Were looking at what has become a typical scene, long lines at polling places. Youve studied elections and polling at the bipartisan policy center. Do we have any real baseline to understand what is going on with the electorate going into this election . Matthew this election is unlike any in the past so it is hard to know if theres a good corollary. Already we have seen far more early and absentee voting than we saw in 2016 so it is really off the charts this time around. Host i have a chart that looks at early and in person voting and how it is trended the last couple of years. As folks can see from watching it, the trend has been for more prior voting, either by absentee or mailin ballot, then in person on election day. What is happening in thinking about the conduct of elections, that has led to this . And then accelerating this trend this year . Matt sure. It has been a trend 20 years in the making. Ever since colorado, Washington State and oregon state made it easy for their voters to vote by mail, we are at sea that once voters have the option, they like the option. Clearly during a pandemic, voting by mail is a good and safe option as well. Already we are going to have no excuse, and proactive voting by mail in 2020. An additional five states are also this year, mailing ballots to every eligible voter. That makes 10 states plus d. C. And other states are also making it much easier. By most estimates, 84 of americans are going to have the chance to vote by mail this year. Host going into this discussion, how about providing baselines that will help people understand how large is the eligible u. S. Electorate in 2020 . Matt the eligible u. S. Electorate is in the range of 180 million. I think we expect 150 million ballots cast in 2020. We had 130 million ballots cast in 2016. Host the anticipation is how many this year . Matt about 150 million to 160 million. Host we are taping this 8 days from the election. Dave wasserman who studies house races for the Cook Political Report tweeted last night, breathtaking, state like texas surpassed 80 of its total 2016 votes cast, leading the nation. And there is still a week of voting to go. Is that what other states are seeing as we lead into election day . Matt yes, it is breathtaking. That is the right word for it. In 2016 we saw 33 million absentee ballots cast. As of one week out before the election, we already have 40 million returned. There are 46 million outstanding according to u. S. Elections project. Host i would like to help people understand the challenges and opportunities for states and the overall tally this year. Let me start with in person voting in advance of election day. How many states are allowing that this year . Is that, again, an uptick in trend . Matt i do not think it is an uptick in trend. We are seeing more states move toward early voting. Most famously this year we see new york state and new york city voting having early voting options in a president ial election. It has been a trend that has slowed down, more of a trend in voting by mail. Most states are trying to extend the early in person voting option. Host in the washington, d. C. Area, virginia started its early voting in person today and maryland tomorrow, about one week out of actual election day 2020. There also have been covered covidrelated experiments in states. One i want to call to your attention, the Supreme Court got involved in an effort in alabama to start curbside voting, because of the pandemic. I am wondering, how many times this year with experiments for cobit courts have had to get involved with things states are wanting to do . Matt yes, curbside voting is an option many states. It is not something states advertise that much. In some states it is limited to voters of a certain age or disabilities. It tends to be resource intensive. That is what was happening in alabama when they expanded it. And then the court pulled her back a little bit. I think these are good options and we should certainly be looking at them in the future. Because the voters are expecting new and more convenient options. And i think Election Officials want to be where voters are. Host as you have been monitoring the weeks leading up to election day have there been significant reports around the country up intimidation with early voting . Matt we are seeing scattered reports. But voters have to be discerning when they see those report. One report in one place does not mean we are seeing widespread concerns across the country and does not mean we are saying widespread concerns in any one state or locality. Again, those are scattered reports. I think what we are seeing more of it is of very long lines or what seem to be long lines and part of that is because of covid social distancing requirements. And part of it is due to problems Election Officials i think are trying to quickly address so that it does not persist to the last week of voting on a and on election day. Host you mentioned the social distancing. You have been participating in seminars where they have been warning and having states plan for covid related staffing issues with enough people to work at the polls. Enough people to sign and people as they come in. How is that turning out as you have been monitoring it . Matt that was certainly the concern i had early in the pandemic, that there were not going to be enough warm bodies to provide significant, robust voting in person during early voting or on election day. I think i was not the only person calling for that. And really, many people have stepped up. There are many groups out there that have certainly recruited a new class of poll workers and it is