporting, how many orders, how many accounts affected on the targeted side. so that's not what i think you and i are talking about now. we are talking about the bulk side. >> right. >> where obviously one order or three orders or five orders could be meaningless if millions and millions of people are affected. on the other hand, i think we were thinking here what about the next program and the next program and the next program?

nd how do we deal with, again, -- stays ys, as it is as it is, how do we deal with bulk reporting on the next program and the next program and the next program? >> what about the program that exists? >> the program that exists -- >> americans know about this program. and we still haven't really given them -- "washington post" will put it on an article. why can't the government tell us the number of telephones -- telephone numbers that are having their data collected, and queried?many are being that would give people some idea of the scope of this program and what it is doing. and i think americans deserve to have that information in order to decide for them selves -- i

think it would be very helpful. listen, i agree with both the airman and mr. medine on the intelligence people. i believe that they are doing the best job they can. but we have oversight, and part of the oversight to me is what you talk about, how important transparency is. and i'm very confused about what you write in your report and what your answer was to my first question in my first set of questions. >> don't let me hog it here. i agree on the numbers of the queries. the reporting there has been disclosed and could be disclosed. >> it has been? >> 99% sure that the government has declassified at least for

one year the queries made against the database. , actually, if i could speaking for myself, i agree their first primary question is going to be how big is this? how many americans are likely affected by this program? to the extent that this information can be disclosed without -- unless the government can show, i think that -- i would suggest this myself, the burden would be on the government to show why it would be a national security it problem. but to approximate that as close as you can get to that number without there being any security problems, but as jim suggested,

the so-called query of this entire databank which we don't know and there is some confusion from the newspaper accounts as to how big that is, and -- but they have disclosed that they ras ist with a so-called in the area of 300 or something like that. what we don't know from that is how many numbers on the first hop or second hop or even a third hop. it's difficult, you have to be careful in defining the number you want. as we learned the way the system operates, this is in the report, when you get the first hop as to which the suspicious number has been in contact with, what happens is the analysts look at all the numbers that prop up and they may look at several of them an annoyians to

us. we'll only look at one -- annoyance to us. we'll only look at one or may look at them all or may look at some and discard them. then you go to the second hop from all of those numbers and you get wider and wider swath. i do think your general notion that americans are most interested in some notion of the scope of people who have been affected is one that the government and the congress and all other people should work toward approximating. unless the government can show that there's some national security danger there. >> i wanted to add that one of the policy reasons why we recommend ending this program is that concern by americans that they are being surveiled and whether it's 30% or 100%, knowing that the government is collecting your phone calls to

your lawyer, to your political organization, to a journalist has a chilling effect. that's why we think it's preferable not having this government maintain this bulk data. and have the information held elsewhere. >> no matter where it's held that's problematic. i know a vote has been called and we have to go. >> senator whitehouse, did you have other questions? perhaps an observation but you can respond and if our time runs out if you want to respond for the record, that's fine. this is probably the most overseen program in the history of the american intelligence community. it is setting aside the intelligence community is probably one of the most overseen government programs ever anywhere. it was managed by n.s.a., overseen by the department of justice and the odni, with n.s.a. you have relatively independent bodies like the inspector general, office of director of compliance, general

counsel's office who had important roles in it, it was reported quartly -- quarterly to the president's intelligence oversight board. u had a full-time court with multiple judges overseeing it. i think that they used to say there are more than 30 different congressional committees that had oversight authority of it, but certainly the intelligence committees, this committee, equivalent committees in the house all had oversight over it. it's hard to imagine how you could apply more oversight and have it make an incremental difference. if you add one more office to the wide array of authority engaged in oversight. so to the extent that there was an oversight problem, it raises to me the question more about the quality of the oversight and

the organization of the oversight rather than the quantity of it. we certainly threw more oversight at this program than anything in history. i'm interested in your reactions to that thought. one more patch i don't think is going to help when there's such a huge quilt of oversight patchwork there already. >> i think there are a number of things. one is, i don't want to overstate our capabilities, our board is now ainedpent agency with high level clearance was authority to see all the information regarding this programs and report our independent reviews without any revire prior by the white house or anyone else, to the congress, president, and public as we have done with regard to this program. we won't be able to be everywhere. we are very small and stay relatively small, those areas where we look -- >> general or in the same position. >> right. but our focus is on national security and balance of privacy and civil liberties. they have a much broader focus. i hope we can contribute in some

