and improve it. by 2001, in the wake of the fiasco in florida, former presidents jimmy carter and gerald ford studied this issue, and they wrote that the registration laws enforced are among the world's most amending and a big reason why voter turnout in the u.s. is at the bottom of the developed world. chilling diagnoses. as many of you know, there have been significant progress since then. will move to modernize our election systems through things such as online registration and a whole host of other ways. the lessons learned from those incremental steps have created this opportunity for a big breakthrough, ebola reform, something that can transform the , automaticelections registration. this is a time where we are seeing a breakthrough for this change. it is very, out --

very exciting. automatic registration, what is it? it represents a paradigm shift as we register voters. for the first time in a meaningful way, the government takes the responsibility to inshore that all eligible citizens are on the role if they want to be. for the first time, the right to vote for the first time -- for the first time, the right to vote is made. we move past the paper and airfield records that clog our system to harness the digital revolution to transfer the information and make the lists real or for the lifetime of the voter. it is a big deal.

nationwide.nted this would add 50 million people rolls. it would cost less and it would curb the potential for fraud and abuse and error. it solves the problems of left and right. it is a breakthrough and it is happening, and all of you has so much to do with it, and we are" for all of you for being a part of it. it is the wave of the future, but not only the future. it is happening as we speak. of you know, over the last 1.5 years, oregon, california, west virginia, and vermont enacted automatic voter .egistration at the dmvs yesterday, and connecticut, alledge and officials announced -- election officials announced

they will be doing automatic registration. this policy works. orphan, buddha registration -- in oregon voter registration rates are higher. it is hard to think of a policy positive and is hopeful and is imminent and tested as this is. this conference could not come at a better time. this is the first national topicence on this bringing together people from all over the country and all backgrounds in this field. we got folks from 23 states. activists,ficials, scholars, experts in technology and immigration, and voter utilization and citizenship. ordinary people who want to learn more and be part of this movement.

in the morning, we are going to focus on why this matters. and what the benefits are of this kind of change. we will be hearing from the former attorney general of the united states, eric holder. in the afternoon, we will have a working session learning from each other. learning lessons on how this reform has been an active. what works? what are the pitfalls to market how can we brought in this movement? us, howf of all of proud we are to host you today, but be a part of this effort. the brennan center, for those who don't know, is a law and policy institute that works to reform and revitalize the systems of democracy and justice in america. we were started two decades ago by the family and clerks of the

late, great supreme court brennan, and the document needs to be -- we are proud to be buried much a part of this effort for the past decade. was a decade ago when we first issued proposals for automatic registration. a lot of these things are available out in the outside area. several ofntroduce my colleagues who not only worked on this issue date in and day out, but to make this conference possible. e-mailsmes are on the if nothing else. but i want to introduce you to them. perez, jimr, nina clark and jodi schultz. around so people

know who you are. [applause] hastag i've been told to tell you. abr. hastag there is wi-fi. i did find the opportunity to , butthe lengthy password they are waving pieces of paper around, so it must be important news. oh, they had the wi-fi password. if anyone wants access to it, it will be back there and we will be happy to share it. we are eager to work with you to continue as we do, providing with the to work incredible coalitions and states across the country who have the this happened with the officials bringing this to life. so many are here who a good

supportive of this effort. on behalf of the british center, we say thank you to all of you and we are thrilled to begin a conversation by hearing from one of the leaders in the country on this movement and in this breakthrough. padilla,able alex secretary of state of california. he is one of the rising bright stars in our country, not just on this issue. he is a graduate of an i.t. in engineering. he left his job writing software . you don't have to actually be a rocket scientist to understand automatic voter registration. turns out, it does not hurt. [laughter] age 26, he was elected to the los angeles city. president he with the of the los angeles city council. he served in the state senate.

theas elected statewide as secretary of the state of california. -- led the fight and persuaded the legislature and now charged with implementing it. of the national association of latino elected officials and on the board of overseers of m.i.t. and many other things. we will be hearing more from him in years to come and we are thrilled to be hearing from him right now. right now, secretary padilla. [applause] idea: good morning everybody. introduction, and said, all no, now comes the expectation. thanks to michael for the very, very kind introduction and for

you for your commitment to the issue. it is an honor to be with all of you. before i begin with my presentation, a couple of acknowledgments to colleagues in the effort -- my colleague from west virginia, natalie, we will be hearing from her. about some election reforms you have heard as part of my remarks as well. most importantly, please welcome, a nice new york welcome whogive thanks to my wife lets me do all of this stuff, angela, who is here with me today. [applause] i stand before all of you and i am getting goosebumps because i isl like so much of my life living the american dream quite frankly. my parents are immigrants who

came to california and los angeles specifically in the late 1960's in different parts of mexico. they met in los angeles and fell in love and decided to seek residency is that a family. there may be a disney movie about that. the meantime, they race three of us. i have an older sister who is in the education space. she has gone from teacher to principal. younger brother working from the -- working for the los angeles city council. there is public service and run through our veins. parents are recently retired after working for nearly 40 years. my father was a short order cook. my mother used to clean houses .or the same amount of time hard work, humble work, but like itmany immigrants, they do

in pursuit of a better life. not so much for them, so that bettert generation has opportunities and hopefully, that her life. now me standing before you as a secretary of state for the most populous state in the nation. what a story. the american dream is alive and well. i know that our family has been blessed in large part because of country makes possible. that opportunity for education. all made possible because of the thatgth of our democracy should never be taken for granted. -- it is amendous tremendous time for me to work, not to justice in this democracy but to advance this democracy

and keep those doors of opportunities opened for generations to come. when i think about democracy, we know there are varied popular metrics, some points of measurement we refer to, whether it is voter registration numbers . i see it more broadly than that. if you look at participation in our demo see as more of a pipeline, or a flowchart, we can look to things like immigration and naturalization and of course voter registration and voting as actions by citizens and democracy. on a day in and day out basis, it should include things like parents being involved in their children's school, or citizens land use andr zoning hearings, all things are key part democracy alive and

well between elections. elections are critical. i take my message of participation for any audience that will have you -- that will have me. naturalization ceremony that will have me. if you have -- if you have never observed hundreds of thousands of people becoming united states citizens at one time, you should. it will move you like any other experience well carry those iniences and in places california where i am reminded that not everybody grows up with the lessons being instilled about the importance of being a registered voter and the importance of voting each and every election. there is a number of reasons we all know why not everyone registers and not everyone vote.

chief among them and not understood is poverty. debate whether it is a correlation or causation, the rate that is on the lower scale of income. we can chalk it up to commute in job schedules and having to have multiple jobs. we will get to that in a minute. before we get to the voting part, the voter registration piece -- as a process, it has been put in place to clean up r voter roolls -- the lls.