impressive. For the most part we are not seeing the kind of shortages that we were most concerned about. Again, even just using data from 2016 and 2018, about half of all poll workers are over the age of 60 in the country. That is a risk category for covid, the concerns were real. I think that was born out. The fact that they were able to recruit so many new workers was great. The risk does not appear on election day. We are now in a period of rising covid infections and any one location there could be situations where poll workers are not able to show up on election day because they have to quarantine. That could result in polling places, oneoff polling places having to shut down or not open fully so i do think there is a risk but i think Election Officials have tried to recruit backup and are going to minimize that risk. Host turning to mailin ballot, and you referenced this earlier in our conversation. I have a chart to put on screen. This is from a report National Public radio did. 2020 mailin ballots, nine states and washington d. C. Washington, d. C. Automatically send ballots to voters. 36 states, ballots sent by request. This time around, no excuse needed or fear of covid19 is accepted as a request five states ballots sent by request and a fear of covid19 is not among the accepted excuse needed. This again is an enormous uptick in mail and balloting this year. I want to go through some aspects of it. First, the states ability to handle the volume as these mailin ballots come in. What kind of technology do states employ to process mailin ballots . Matt many states did not have a lot of technology to process these ballots. As recently as a few years ago most states were not seeing huge proportions of electorate voting by mail. Most states had fewer than 15 of the ballots cast by mail. So it was a human driven, oneoff process. The request came in and somebody in the Elections Office had to process it and sent out the ballot. There are technological solutions. I think we are seeing states trying to employ more of those. Many states have upgraded capacity to process these more automatically as opposed to having to handle it by humans. Host are they getting support from the federal government in is thise upgrades, or state driven . Matt the federal government did appropriate 400 million in the cares act in may. Most Election Officials, most policymakers, thought that was step one in the process and that there would be additional federal support and that did not materialize. We have been seeing and i think it was unexpected, we are seeing civil society, some philanthropists, stepping up were congress may have, and certainly the Zuckerberg Initiative has given 400 million to states and localities to upgrade voting equipment and absentee voting processes. The Schwarzenegger Foundation is doing the same. I think philanthropy is stepping in where congress was unable to find an agreement. That is certainly helping states run elections this year. Host a second aspect is the capabilities of the Postal Service to get ballots to people and return them to state officials in time. Folks watching this are familiar with the hearings Congress Held where the Postal Service commissioner was called to testify. Lots of criticism from congress about changes made to the postal system. How do things stand as we head into election day . Matt at this point, one week out from election day, we are kind of at the moment that if you are going to use the Postal Service, now is the time to get the ballot in the mail in those states where the ballot has to be received back by the election official by the close of polls on election day. Certainly the Service Standards have been slower. We do not want voters to unintentionally disenfranchise themselves by not getting ballots back in time because even though we know only 1 of ballots are returned and submitted for counting get rejected, a huge proportion of those ballots they get rejected are rejected because they missed the deadline and that is the last reason we want ballots rejected. Host voters concerned about using the Postal Service have access to drop boxes and this has been a point of conflict in some states, accessibility of drop boxes and confusion about which boxes are official and which are being done either for malicious reasons or in an attempt to help voters drop. Give us an overview of the dropbox situation across the country. Matt drop boxes have a lot of promise. They have been used west where we have seen more voting by mail and they have been used for many election cycles. These are safe options. For me, i think they are among the best options for voters to vote by mail. A dropbox is a one to one connection between the voter and election official. There is no middleman, no Postal Service. The only people who have access to a secure lock box, dropbox, are Election Officials themselves. So i think they are great option and they are not an option everywhere, but some states have done a great job of rolling them out quickly. Certainly here in maryland, we have not had them before. I was able to go to my local Elections Office and drop it in the dropbox. There were 200 locations in the state. I think we are going to see more of these in future years because this is a simple solution. A voter convenience option, safe and secure. And from my perspective one of the Better Options for voting by mail. Host the accessibility of drop boxes has been a point of contention. In texas the governor limited one per county, including the states most populous county. People criticized and suggested that makes it less accessible for lower income people or folks who do not have