way going forward. as we recommended -- >> let me not put you in the position of trying to defend you should have some role going forward. my point is when you got this vast array of oversight already, the most overseen program in history, adding one more thing i don't think is a convincing argument on its own. i think that we have got to take a look at the structure of this patchwork and array of oversight and see if in fact there were oversight problems what did they go back to. i don't mind adding you to the equation, that's not my point. my point is there is already so much oversight i can't believe adding you will make a huge marginal difference. it will make a good difference and i don't object to your further participation in this, but i really think to the extent that oversight is condemned in all of this, the solution is not adding more small elements of oversight to an already vastly overseen, multipli overseen, frankly hard to imagine how you

could add more oversight to it other than yourselves. every branch of government is covered, every house of congress is covered, executive branch has multiple redundant -- >> i think you are 100% right. i actually think that's why the value of our board and what needs to be done is, i think, what we did was we pulled backp and said wait a second. where's the legal foundation for this? upon what structure has all of that oversight been created, and we concluded, the majority, that the foundation itself was inadequate and then i do believe we took remarkably, the most in-depth look at effectiveness. and looked, i believe, more closely and probingly at effectiveness and again concluded that the program came

up short. but those two questions, what is the legal foundation and what is the effectiveness despite all of that structure i believe they never really got in 10 years of this program adequate attention. >> i want to take the prerogative of the chair to observe in response to senator whitehouse's point that none of the oversight was adversarial in nature. which is why i propose the constitutional advocates. courts always do better when they hear both sides, the process is well served when there is contention as there was within this board. might just point out that the dissent by ms. brand says in commenting on whether the board should consider the legal question as you very thoughtfully observed and i'm quoting, this legal question will be resolved by the courts

not by this board, which does not have the benefit of traditional adversarial legal briefing and is not particularly well suited to conducting de novo review of long-standing statutory interpretations. at least part of that observation can be said of the fisa court and of the legal review and perhaps factual review that's been conducted in this program. the oversight may have been numerically abundant, but as you observed, senator whitehouse, potentially lacking in quality. i'm going to have to go to the vote. senator whitehouse moves more quickly. >> we'll go ahead and i'll let the chairman conclude the hearing. i would just note in reply that the great adverse relationship that the founding fathers built into the constitution was the adverse relationship between the legislative and the executive

branches, which they characterized as one of jealousy and rivalry that was to be harnessed for the good of the public. i would hate to think that just because there wasn't a lawyer in the courtroom with a general ublic interest purpose, that there was not adversarialness in all of this. there should have been and the structure of our government creates that adversarialness, and if that has not been adverse enough, then that's our fault, but it's not the fault of the lack of additional lawyer in the courtroom at the fisa court. >> i don't think lawyers are necessary for adversarial contention, but i think your point is well taken. i'm going to close the hearing. leave the record open for one week. and again thank the panel for being here, for your very thoughtful and insightful and very helpful testimony.

again thank our entire intelligence community that day in and day out work to grapple with these very difficult and challenging questions. thank you. the hearing is closed. [captioning performed by ational captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> on our facebook page, one, the rights -- another says americans cannot have it both ways.

add your thoughts at facebook.com/c-span. tonight, a senate hearing on improving u.s. elections. president obama signed an executive order raising the minimum wage for federal contractors. the senate judiciary committee holds a hearing on nsa surveillance programs. tomorrow on c-span, live coverage of vice president joe biden's speech at the house democratic caucus's 2014 issues conference out in cambridge, maryland. that gets underway at noon eastern. at 2:30, the senate commerce subcommittee on transportation holds a hearing on passenger and freight rail safety. you can see a pie on c-span and at c-span.org.

>> i know that is a strange thing for one to say but i believe that. number ofy small people ever enter into a courtroom, much less have any entanglement with the law. >> friday, c-span radio continues its series of world history interviews with former supreme court justices. this week, associate justice tom clark at 4:00 eastern. >> the president's commission on election administration recently came out with recommendations for improving u.s. elections and making them more convenient for voters. the cochairs testified about the of theat a hearing senate rules and administration committee. this is over an hour.

e rules committee will call to order. our hearing today is on the presidential commission on election administration. the report and recommendations on best practices in election administration. at the core of our national identity as americans is a pride that we live in a democracy and of course have the right to vote. the beautiful thing to me this on november nights in new york, cold november nights, citizens, tired, coming home from work, want to get home and put dinner on the table for the kids, just get home because they've had a hard day at work, put their feet up on the table and -- on the coffee table and watch their tv show but in quiet dignity they line up, go into the pling -- polling place, do their duty and the next morning we all abide by the decision.