the burden is on the citizen to sign up. the burden is on the citizen to register and to vote. unfortunately, it has created were too many people are left out of election process. i talk to as many groups as they can. there is an observation that hit me like a ton of bricks when i was talking to one of the high schools not too far from monterey. most of these events, get introduced by somebody. local mayorth the school board member or school principal introduce us and far more often than not, i hear their story growing up in a household with their parents instilled in them the importance of being a registered voter and of voting. they would talk about who was on the ballot in what is on the ballot at the dinner table.

to the polls in november and brought up with the tradition. then i would into the eyes of the kids in the audience and i see a bit of a disconnect. i feel a disconnect. because i was not brought up with those traditions. i wasn't brought up with that experience. not because my parents did not want to instill that it me or teach me that, but as you recall, my parents were immigrants to the united states. they did not vote because they want eligible to vote. it was not until years later they became citizens. they have not missed an election since. them with theto polls in november. so many young people today, so many young people today, not just in california, but throughout the nation, have that in common. whether there parents aren't

eligible or just not active. i know my experience is not uncommon. in california, there is a magic number -- 7 million. 7 million is a number of toifornians who are eligible be voters but cannot because they are not registered. aside from just being a big number, it is important to think of who they are. it is disproportionately working families and the one i grew up in. disproportionately communities of color. disproportionately young people. and if you look at what happens in the communities where we live , the most pressing policy challenges that we face from education and quality of our inequality,ncome

air quality, health, and chronic disease challenges, there is that consistency again, that correlation between communities of lower voting rates and the most acute challenges to our quality of life. i cannot help but conclude, the me, but there are communities that are not registering are the ones who need to speak louder in our democracy, but don't have that voice because they are not registered. so how can we empower them? how can we do a better job of including them in our democracy? it begins with voter registration. and voting. but you can't vote unless you are registered. we have a fundamental right to vote. as president johnson put it, without the right to vote, no other right really matters. thatg is our democracy and -- it is voting democracy that

the advance policy. it currently exists as the burden on the citizen to opt in. to register. to sign up. and there in lies the barrier. for most of our history, voter registration has taken the form of not just filling out a card, but has included things like taxes, howsts, poll many jellybeans in this jar? we may not have that today, but id, purging voter of voter forms, it takes on many forms. it what other right to be sign up for? freedom of speech? anybody fill out that form? the right to not be discriminated against? can i do that online? our right together here today,

this peaceful assembly? no other right do we have to sign up for, so why the right to vote? especially in the digital age with this information, this data to know who is eligible and to register people and administered elections is that much more easy. to paraphrase governor jerry brown from decades ago, she was speaking to a democratic convention and sent us a video clip. you says, if government can use these computer things to find us and get us to pay our taxes, then surely we can use these computer things to find people and register them to vote. and i couldn't agree more. literally just weeks after i was born in a secretary of state, the bill was cleared by the legislature and landed on the desk of former secretary of state, now governor kate brown. organ's automatic

voter registration into law. when i made the announcement, if it's good enough for or gone, it is good enough -- if it is good enough for oregon, it is good enough for california. i think the brennan center for being a huge partner for the drafting and messaging of it in the rallying and support around it in front of the legislature and the governor. it was a big part of our success. creditoregon a lot of for being the pioneers on missed. they estimate that over time, they will register hundreds of thousands of previously unregistered voters in the process. california, we are want to register millions. -- in california, we are going to register millions. that is an historic shift.

to give voice to millions of new voters is transformational. by doing it in california, we don't want to pat ourselves on the back, but if we can remove every excuse for every other state. if california can do it, if california, the most diverse state in the nation can do it, if we can figure out the technology of how to do it with not,e renewals and this is there is no reason it can't be done anywhere else. remember, fort to those who say, why should we be doing this anyway? it has been federal law for more than 20 years now that every state, through the department of motor vehicles, facilitate the ability for someone to vote or update their voter registration. the national voter registration

we have had this responsibility already. we are talking about is doing it better. -- givene technology the technology we have today. 90% of the public, 90% of eligible voters interact with dmv at some point. i detect the new motor voter is a technology project of people who are otherwise eligible to vote and have two state agencies share this information. the department of motor vehicles in the secretary of state office. that is what we are talking about. building on information that is already being shared. both levels of government share data for the advancement and improvement of public policy already. whether it's in the health care

arena. whether it is in public safety. whether, as governor jerry brown once said, for the collection of taxes. we are ready do it, so why not do it for voter registration? yeah catching the same information over and over again -- name, address, date of birth, and a signature on file. if we are already doing this, it would make perfect sense to use it for voter registration like oregon did. the default will be adding you to the voter rolls. --s is america and eu have and you have freedom of speech. the california law will go into full effect next summer. may 2017. that is why the legislature signed by the governor, in the

year of implementation and the training of employees, working out kinks, oregon's law that went into affect are averaging 12,000 voters a month. in,. opt out, they were averaging 4000 registrations. how is that for success? in california, let's look at the numbers -- more than 24 million -- eligible to vote. if we capture 90% of them over time, more than 6 million people in californiaoll in the coming years. that is awesome. [applause]

imagine the impact your going to have? i have been asked to share inside of the experience getting this to the legislature and some of the uniqueness about california. first, one of the sites we had to get over was, there is going to be voter fraud. make sure going to you are not registering systematically someone who is not eligible to be a voter? we heard in california, you pass this law again, and giving driver license to undocumented individuals, this is a conspiracy. no, no, no. yes, california does provide drivers license to the undocumented, but as they assure us, that is a siloed process. by the way, even if it other

state does not provide drivers licenses for undocumented individuals, they do provide them do people like my parents. legal, permanent residents. they are over 18. they are not citizens. so, you build it into the protocols. firewalls have been in place for the last 20 years for motor voter. what about 16 or 17-year-old to maybe citizens and have a drivers license? , noe is no barriers challenge we can't work around. we heard a concern for some immigrant rights groups on the half of illegal residents. we are hopeful for copperheads of immigration reform coming sooner rather than later. and someone is registered inadvertently, we don't want them punished later for a crime

they did not commit. government automatically register them possibly, but just in case, we wrote language into the bill, thank you brennan for your guidance on this that would put the faults on the government side, not on the individual's side so it does not create issues later. we also wanted to make sure that we are working for the department of motor vehicles to on voterlear language eligibility. when we do it on paper now, we .ave to check those boxes yes, i am a citizen and eligible. and i have been filling out this form that is true and correct. that language is going to be glaring going to the new motor through automatic voter registration, we are providing materials and the nine languages

other than english required in california under the voting rights act. we are able to do with because -- we are doing it at the point-of-sale at the dmv. a little bit different from o regon., -- a little bit different from oregon. they are sending letter after the fact saying that we have captured your information. since the government cannot check a party for you, check this box and send the form in 30 days. in california, we are piggybacking off a previously funded technology at the dmv. we are going to be able to ask these questions, not after-the-fact the fact, but as that person is applying a renewing their drivers licenses or state ids.

