broadband to all americans in a think there is another strong theme running along the idea of inclusive innovation. >> we all want to see the benefits of the internet be made available to all. we want to see more rapid innovation. what mr. trump is saying is that the way to the path of those objectives is less regulation, lower taxation. communicators on c-span2. >> on c-span, newsmakers is next with a look at the voting process ahead of election day. then president biden travels to his hometown of scranton, pennsylvania to campaign for hillary clinton.

millard talksace about her new book on winston churchill. newsmakers wet focus on the machinery and to the integrity of the vote. thomas hicks joins us and he is in chicago. denise merrill's president of the national association of secretaries of state. she joins us from hartford. jeff mason is the white house reporter for reuters. anna palmer is the co-author of the popular playbook pick sheets. repeatedlyrump has said that the system is rigged. calling into question the integrity of our elections in general. do you believe that he is sewing jeanette concerns about whether to havetions are going

the right results at the end of the day? >> thank you. it is nice to be here. i would have to say about the question of rigging the election that even the question is is noctive. there evidence that there is a massive conspiracy to overturn or even change u.s. election results. the results of this claim has in thessive distrust system in connecticut and elsewhere i am having reports of hundreds of people calling in and saying how are you counting my vote, are there illegal aliens voting? the problem is that the claim is vague. when you say rigged the election, i'm not sure what he meant but it plays into the fear that people have that their vote will not be counted. just the claim alone is destructive and the fact is that

overstated would be an understatement. there are lots of reasons that many of us have been explaining at length the last month or so including the fact that for example, none of the election equipment where results are tabulated are connected to the internet. people assume it will be some sort of internet-based hacking of a system and it isn't even possible. that is just the beginning of why it is a preposterous idea. >> i want to thank you for allowing me to be on your show today. one of the things i wanted to make sure that the american people know is that they should have the confidence in our system that they will function well on election day. over 30 million people have already voted early. if you have some sort of doubt, votes will be counted on election day and are being cast

before election day and the system is working well. the election assistance commission and by fellow commissioners and i have traveled around the country to see the process play out. i am in chicago because i am seeing early voting take place. over 100 machines were hooked up and none of them were connected to the internet and all of them had securitize to them. if anyone attempted to interfere with the process, there were security there, poll workers there. the system will function as well as it can. if you see the process from the inside you will see that it functions well.

as long as people ensure they operating within the means of the law, they conserve as poll watchers. we do not want people intimidating folks or trying to influence the process. we want everyone to operating cr ballot and have them counted accurately. >> amalek to follow up on that last statement. are you expecting there to be a lot of unannounced or unplanned poll watchers across the country? how will the places deal with that and how should they? >> we are not expecting that that as eac has done, there are contingency plans for everything. what the election officials have done -- as you know, the elections are run by the state, not the federal government. voter and i go to a

polling place and i am feeling intimidated, i should talk to the election officials that are there. mythat does not alleviate fears, i should talk to local law enforcement. i should not be intimidated to cast my ballot on election day ballotast -- to cast my before election day in the states that allow it. >> we recently did a poll that said 41% of voters thought the election could be "stolen." are you surprised by that number and what are you doing to make sure people are reassured before they go and vote? >> i'm not surprised by that given the kinds of conversations that have been going on. if there is anything good there are two things. on high alert.

advising charged with -- they have all, and talked openly about how the election is administered. people are asking how does it work? it is very local. in almost every state the moderator of that polling place is the person charged with keeping order. people understand that these elections are very local. you have a human being you can talk to about what is going on. it has always operated on trust to a certain degree. people were questioning that

doubt -- now and we are getting an education on how elections run in this country. >> it is hard to say where that comes from but there have been reports of tampering and incorrect data when it comes to voter registration. i wanted to talk about that. why do the systems seem more vulnerable and why don't you think that could spill over into the results of the election? to expand onted the last question before we move on. about the 41% number but i hope that as the election season draws to an end that we continue to talk about these issues. rolls around, americans can still participate in the process in terms of the things the eac is doing for the next iteration of standards for

voting machines. >> people should understand that the mostly computerized photo registration rolls are state-by-state. there is not a lot of information sharing across state lines so to some degree it is true that there are many people who are cross registered in many states. great deal of mobility now and we are very hesitant before we take anyone off the rolls appropriately. we should understand that the voter registration databases are one piece of election administration. they are not connected to the election result tabulation.