it's an amazing thing that doesn't happen in most countries still to this day and hasn't happened in any country for as long as it has happened in ours. it's a beautiful thing. in the 225-year journey since the first presidential election, many things have changed. to people are eligible vote. s i look around the room here, only half of us would have been able to vote then. more people are eligible to vote, african-americans, 18 to 20-year-olds, today's expanded electorate is much more reflective of our nation as a whole. as recent examples have shown, there are still problems with our lechesmark of which can be addressed by improve thelling way we administer. election administration is a

difficult, often thankless task. before i go further, i'd like to thank our election officials for all the election day that was gone right over the years. it's not an easy job because it's so important to our democracy, we have to aspire to perfection. in reality, most americans don't even think about running of an election until something goes wrong. we all remember florida in 2000, minnesota's 2008, where elections were under a microscope. as recently as 2012, many polling places around the country had unacceptably long lines. this wasn't the first election with the problem but we'd like it to be the last. in his victory speech, president obama referenced the long linesing saying, quote, we need to fix that, unquote. that's hard to do because elections are run at the state and local level.

with the patchwork system sometimes creating challenges, former supreme court justice louie bran dice famously called the states, quote, laboratories of democracy. they sometimes provide us with examples of innovation that can be shared throughout the country. soon after the last election, the president acted and created a bipartisan commission to study election administration and best practices for improving voting in america. the president insisted this not be a partisan exercise. the commission was supposed to seek out the best ideas for making voting easier and better no matter where they came from. that's what the commission did. the presidential election -- commission on election administration was made up of 10 members, included current and former election officials, executives from successful customer service oriented businesses and two chairs, both well known, one republican, one a democrat, but each with a long, storied history in this area. and so, mr. bauer and mr.

ginsburg, you've been on opposing sides in political campaigns, in the courtroom, you both have top-notch credentials as advocates an champions of your respect i parties. you're uniquely qualified to identify caresa -- areas where we should move forward. i'd like to thank you for serving on the commission and finding places where we can move beyond partisanship and focus on the nuts and bolts of making running elections easier and better for voters and administrators alike. your commission's report in my judgment is an outstanding piece of work, a valuable road map for improving election administration in this country. while the commission's charge did not include recommendations for federal legislation, the report makes it leer there are areas of existing law and its enforcement must be improved and our committee will study your report and testimony today carefully. i hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will join me in using this report to help

improve our election system and strengthen our democracy. so we thank you for your work, we look forward to hearing your testimony and with that, let me turn it over to senator roberts. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i look forward to hearing the presentation of our witnesses. i want to thank you for your service. they are to be commended for giving their time on this project, lending their, appearance and expertise which is considerable. i know there are a number of other well-qualified commissioners who are not with us today but i thank hem as -- them as well for their efforts. the committee was charged with making best practice recommendations rather than legislative recommendations and that's what the report has done. it recognizes that elections are carried out at the state and local level and that's where we must focus our attention. for elections to function properly, we need all parties -- the election officials, pollworkers and the voters themselves, to do their part. this requires proper planning and effective administration

many. -- administration. i hope the wok of the commission and its recommendations will help advance the effective administration of our elections and improve the voter experience. i look forward to the testimony of our witnesses. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank, senator roberts. i welcome opening statements by the other members of the panel. >> thank you very much, senator schumer. i want to, again, as a member of the judiciary committee, i have looked at issues from that perspective, i want to thank our witnesses today for their good work and while you did mention minnesota with the recount, ok, and the fact that as we all remember, someone did vote for someone namedly sard person in that particular election when we painfully looked at every single ballot in the state, our state has a proud tradition of high voter turnout. we were the -- we're always consistently in the top few states of voter turnout and a lot of that has to do with

having same day registration. of the top six states for voter turnout, they're not necessarily democrat or republican states, iowa is usually one of the top ones, maine is one of the top states, but they tend to have something in common, most of them have same-day registration. i know that isn't necessarily part of what you looked at in terms of legislation but i think that it would go a long way and i have a bill with senator tester to look at rolling that out on a national level. thank you, mr. chairman. >> minnesota has one of the best election systems and really tries to do it fairly and in a nonpartisan way, as does maine, actually. senator king. >> i don't have a statement, mr. chairman, except to, since minnesota an maine have been brought up, jesse ventura and i always thought it was states with independent yoverpbors who 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 >> is there an up front cost? an up front cost. it is not significant and over that the cost r is more than recovered. .t is a net savings >> we have a lot of instances here an up front cost is recouped over the next 10 years but people don't want to make expenditures in year one and two. but that is not a barrier in your eyes as of yet? >> no. electronic t states poll books have the potential to olve election day issues and officials want the technology.