for people renewing by down, for people renewing online, we are building protocols to ask questions right then and there. part of it, sec. padilla: anyone that for me in california as big diverse day as we are doing that follow-up letter in 10 different languages? we had a communications challenge there and we had a workaround that we think is better and more efficient. and it's also not walk, we are building a foundation here. we are like get 90% maybe of the eligible unregistered, we are not capturing 100 so what efforts can you to capture more folks who are eligible but unregistered will be at the dmv? once we lay down the technology backbone here, i envision being able to expand to other state department and agencies and maybe even local governments as well. for all the people who come in and provide name, address date

of birth signature, whether you're signing up for community college classes, whether you're coming into our employment development department because you're not unemployed, whether you are returning from a tour of duty and signing up for veterans benefits or get this, people previously uninsured coming to sign up for healthcare under the aca. to our health benefits exchange. we can be conducting voter registration as well systematically. and again, captured in real time political party preference, language preference, if they want to be a vote by mail voter, all that stuff is going to make it more effective and more efficient for us to do. so i envision that over the next several years, once we have a new motor voter technology foundation in place. and last but not least, some people will criticize new motor voter by saying well, for people who are renewing their drivers license, i may not back to this

for 5-10 years, so how efficient is it how quickly are we moving the needle? they have a little bit of a point most people as soon as you move and you are reviewing your checking accounts and all, that's a reminder that you got to renew at dmv and we have this online registration tool like a couple of other dozen states do that isn't just for online first time registration but to update , your registration as well. and we also, so taken together i think we are going to be able to keep up and have them keep up with us as well. last but not least, i want to talk about an attitude i came across even from some supporters of automatic registration as we proposed it. it always took the form of something like this. alex, why are you going through all this effort? just because you register somebody to vote doesn't mean they're going to vote right? , if you haven't heard that already, expect it. i disagree.

maybe not 100% of them will turn out and vote but if nothing , else, think about this. if you are eligible to vote in the united states of america not but not a registered voter today, you do not receive the voter information guide from your state. if you are eligible to vote in the united states of america but not registered, you don't get yourample ballot from county. think about that. just through sheer virtue of systematic registration of millions of voters in california and throughout the nation, automatically these new registered voters will receive the voter information guide. they will receive a sample ballot. and maybe they won't hear from all the candidates or the politicians seeking reelection, but they will hear from the smart ones who know somebody's now eligible to vote and i need , their vote. so bottom line is, as a new registered voter you get the

, invitation to the democracy party that you never got before. you get that invitation to participate and the information that there's an election coming up, the date, when, where and , how to vote. and this brings me to my next project that i put brightly in the voting rights category. let's modernize how to conduct elections in recognition of life in the 21st century. we talk about automatic registration. why not go one step further and talk about automatically adding a putting a ballot in the hands of every registered voter each and every election? and we have a tremendous opportunity here to really do this right. as we free up time, energy, resources away from voter registration because of success on automatic registration, we can shift some of that time, energy and resources on voter , outreach and voter education and voter turn out. so just as oregon was a big inspiration for us to pursue

automatic registration, colorado has been a big inspiration for us on how to conduct elections and make it easier for people to participate. their series of reforms implemented, ours now proposing legislation goes something like this. every registered voter automatic receives about four weeks before election day and they are afforded multiple opportunities for how to submit that ballot. there is still good old-fashioned u.s. postal service. in colorado, every county installs ballot drop boxes throughout the county, and any voter can drop their ballot off at any dropbox convenient to them in the weeks leading up to the election. denver goes a step further and sets up curbside ballot drop off stations. think the post office on april 15. you don't even have to get out of your car. there's a friendly face representing the county taking your ballot from you curbside. and if you like my mother still

insist on going in person to cast your ballot because you won't have it any other way, they have modernized polling places as we know them to what are known as a vote centers. i will let them into more detail but basically we afford voters , the flexibility and convenience of voting anywhere in the county and not just at one designated location close to where you live. and you have this option in the weeks leading up to election day, not only that first tuesday after the first monday of november from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. if you're in california. so the good news is, this is a good idea we think and we are crossing our fingers. we know california has gone from 12 to third in the nation in turnout. california in 2014 right 40 thirds of clearly we have room for improvement and we know where to go for good ideas. san mateo county south of san

francisco piloted this model just last fall and now we have our own metrics of whether or not it works. we took the savings from the administration side, investment in education, public service announcements, billboards, social media, mailings for a special election which normally , we take very low turnout. san mateo saw the highest turnout in 20 years across all demographic groups. that is success. we are sponsoring legislation to implement that in california, have that be the model in the years ahead. and so as i conclude here i want to just bring it all together and say here's what i propose our voting rights agenda be in the 21st century. yes, we must defend and protect our voting rights and insist that congress sooner rather than later restore section four of the voting rights act that was compromised by the supreme court. [applause]

padilla: but i'm not satisfied with just playing defense. i like to play offense. offense is how you put points on the board and we can play offense when it comes to voting rights by automatically registering all eligible voters. we can play offense by automatically sending editorial registrar about and providing more choices for when, where and how to cast that ballot and we , can play offense by taking the savings through these reforms and investing in voter outreach and education and turnout and i believe this is the agenda of how we overcome the historical barriers to the ballot box and participation and , this is how we instill the tradition of voting for all people and strengthen our democracy and this is how we fight back against the attacks on voting rights that we see in far too many states in our country right now. and while we wait for congress to act, we embrace the opportunity for states to be able to act now. this is our agenda. the department of justice can't do it alone. i know later today we hear from

former attorney general eric holder, whose leadership as attorney general really rebuilt the civil rights division of the department of justice. he was a tremendous leader for the department. he had a sturdy shield when it came to our voting rights and lead with a steady hand. i can only hope my contribution to democracy in this nation is just a small fraction of what he has done and is continuing to do so thanks you brennan center for , your fights for democracy and justice and thank you for having me here this morning. [applause] wendy: thank you, secretary by