ironically, paper is still the best medium. they're printed out and people are checked and largely on paper and most of them are not connected in any way to the election result system. their hase is kind of been talk of dead people on the rolls and so forth but that is because we do not have a national database because elections are run by each individual state. itry state as i understand -- the local registrars or clerks do canvases every year and make many attempts to keep the rolls accurate. inaccuracy comes from

cross registration or the people who did not realize you need to cancel it for you go to another one. many of us joined a consortium of states and to be honest i think the election are better than they ever have been because they are cuter riced but you still get checked in at that desk. you get checked in at every precinct and that is the best way to make sure that people who are voting are voting once and only where they reside. national database of when you would advocate for question mark >> not -- for? not necessarily. it is probably as you are seeing now probably a good thing. --re are federal regulations the eac does provide guidelines

for all of that but within small margins the states really do administer elections. i'm not sure that a national database would be possible. the consortium we have joined is a good first step toward something like that. >> mr. hicks? >> i agree with that but would like to add that with online voter registration lists are a lot cleaner than they have been. when states talk to each other , i think thatms the states are doing a better job of ensuring that those folks lists are a lot cleaner. they want to make sure that we keep the people who deserve to be on those lists on the list. i would air on the side of having the lists a little

unclean. so we are not disenfranchising people. theomeone does show up in polls, they are allowed to still vote. >> there has been some concern in the public about what will happen with the vote. our states and counties doing anything differently this year compared to previous election cycles? can you walk us through how that has happened? have some of the states i visited. invited theave public in to see that. this is >> and cycle has been different than any other.

the contingency planning. ago, a week before that national election, hurricane sandy occurred. that has played into the rhetoric. i believe the states are prepared for a number of issues during this election cycle. last election cycle to ensure that the election will move forward. to make sure those machines are clean and accurate. the results that you see on election night are slower. things to ensure that function well. to eac has put out guidance

election officials making sure their database is up to date. dhs and theed with fbi and finding out more threats. we don't know if any credible threats right now but we want to ensure that the american people have the confidence to go out and cast their ballots on election day through early voting. is that normal to work with dhs and f the eye or is that specific to this election? >> that is specific to this election. states and locals have worked before with the fbi in the department of justice and local law enforcement because of threats that may have occurred with polling places or things like that. it is more making sure that the election is secure overall.

making sure that the election equipment is secure. they work with local law .nforcement or security are you talking about the physical security? >> they have worked with other law enforcement agencies on the physical security. >> secretary merrill, did you want to respond? >> i would -- i would echo everything thomas has just said. we were part of the hurricane problem and as a result, i recommended emergency plans for every state. up-to-dateng those this year. what do you do when the

electricity goes off? when your polling place is underwater? those are real problems. it sounds like the weather will not be an issue. security thing is new. i am part of the person that tom is describing. we're hoping it will result in quick communications. as i said before, since the election results system is not collected to the internet, the problem might be with the list or some attack that would slow things down in some way. hopefully we will get first word if that occurs. communication system. election officials are doing

their best to make sure that everything goes smoothly. we remember the hanging chad. positiveat produced a result which means everyone will be extra careful. >> i want to build on what secretary merrill is talking about. to ensure that i hope the news media -- a lot of americans received their election night reporting is also prepared for the election. we saw a denial of service attack which slowed down internet service on the east coast. hope the news media is preparing for this election cycle because they are part of it. assistancelection commission giving any kind of guidance on how to do that? >> we have not, but we could. if anyone wants it we are more

than willing to give that advice . >> what would be a piece of advice that you would give? >> one thing would be to ensure that denial of service does not occur. any pdf's coming in to ensure up-to-date virus scans done to ensure that the electricity and other things like that -- that you have backups. there are a number of different that we could get to on that topic. >> you are talking about the contingency plan on the front of this. potentialepared for legal challenges by donald trump or other voters, in terms of challenging the results? election assistance commission does not deal with the challenges that way. that would be something done

through their lawyers with the senate or house. be involved in that at all. >> legal challenges would probably be on a state-by-state basis. actual enforcement of election laws in a bipartisan commission separate from the secretary of office. they will be a once a take action or the attorneys general. we are prepared for that kind of thing and i think that most states are in the general way that you would be for any election. i want to mention one thing we alluded to which is there is one new thing which is many states are implementing a computerized result system. the results will be uploaded electronically to make them quicker and frankly more

accurate because most of the errors we see on election night are human error. it's the end of a long day and 's numbers getle transposed. it only comes into play if there is a close election but we have two to three weeks in every state to verify the results. and check against a paper copy in most cases but the slow down on election night might occur with a denial of service on some of these new systems which are on the internet in many cases and if that happens i think all of us are prepared with backup systems . we still have policeman bringing up the results from certain small towns. the old-fashioned ways are still out there and they will be called into play if there is some sort of breakdown in the system. >> we have about 10 minutes left

this week. secretary merrill, you are a democrat elected as secretary of state in connecticut. what is your national role? >> this year i am president of the national association. it is a bipartisan, nonpartisan group. we share best practices and things like that. it is a one-year term and we rotate democrat and republican. host: and if you could talk a little bit about where the elections commission came from and what your budget is as you work to help voting systems around the country? thomas: it came about after the 2000 election, formed by president bush on october 29 of 2002, to basically help states with the administration of elections here and we gave out $3.4 billion to the states to purchase new voting equipment and have statewide databases for voter registration, to reform things like provisional ballots. one of our biggest functions is our voting guidelines, which we

