mr. chair. >> our ranking member. >> thank you, senator merkley. let me just ask a couple of questions about cybersecurity, if that was covered while i was gone, will just repeat whatever those answers may have been. particularly particularly tap the two current election authorities. >> thank you for that question, senator. whatever states done between say 2018 and now to try to both secure the system and create a stronger impression that both the voters system and the voter registration system is less subject to any interference then people might of been led to believe. >> thank you, senator, for that question. what louisiana has done is we have a centralized management system with no remote access from vendors. we have a third party that's monitoring all behavior on our attacks on our website to see if there's any certain behavior, and to mitigate those attacks immediately. that's a 24/7 process. we own our own transmission lines and we monitor those, even if they're not being used all, every single day of the year, and all hours of the day. addi

merkley. and thank you to all of our guests, today. i would like to start out with you mr. who it, to talk about the georgia voting laws. last year, you characterized changes to georgia's election laws as quote, limiting access early voting. yet, we are currently in the third week of early voting in georgia, and they are seeing record early voting. in fact, early voting is up 217% from the last midterm election. and it is even up 100 55% from the 2020 presidential primary. so i want to ask you, mr., what do you think that the new georgia law limits access to early voting? >> thank you, senator. look, we are still analyzing numbers that are coming in, but what we know is that, anything that requires voters en masse to have to change to now find alternative ways to voting, whether restricted from being able to do what they once did, or whether we're accustomed to doing, is inherently problematic. we think that there are still some challenges with mailing voting, as well, in georgia and elsewhere. but here's the thing, the progress, and this is if you wanna talk about the laws

mr. merkley: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent for us to take five minutes to address the pump for nursing mothers act. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. merkley: thank you, mr. president. it's ten years ago we all got together to pass a bill to help women when they go back to work to be able to pump breast milk at work. we have 80% of women having babies today striving to breast feed. half of the women who have babies are going back to work within a very short period of time, and the only way they can breast feed is to pump milk at work. this is a beautiful, bipartisan vision. it was doctor coburn who educated us all about the tremendous benefits of breast milk for babies. but in that work we did ten years ago, we left out a significant group of women in america, those who work according to a manager's salary rather than according to wage. and so, now we have a bill that has come out of committee, by voice vote, to fix that. here we're talking about baby formula. truly, what is bett