padilla. that was truly inspiring and energizing. i would like to commend our panelists for expanding folder registration in the changing america. thank you everybody. wendy: thank you, everybody. my name is wendy and i direct the program here at the center, and among other things, we work to improve election of whichation, both are think are advanced by automatic voter registration. in the united states, we face a turnout crisis. our last federal election saw the lowest voter turnout in 72 years. and even with all the enthusiasm around this year's presidential primaries, turnout remains embarrassingly low. according to a recent pew study analysis of the first 12 primaries this year, turnout was

around 17% for republicans, less than 12% for democrats, and that is actually considered reasonably high, so this is a real problem we need to address. in some ways, our country is going even farther in the wrong direction on voting. we are facing the first presidential election in which 17 states have new laws in place that will make it harder for eligible citizens to vote. it is the first presidential election in more than half a century without the full protections of the voting rights act. and it is the first residential election in which we are feeling the full force of the supreme court decision in citizens united. but today, we are here to talk about the major way in which the country is going in the right direction. and a groundswell of momentum around automatic voter registration is not only a real bright spot, but inspiring and we are really delighted to , be working with all of you on this important reform, so this

panel is going to talk a little bit about what are the benefits. ofknow from our studies other recent efforts to modernize voter registration that this reform will save millions of dollars. it will make our voting rolls far more accurate, up-to-date and error-free and it will dramatically increase voter registration rates. but will it also increase dissipation rates? -- will it increase participation rates and those who face the greatest area of participation traditionally? new registrations do not necessarily translate into new voters, or does it? these are the questions that the panel is going to address. only one state has implemented automatic voter registration and that is oregon, and we are already seeing positive results. we have heard that the state dmv registration rates have skyrocketed, going from 4000 a year to 12,000 to 15,000 registrations a month.

and recent data put out by the motor voter coalition suggest that these registrations are translating into greater turnout. as of monday morning, according to their analysis, young people aged 18 to 29, who are automatically registered in oregon, actually voted in higher rates in the primary than those who were registered using traditional means. if you look at the unaffiliated voters, those who cannot vote in the presidential primaries, and they only voted in the judicial election, turnout was 10% for those who were registered automatically as compared to 3.3% for those who registered using traditional means. in other words, automatic registration really seems to have an impact on participation according to the early returns. we are lucky today to have three brilliant panelists with the experience and background to help shed light on why and how

automatic registration can help voter participation and turnout. they are going to address the question from three different perspectives. the perspective of voter mobilization canteens, behavioral signs and brain studies, and experimental political science. i will start to my left and we will go one at a time with jeremy bird, one of the countries leading strategists on voter mobilization with extensive working to engage and turnout voters. jeremy is the founding partner of strategies and founding 27 member of an organization focused on promoting automatic voter registration. in 2012, he was the national field director for president obama's reelection campaign, where he ran the campaign turnout efforts. he was also the founding leader of battleground texas, which focused on registering and turning out millions of texans to vote.

so we could not be more pleased to have you here. jeremy, drawing on your campaign and mobilization experience i , would be grateful if you could talk about how you think automatic registration will impact voter participation. jeremy: thanks for having me. good morning, everyone. i want to start by just getting people into the mindset or thinking about the times you have volunteered on the campaign , or if you haven't, thinking about being out on a campaign. when it comes time to get out the vote, and i think back to so many stories of being in states where there was not same-day registration and there wasn't early vote and there were not some of the reforms at the center and where others have been championed. i remember so many times having my list of voters who were turnout andng to knocking on their door one week

before the election. 30 days before the election, the day before the election, and the person opening the door wasn't the person on my list and talking to them about why they were not on the list. so many of those conversations were to folks who the secretary had talked about earlier, disproportionately communities of color, young people and disproportionately low income communities, where people were already excluded from my list. they were not registered and it was within the window of their ability to participate in the process. you will hear more stats on this, but it is a massive issue. we know, and you will hear it from the two other panelists, that voter mobilization works. we go to thewhen door of somebody who is lesstered to vote, who is likely to vote, that by having a

conversation, on the phone, by mail engaging them in the , process, they are visible on the list, we can increase participation rates and we have seen that in studies. whether it is sending out information about voting or from a campaign or community group going and engaging that person. but our resources could shift fundamentally with automatic but a registration and i would , like to get to 2012 for a second. on the obama campaign, we knocked on the door or called 150 million times to different voters. 150 million times. to either talk to someone who was a persuadable voter or to have a conversation with a voter that was already registered to vote and we wanted to turn out to vote. to register 2.1 million voters on the obama campaign took 700,000 volunteer. 700,000. if those volunteer shifts, and by the way this was only in 10

states, and there is a whole issue about the other 40 states that we can talk about later, but this was only 10 states. if we redirected those volunteer resources of those people that did that voter registration, we would have been able to knock on or call 35 million additional voters and engage them in the process, invite them to the democracy party. so simply for campaigns alone to redistribute our resources to people already registered and have those conversations about when, where, and how to vote as opposed to getting them on the list to start with, fundamentally changes the way we run our campaigns and fundamentally changes the way to bring people into the process. wendy: can you talk about what impact you think these changes might have on engaging lower propensity voters, minority voters, and lower income voters? jeremy: we know that we are talking about disproportionately

affecting communities of color , young people, lower income voters or citizens who could , become voters, so i think the process by which automatic voter registration works generally changes the composition of the electorate. it fundamentally changes the composition of the electorate. if you go to any state in the places like taxes where there our large populations of latino voters, young people, this will have a bigger impact in the communities because it will change was on the registration and on the lists of who we are talking to from state election officials, campaigns to community groups. i think there is another thing tactically that this changes. if you are out on the campaign when it comes to the time and either you don't have this same-day registration and you get the list, you will notice in those same communities that the density of where people live is high, but the density of the list is not so much because there are so many houses that you are walking by where people

are not registered to vote and it is within that registration window. and so, what you will see is campaigns will have much more of an ability to talk to more folks when people are on that list and you will be able to have that those conversations. you will also see, like in oregon already, people are voting for the first time. if we can get them involved in the process and to vote the second time, you have created habitual voters. you create a tradition as the secretary was talking about where their kids start to go and it becomes a cultural change and then we change the narrative, which is important. wendy: thank you. over.l turn it i believe there will be questions at the end of this panel. sam is one of the nation's leading experts on the brain and the haverhill science. he is a professor of

neuroscience and molecular biology at princeton university. he has published over 60 scientific articles and books on the brain and is widely known for his work on statistical methods for analyzing election polls. sam, as you know automatic , registration works in significant part by changing the presumptions around voter registration. under the current system in most of the country, no one is taketered unless they steps to register to vote and automatic registration helps that. the citizen who goes to the dmv or other agency that is covered will be registered unless they affirmatively decline voter registration. perspective of behavioral science what does , that research on changing tell us about the possible impact of automatic voter registration on behavior? sam: right. thank you for the question. i am glad you gave that kind