are updating now and we hope to have it finished by the and of next year and the beginning of 2018. the standards have not been updated for over 10 years. part of that is due to the fact it was not functioning for a number of years. my colleagues and i are working hard to make sure those are written in a way that ensures that innovation takes place, they were written before the iphone was done, or other smart phones and tablets as well. we want to ensure we move forward with that. best passes to the states, in terms of voting practices, but we also have a number of resources we provide to voters. we recently did a voter card for people who have disabilities. the card can be put in their

wallets to bring to the polls to remind yourself of what your rights are. the last function we did with that, we did it through a qr code, so that you can scan it with your own device and see what your rights are. we want to make sure voters vote securely and privately. host: we talked a little bit about the topic of rigging the election. is that even possible? if you wanted to rig an election, how would you do it? thomas: rigging an election would be -- go on. >> you know, it is hard to imagine what it really means. what is implied is at first, it seems like the accusation would be someone out of the country or a sort of cyber attack.

it is clear that would be very difficult to imagine. the result systems are really not electronic. maybe some adding or subtracting of names on the voter registration list, that would be difficult because it would be detected pretty quickly. i think there are over 10,000 precinct jurisdictions not even counting all the polling places in the country. they are pretty independent. even the states like my office, really, the moderator of each polling place is in charge of the place. they are charged with following the laws of the state and the federal government in the election. a lot of us are scratching our heads to see what this really even implies. we're trying to think of every scenario that we can. i think there is some sense that there are a lot of illegal aliens voting. i think that is a subtext of

some of this. again, it is hard to imagine how that would happen given there has been a long fight over voter id requirements in the country. it comes down to, a lot of us feel that making sure every eligible citizen can vote is the most important goal we all share. it is how you get there that i guess is the question. that is behind all the fights about what we need to identify someone as a voter. barring something like that, and that on a grand scale is hard to imagine. host: on hypothetical rigging scenarios? thomas: rigging the election is something a lot of folks have talked about in terms of people casting votes who should not, or suppressing the vote by

preventing other people from casting the ballots. one thing i want to ensure with this is if the way that these scenarios are being described, you would need an army of tens of thousands if not millions of people to pull off the rigging of the election the way things are described. machines are not hooked up to the internet. they are secured by election officials and poll workers. it has guidelines on securing voting equipment. we want to ensure that, you know, if you have any sort of suspicion that those things are taking place, you need to report those. it is still a felony to commit voter fraud. it is still a felony to suppress people's votes. we want to ensure that. that is something local law enforcement would participate in or the department of justice, where there are number of actors -- advocacy groups where you can call to express your opinion if you feel the vote is being rigged.

anna: there is a lot of focus on cyber attacks. how common is in person voter fraud? is that a wide problem or nonissue? thomas: it is not an issue. denise: extremely rare. thomas: it is extremely rare. to have in person voter fraud. denise: there is quite a large academic body of work that supports that. researchers have tried to find in person voter fraud and i think one research to describe it -- researcher described it as you are more likely to be hit by lightning than experience voter fraud. host: we want to ask you about overseas and military voters serving overseas. how do you make sure the voting process is as secure as in the precinct in the united states? thomas: military and overseas

voters through the act passed in 2010, have two important features. they are able to receive their ballots 45 days before the federal election. they are also able to's -- to receive those electronically. some states allow you to see that electronically as well. many concerns have been raised about the hacking of those votes. we want to make sure the men and women fighting for our fight -- our right to vote, get their votes back as quickly as possible. some of those votes in the past when they send those back, have not been counted because they have gotten here not in time. we want to ensure that our men and women overseas can have their vote counted as well. forward, we want to

see if there are other ways we can go about ensuring that people can cast their votes and have been counted accurately. come january, when we have a new president, whenever that might our functions for the next year or so, we want to look at what otherthat will ensure ways to cast ballots, so we are not making the same arguments. >> a minute or two left. i want to give the last question. >> you mentioned little evidence that voter fraud is a problem. differently byd different parties? >> i will let you start.

.> i am not sure like all things in this country, i think there is politicization case is that republicans want more identification, despite indications of voter fraud, just be sure. on thet think it rests evidence, one way or another. about almost all of the institutions and the question is to get af you need specific kind of identification on an airplane, why shouldn't there be identification to vote?

this ignores that people do not have identification, for a reason or another. haveer or not you should to say who you are at the polls, it is more about what kind you should have to prove who you are and it comes back to a more profound distrust. >> last 30 seconds. >> i spent 11 years working in the congress and, when i got there, there was camaraderie on have theirthey may point of view, but there has to be a common ground, which we work towards to pass legislation that is beneficial to the

american people. i hope that is not our role. lawrole is to interpret the and, in my capacity as an american, i hope to get back to that. >> we are going to have to end it there. good luck in the days ahead. helping withfor these questions today. it will be a busy week coming up for you. thank you. >> we have the older man sending younger men into war and few