introduction. there could be some question about like a neuroscientist would be here at all. what i would like to do is give a little bit of information about exactly how one could go about estimating the benefits of automatic voter registration. as we already heard this morning something like 24% of voting , eligible adults in the united states are not registered to vote. that is about 53 million people. i believe we heard this morning about 50 million people. the question is, how can we understand how much benefit there would be, especially if in given that it is innovative and front edge to be doing automatic voter registration? it has only been enacted in four states. to predict what would happen, we have to rely on to other areas of knowledge, neuroscience and behavioral and cognitive science. there are a couple of basic principles and want to give you a way to think of them that is different from what we heard so far. i want to give you two ideas and build out from those ideas and i , will try to do it briefly. the first idea is on cognitive

science and behavioral science and something called the power of the default option. the general idea is that human beings as it turns out do not like to think very hard. [laughter] sam: the terminology -- i will go in some technical terms, and these technical terms are mainly useful if you are curious and , you can go to google google scholar to look these up -- the term that is used is cognitive misers. we will choose the default option and take that if it is a reasonable option, so that is a. the second point is the power of not having to plan ahead, so . so generally speaking, we think that we can plan ahead, but things like organ donation to saving for retirement, it seems that there are some barriers to making plans far into the future to one that we cannot necessarily see. in particular, we use something

called executive function. executive function does not mean the person in charge of the company, it means executing actions, so there is a part of your brain important for executive function in the three frontal cortex. let me talk about these a little bit. first, as i think we are ready know, we intuitively opt out as opposed to opt in. it has several advantages, and one of the biggest is inertia. ones if you do not do anything, which is what most people specialize in -- [laughter] sam: -- then your registered in the opt out system. the other point is planning ahead. as i said, we are not good at planning ahead for the future one we choose immediate actions and this plays out in every aspect of daily lives. for instance, if you came in and had a pastry instead of fruit, from a health standpoint, he did you didn't necessarily plan ahead very well. you may not have planned ahead 20 years for 30 years when that fruit versus the pastry might make a difference in your life. [laughter] sam: and so difficulty with , one executive function and planning ahead is that we had to be able to imagine what we will

do in the first tuesday in november and that could be as far as two years from now. it is hard to do that, so these kinds of things require executive function. let me give you a couple of estimates about what removing this barrier would achieve. these are two examples from research literature, if i have time. the first example is savings plans. inre is a famous study behavioral signs that comes from 2001, and it has to do with retirement savings. what they showed is that dissipation rates in an opt in approach led to 36% participation -- -- led to about 65% participation in a retirement savings, but when the system was switched to automatic enrollment, the participation rate jumped to 98%. ok, so the jump from 65% to 98%. that is relevant because voter registration is about 76% nationwide. another example is organ donation.

this is a pretty famous example. it turns out that drivers in the voter registration is opt in, so you have to seek out the opportunity to do that and other countries, you have to automatically opt out. opt in countries, it is 14% and in opt out countries, the rate of organ donation is 94%. that is a huge jump, so in these examples, we have an endpoint compliance rate from 94% to 90% for an outcome that is socially agreed upon to be good. what that means, i could give you more examples, but the general idea is that getting above 90% is evidently achievable. 65% to 95%, you could get about 40 million people more registered and i think that is the goal. i would pose that ask a relatively realistic goal. another question that comes up is whether registering will increase voting. we heard that question brought

up hypothetically by the secretary. there is a way to actually look at voting statistics and get some indirect information about whether registering will increase voting and this gets to , the idea the prefrontal cortex and executive function. the question is, are there people who would like to vote but do not because they failed to register in advance? to give an example, before the innovation in west virginia, the law used to be that voters need to register 21 days before the is aion, and so there big experiment going on there because the percentage of the voting of eligible population was 46%, which is well below the national average, so we are about to see a big national experiment, but let me tell you about something already known. the question is, does having to plan in advance to vote, is that a barrier?

11 states in the district can lock in and register to vote right way and that removes the barrier of planning in advance, the prefrontal cortex or executive function. all 12 had above average voter turnout. their average voter turnout is 66% of voter eligible adults versus 58.6% nationally. if you apply the difference nationwide, that is about 15 million people more who would vote. of the top four turnout states in the united states, three have same-day registration, minnesota, wisconsin and new hampshire and they have 71% to , 76% of eligible voters that are able to end of voting on election day in 2012. conversely, in the bottom four states, all below 50% they , require advanced registration. the secretary brought up another point. the point is will these people actually vote? the benefit of opt out is to be greater than what i have said so far because data from sending

same-day registration states does not answer the question on whether more people would be willing to vote if they were already registered and began receiving mail. this is a research area called implementation intention, so if you google that mouthful, you can look that up, you can learn about manipulation. i think we will hear more about that because i know several experts on the stage who know a lot about this. in addition to asking whether you plan to vote, i can ask how you plan to get there? who is going to take you there? who will do go with? when are you going to go? it turns out that guiding people to the planning increases the chances of them turning up. we can think of this as an assist to the prefrontal cortex, , the idea being that we would like to plan ahead but we don't have the ability to do it ourselves and we need the equivalent of an exercise buddy who is going to get his to go to

the gym. we need a voting buddy. some approaches can be done by mail or other forms of contact. end withe just in tha a general note, currently of the people registered, they will vote. of people registered currently, about 77% vote in a presidential election. even if the percentage drops with automatic registration, and estimate would be that close to 30 way people nationwide are likely to vote who otherwise would not. i would close with a nonpartisan note -- everything has been nonpartisan, but this isn't something that should appeal to legislators and secretaries of state's in all states. if they are close to 30 million people who would vote, who otherwise would not, in blue and red states, and those are voters that cut across all demographics. if you have a nationwide close election and we remember bush versus gore in 2000, surely you would like some of the 30 way million people to vote in your state because you would like to

not lose ground to other states that are more motivated. i think this is something that should in principle appealed to al the competitive instincts of all states to get the 30 million people to the polls that otherwise would not. i will stop there. wendy: thank you very much. [applause] wendy: before i turn to our last panelist, i want to note two things. first, our hashtag is trending on twitter. good job. keep it up. also, i did want to send apologies. we have a fourth panelist, professor gabriel sanchez of new mexico and latino decisions who was supposed to join us today, but he sends his apologies and , but i think we have a wonderful panel. i will now turn to our final panelist. professor david nickerson, professor of political science at temple university, leader in experimental science and one of countries leading political

scientist studying voter motivation. he has worked with countless grassroots groups and political campaigns, including any of you here, through at least four presidential election cycles and more congressional races, he has led dozens of the old experiments and published dozens of papers on mobilization turnout over the last decade. david, can you tell us what does the political science research tell us about the impact that automatic voter registration might have on voter participation and turnout? david: registration is really hard to study because you have to opt in. once you have this selection effect, you are getting this type of person interested in voting. so if elections are your jam, you are probably already registered. we are trying to get people not necessarily registered. a lot of that goes around in registration cards, but a lot of those people have to come up to them at the bus stop, grocery store and say, yes, i will vote,

so simply counting cards does not measure the effect. we need to know what would happen if that group was not there doing the hard work to register people. rather than rely on statistical models, what i try to do is conduct randomized field trials. we say, what happened is that if that do-gooder with the notepad or clipboard was not standing there? in one set of experiments, which range from tampa, detroit in 2004, three cities in 2006, a local election in 2007, we studied streets and we randomly assigned them to get them knocking on each door. two streets where they did not go down. and the reason i say to streets is no list of unregistered voters. it is not like you can go to the

secretary of state and say, tell me a blonde who is not registered to vote and mobilize them. you can buy the consumer list and try that, and there are a lot of experiments to talk about, but streets are easy to track. they don't move. on and see howr many votes were cast on the street. people in the natural habitat are hard to get. they move, they don't talk to, they close the door they had , free will. in this case, we will take the streets and send people down to mobilize them. what we found wind we looked at overall registration rates is that two passes down, we could increase the registration rate over the control streets by about 10 cards per street, which is about 5%. it was a pretty simple intervention with two passes. i said simple, but it was like 50,000 hours of work. [laughter]

david: simple in the abstract concept. relative, it is a minor intervention. people still had to open up the door to assign the card, so there is a lot of free will. if you are only getting to are only interested in voting, you might not see the difference in actual turnout rate so we'd then look to see , who cast a vote five months later and we saw an increase in turnout by about 2.5 points. sorry, 2.5 votes which means we , are increasing voter turnout. so there are pools of people if you register the people to vote, they will go and turnout who otherwise have stayed at home. this is an intervention where we did not follow-up with them. in fact, we had a strict firewall. we organized the drive and then went away with all the information. i don't even know if the streets control streets are.

that means that these people who are getting engaged, either because people like jeremy bird organized lots of volunteers to knock on the doors and say, your registered to vote, vote for our side and give them an invitation, or people who are early deciders. a lot of people don't like football, right? but they end up watching the super bowl. a lot of people don't like voting. it is hard for you folks to understand because you are intimately involved in the voting process. a lot of people are like, i don't like elections too much, but there is a lot of media coverage, excitement, this trump guy has interesting ideas, right? [laughter] david: but if this is after the deadline, they cannot participate. the experiment showed that people who had an interest in the elections late, they could be involved because they are are already registered to vote. there are lots of other experiments to talk about like

randomizing in classrooms or other captive audiences, but once you make the invitation, about one third of those people or a quarter vote who would have stayed home. wendy: thank you, david. if a third of people overall who otherwise would not have been registered and get registered actually turned out to vote, did you see differences for lower income or minority voters or did you see a similar effect that we could expect? david: in three of the experiments in 2006, we tried to get a sample of streets which ranged from high-income to low income. in the high-income streets, we sought a little bit smaller jump in registration rates because a lot of people are already registered. once you register them, they voted at about the same rates as people around them. the story is different in neighborhoods which were low income. we are talking about 15% of average income in the city.

they had a much larger effect in registration and the overall turnout was lower in the low income neighborhoods, but the number of votes generated ended was about twice as high as the high income streets, so if anything, there is more value to be gained by doing this in low income communities than high income communities. wendy: thanks. and you have also talked about some of the downstream effects of participation. a new person enters the political process and other effects it might have on participation. can you tell us about those? david: yeah, so when people like jeremy -- when we do voter mobilization experiments, we take people on the list and now we randomly assigned them to the control group to get you to vote and we knock on your door, make a phone call and we can see the election turnout and that helps campaigns know what they yield is when they knock on doors.

one interesting fact of that is then that we can look to see what happens here turnout down the road, right? so we saw that you knocked on the door, we increased by six percentage points. what happens by the next election we did not talk to you? we see about one quarter in that out so once turn you get people engaged in the process, they are from ireland where to vote and the process is familiar and they will most likely do it down the line. wendy: is there any effect on the people around them as well, household members? david: yes, so this is a fun experiment, fun for me because i am a geek, but we randomly have people knock on the door with a recycling message, and the reason why we did that was given that you answer the door and you have a recycling message that

has no effect on voter turnout or recycling -- that was hard, a little disappointing. [laughter] david: we did see that they had a six point boost internet, but what happened to the other person who did not receive the door? the first experiment, the shows 60% was passed on to a person in the household. subsequent experiments showed that about 30% was contagious, so that person you are getting involved is likely the first to pass it around, so this is more anecdotal than experimental. one of the challenges when we work at registering neighborhoods with high rates of immigration is that not many of their neighbors are engaged in the political process. they might not be citizens and so we talk to people about the election and information about

the process and there is not a culture of we are not engaged. part of it is because there are not many voters and sometimes it is not their identity, so if we were to increase registration in neighborhoods which are traditionally not engaged, my guess is you will see the culture politics arise where otherwise it is not deeply rooted in neighborhoods where almost everyone is registered to and votes. wendy: thank you very much for that. we will open up the panel to questions. there is somebody walking around with a microphone. i am going to start with a question for any of the first panelists that want to answer. one of the effects of automatic voter registration is to create a more complete list, including a list of people that were previously unregistered voters , but does not exist today. and that will enable us to learn a lot more about those voters or nonvoters and their behavior, so

how does that ability to study those voters or to actually have a list of them and contact them affect either how campaigns are run, how studies are conducted, and how might that affect participation over time? maybe i will start with you jeremy. jeremy: it is all about the list when you run the campaign, how the list will look like, etc.. there is not a good list of unregistered voters and we tried everything we could in the obama campaign's and before that to figure out how to take the consumer file of information and look at it was who is on that list but not on , the registration list to see if you can figure it out. it does not work very well and it does not get to the voters you are trying to get to, so we start with a list that is universal fundamentally changes

the goals you set as a campaign, . it changes the people you put on your list for every kind of targeting, digital ads, mail, phones, the way you conduct your tv ad buys, which is done a lot smarter now based on specific people. it would fundamentally change the way that any campaign and increase participation because you start from the list and you build out your goals and your budget from those targets that you try to reach. wendy: david, do you have anything to add to that? david: it would give us a more complete picture of what the electorate looks like and how they respond to things. when experiments and medical signs were done on white males we found they are less effective , with people of other ethnicities or women. the same with voters. if you are on the voter registration lists, we now you respond to impulses, how you behave, the pool of nonvoters are invisible, so we are not

able to study on how to engage them in the process. wendy: maybe we could learn more get better in engaging them. for folks who have questions, please raise your hands and the microphone will come to you. there are a few people over here, a person in the back someone over here. >> i have a comment. we need online registration and voting. this way we can eliminate paper, which kills the trees. wendy: thank you. is there someone with a question? i see someone in the middle and someone in the front.

and please introduce yourself. tanya: i am tanya from new york and i think you convinced us , that automatic registration is a good idea. i wonder if the panel would address the problem of the implementation and getting this through in places like new york, texas, florida and pennsylvania? wendy: thank you. i will take that. part of what this conference is here to address and help achieve, we actually see a lot of bills being pushed across the country, in fact, in 28 states this year there were legislative , efforts. some of them are actually getting very far and there is promise in the coming year. new york state does have a

number of bills pending, and for example an active coalition , pushing that right now. that is why we are here today over the coming hours and in the afternoon, here to try and make happen. jeremy: can i add to that? i have been doing a lot of work with i vote. i think there are two approaches, really three. the research we see out of oregon is important to show the case studies of success, and there is a legislative strategy and a lot of groups working on this in states or you have legislators and statehouse and state sentence that you can pass it through. it is using folks like the brennan center and oregon and saying, here is legislation that works and let's implement it. through legislative process. secondly, there are states that will not do that through legislative process. about 10 of them have amendment processes, where you can take it to the voters. you will see people doing that

in ohio and other places where people say, we have to , take it to people who are nonpartisan and to say, this is a good idea and let's get it enacted through whether a constitutional amendment or other things at the state level. third education and research to , show that it works and to put public pressure out there in states all across the country and to make this happen. so i think legislative and organizes, and in general education. wendy: i think we could expect a snowball effect as they start passing across the country and being implemented successfully. that is in part to the story of california mimicking oregon and some other earlier reforms to modernize the voter registration process, like making it electronic, government agencies adopting online registration , that started with a few states and their successes have now

bred this massive reform nationwide and in most states now, so i think the success will breed additional success. david: if i could broaden the question a little bit to talk about the cognitive aspects. >> texas has the fourth lowest rate of voting, fewer than 50% of the people eligible in texas voted in 2012. in the bottom four states, the rule is that people have to be registered between 21 and 30 days in advance. it takes that long to register, and that contrast with what i said before, which is the top four states in turnout, three of them allow same-day registration and one allows 10 days advanced registration. i know that we have been very high-minded here in talking about how great it is for democracy to be able to vote, science a cognitive

standpoint, it might be good to appeal to people's fear and competition. so if you're competitor states are getting out to vote and when it comes to a popular national vote maybe you want some of your , guys voting, so broadly i would not underestimate the power of fear and competition. [laughter] wendy: a lot of questions. ok. >> thank you so much for this very exciting presentation. i was curious to know from the cognitive point of view and the latest political science analysis, how do we deal with alienation? the fact that once you get to the point where people are automatically registered, and i know many of us in here, myself, have had decades of experience doing grassroots political organizing. how do you get beyond the fact bums?te trust the

why vote for the bums to start ith? what do we know about current research that handles that particular problem of getting voters motivated to vote to start with? david: i am going to point out that some of the problems you are talking about or the problem you are talking about is not limited to voting in democracy. there is a decreasing distrust across all domains, not only the legislators who represent us but also medical professionals, every domain. i think the exception is the military, but generally speaking, leaders of society are increasingly distrusted, so the advantage of an opt out is it automatically engages people. it is hard to say how that will engage people in terms of alienation, but it seems like it would be better from a policy point of view to get people at least to a place with a good seat and they could take one

step toward voting rather than multiple steps, so the difficulty here is not to decrease alienation across the board, but it is a large problem , but to take out one barrier between that person who might be alienated and get them to go vote. >> can i add to it? if our voters are more diverse, our elected officials will be as well. that comes in all the forms where on election day, the distinction between income in terms of who turns out and that, you want to solve economic . you want to solve economic inequality, let's solve bite economic inequalities that happen with voters on election day. our elected officials would be younger, more diverse and more representative of the population if more people are participating. in some ways it is the chicken and egg but changing who is , elected as part of who is voting. wendy: thank you. there are some questions over

here, and there is one in the front as well. susan: hi, susan from new york. dr. wang i am interested in the , interaction between habit-forming and novelty when we are talking about automatic voter registration. such an exciting idea to have the opt out and not to have the burden on individuals. to what extent can we expect that there be a bump up when there is a new idea and how do we move people to the coming habitual voters? what kind of maintenance do we need from a cognitive point of view so it is not just this thing is coming in the mail every four years and i'm automatically registered but , actually helps them become habitual voters? sam: susan, thank you for the question.

the way of put it is this, we think about our conscious acts as being this abstract event of well, i have a choice and i will make that choice, but as you rightly point out, any action we take is not this isolated single decision but as you said, it is , the formation of the habit. as an example, i habitually vote . i don't even think about it. it is election day, i better go vote. i can go between 5:30 and 7:30 because that is after daycare close,s, then the polls but i make those plans because it is a habit for me. we do not have to go through mental effort to brush our teeth in the morning or take things that don't look at gerrish we go out the front door. at least, many people don't have that problem. [laughter] sam: generally speaking, think about the way the brain makes decisions. it is not one decision center but many. just to totally draw on a different domain, better eating

habits or better exercise habits do not arise from a conscious decision to apply willpower to do that but the way they work is , that you form a habit by doing something day after day after day, and after a while, you are not thinking about that. that suggests the possibility that the benefit might not come in one election. it might take several elections. if you think about the frequency of election cycles with primaries it is possible that it , would take a full election cycle of four years to really see the full effects, so i would say that one could expect an immediate bump up followed by a gradual ramping up as people get the habits, and it is important to think about that when establishing metrics to decide when interventions have succeeded. i think that the key here is that your brain does not have one decision-making center but a , bunch. if you take out this barrier, it becomes easier to build up the habit. david: on that point, you are right about the novelty effect

and the first time we make an intervention, we see it far more effective down the road. it is not like you magically get them involved and engaged and the fourth time, it is not quite as effective, so when you see the results out of an intervention, it is often big to start and trails off. in oregon, we moved to vote by mail and we thought, this is amazing because people were interested the first time because they had not received a ballot by mail before. afterwards, it came down to a slightly lower level than that. so you are right, you cannot judge it based on the first one. you have to look longer-term and look at the equilibrium and what it will be. >> good morning. my name is don adams and i work with johnny youngblood at the baptist church in brooklyn. my question is part of the

comment but the rest is a , question. one of the things you said, it is nice that streets do not move. my concern is the concept of redistricting, where people are involuntarily moved by the will of political factions to put two more advantage voting situations or how it might be affected. can you give me perhaps an idea of what we are doing right now, and i say we because we are all involved here but i would like , to know what your ideas are of youre some suggestions as far as battling that aspect. david: your concern is that if i have a different representative, i will be disconnected and not feel as close to the electoral process because it has changed? don: i have seen it happen in brooklyn. david: that is a little out of

my range of expertise. i might defer to someone else. wendy: you touched on an important issue, and a lot of the gerrymandering problems are things that do alienate people and have a negative impact on participation, automatic voter registration, and while it has a significant effect, it does not address that problem. there is a lot of momentum around reforming redistricting around the country and addressing concerns of partisan gerrymandering and community representation for all communities, communities of color. there are some movements as well, and i think that is another important issue to engage on as well. go ahead. >> thank you. anna maryland state delegate. , you touched upon something that i have been fascinated

about, and that is the citizen who does not register. the citizen who is not motivated and does not take that step. i wonder how much of it is our own emphasis as we run elections on the super voter and all of our attention to reaching out. i love the idea of going up and down the streets. my question is, do we know anymore about what is behind that person who has not registered to vote, or when they are registered to vote and does not go there? are we studying that level of motivation? jerry: there is some work on that, and this goes back to the question on alienation, where some people do not register and participate in part because they are young.

david: they have not had the process to where you have been established in the neighborhood and chances are, there are other people who will draw you into the system. that is like a lifecycle process. we know that as we get older, you accumulate many habits and behaviors of people who vote. there is another set of people for whom voting does not speak to them. it is not part of their core identity and they are not engaged. the reasons for that vary wildly. one of the fun things about voters, no matter what year you . you have about a voter, that person exists. it is the question of what proportion of the electorate they are. again, this is more anecdote than i did an experiment and i can tell you exactly how people think, but when i have done doorknocking in very poor neighborhoods, one of the questions you often get is, why should i care? no matter who gets elected, you know, the status of my neighborhood doesn't really change.

the groups that i have worked with who have seen best engage with them can point a small victories and say, because we made outreach to the community, , the lights got fixed or the playground got cleaned up or as a group, we petitioned the police department and we changed how the police our community. >> those types of things can show engagement. people are stubborn. if they don't want to vote, you can't force them to. this is not australia. things thatint to they personally care about and have found progress in, it may not be voting. if you are expecting barack obama to fix your neighborhoods

somethingr there's about the bureaucracy you are not understanding. there are little -- lower governments where you can make a difference. complex thatedibly the people we are talking about there is not a homogeneous reason. one reason that you ask of people who do polling is some people do not feel like it matters. in some ways it doesn't. they also don't feel it they are getting spoken to by campaigns and are not involved in the process. there are other barriers created by our laws. it is also the narrative. --any of you have gotten it

a newspaper and says the brennan center will have low willcipation and no people be there. there is all the barriers there. the narrative we're created is no one is going to be at this party. why would i go to the party? that is the barrier that is cultural and narrative. we also have to fix that problem. i just want to point out that ,he people in this room although voter registration has that technical sound about what we are trying to accomplish here. eventually have a much larger effect then grabbing them.

that is a few percentage points. 48% of them vote. 72% of the vote. one could suppose the hypothesis lesspeople in iowa are isolated than people in texas. but that is the 24% advantage point difference. that could potentially be in effect that is 10 times as large as these very interesting effects. just automatically from going to opt in to opt out and get a 10 fold increase. it feels like a good thing to do.

>> in california and in oregon, how are people reaching people that don't have driver's licenses? >> that is a great question. registration at the dmv does reach only those forle with drivers licenses that method of registration. there are still avenues available outside of the dmv. there is no reason that this needs to be limited to dmv's. a lot of dmv's are considering much broader sweeps of their automatic voter registration to include the public service agency. a whole wide range of government there is no reason why they couldn't be included in the process. haveve seen in states that processes, many of them

expanding into other government agencies. ultimately a system of universal voter registration should cover as wide a spot of agencies that citizens interact with. >> good morning. i'm at the end do -- and aa cd naacp and i have to commend you to this great conference. there is so much fear in my community when it comes to voting. know where we are going to make the changes. i know what you are doing is

wonderful, you are our partners that we need help. disenfranchised through the redistricting. we just don't trust anyone. that we takest this show on the road. insiders. what about the people that we want to bring to the polls. they are the ones that need to hear what you are saying so i believe that we should train the bringrs so that we can front and center message everywhere. i live in a county that is the and wegregated county are feeling it so much at the polls so we need help.

in nashville. we are in court. so i don't know how we change the mindset to get people to the polls except to take this show on the road. thank you. >> thank you so much. [applause] that is a wonderful note to end this can all everyone here can take this show on the road. we're going to have a short break before the honorable eric holder addresses us. please don't leave and thank you so much. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016]

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>> more now from the brennan center for justice is former attorney general eric holder. he talks about the voting process and how it can be more effective. this is 25 minutes. >> ok everyone, we are going to get started. if he will take your seats, this part of the program is about to begin.

i have the honor of introducing my former boss and good friend attorney general eric holder. we are so delighted he is with us today. i'm going to start by bringing greetings from someone who is quite interested in this topic. he writes to the brennan center. this includes ensuring every person. when we vote, our government is more reflective of who we are as a people and our nation is better off. a join you in inviting. actions like this not only make it possible for our forces to be

heard but they also modernize our voting system in the 20th century. enable,ome together to i wish you all the best. the key is to speak after barack obama in writing. it is humbling to introduce one of the great attorney generals in our history. it is tempting to do so by rattling off all of his accomplishment. hundreds of terrorism convictions. equalityup for lgbt and restoring what he calls the conscience of the department. i was excited to do this today because it gives the opportunity

something he does not get enough credit for. his fierce protection to protecting voting rights. my last leader of the obama administration and i say it like that to remind the attorney general that i succeeded in leaving before he did. issued its --rt .he supreme court forced to standing up for military voters overseas.

voter as an after precaution.