access to personal transportation. Can you comment on that, and of course courts got involved and upheld the governors decision. How do we understand and how should we process decisions like that to limit availability . Matt the texas decision is more because the state does not have drop boxes per se. They really have drop site where drop sites where they are staffed by election people. That is what is required by the law. You have to have a physical presence at all of these sites from the Elections Office, and that is going to be limiting. I do think texas is one of the states thats most difficult to vote by mail. They have chosen to go more toward the early in person voting route. I agree during a pandemic that is not the best option for a lot of voters. I do think states really should do more to make voting by mail options work better and in my view making that work better includes having accessible drop boxes everywhere. Host another aspect of voting by mail is following the rules as states set them up. In pennsylvania for the past few weeks, there has been something called a naked ballot dispute. Which means people have failed to include the privacy envelope as they have sent in their ballots. How complicated have you found the rules around mail and mailin balloting and where have issues like this popped up across the country . Matt the naked ballot issue i think got a lot of press. It is not a problem everywhere. Most states are not requiring privacy sleeves within the outer envelope. You are absolutely right. There are a lot of requirements. Many times, they want you to use the right color pen. Many times you need to have a witness or two witness signatures. Making sure you are following those requirements is essential so you can be sure your voting is going to be accounted. I do think we are seeing states do better when it comes to designing instructions and making them clear. But considering we are going to have a lot of new voters cast vote by mail ballots i do have concerns we may see higher rejection rates and we would than we would have otherwise seen. Host in tossup states, is this one aspect going to be a source of likely lawsuits . Matt yes. Certainly ballots cast in person do not generally make their way into lawsuits after election a election day, because once they havent cast in person and deposit into a voting machine. [indiscernible] we do know after election disputes tend to be based on mailin ballots and provisional bows because that is what is left to fight over. I think the range of options for the candidates or campaigns to fight over would be the increased numbers of absentee ballots and provisional ballots, would be a target of litigation after the fact in some states. Host the public has been hearing President Trump raise concerns about mailin balloting throughout the fall. Here is one example. [video clip] as far as ballots are concerned, it is a disaster. A solicited ballot, you request and they send it back and that is ok. Theyre sending millions of ballots all over the country. There is fraud and they found them with that name trump in a wastepaper basket. They are being sent all of the place. Area. Ent 2 in a democrat this is going to be a fraud. Host how large a concern is fraud in mail and balloting . Matt fraud is a very, very small percentage of mailin ballots. Over the decades we have seen it, we have seen only a couple hundred cases confirmed out of millions and millions of ballots cast. So i do not think fraud is big problem and there are many security features when it comes to absentee ballots. Host what has happened it seems as a result of this, the university of florida which tracks the voting steps before the election, reporting 60 Million People having participated eight days out. There was a partisan split. The number of people opting to vote by mail. In states where they count them. And people who are not. Is it surprising to you, that how you vote has become a partisan issue this year . Matt i wish it was, i think at this point nothing surprises me about what could become partisan. I do think it is making it more difficult for us to model out some of the aspects we would normally try to be doing at this point. Certainly in the past, the breakdowns of voting by mail versus in person voting tents voting ten versus in person to reflect the electorate of the state. If it is a more republican state you have more republicans voting early. With this, democrats voting more early. We really do not know what the final turn out is going to be. Host another issue with this years balloting, that has been raised is both foreign and domestic interference in the process. About 10 days out from the election, a press Conference Held by the dni and the fbi director christopher wray, here is the clip where they talk about their concerns about russia and iran intending to disrupt the election in the united states. [video clip] we would like to alert the public we have identified that two foreign actors, iran and russia, have taken specific actions to influence Public Opinion relating to our elections. First, we have confirmed that some Voter Registration information has been obtained by iran, and separately, by russia. This data can be used by foreign actors to attempt to communicate false information to registered voters, that they hope will cause confusion, chaos, and undermine confidence in american democracy. Host right after this press conference you published your response. What was it . Matt i think most voters have to remember Voter Registration rolls in this country are public record. What i did not hear the dni or fbi director say was they penetrated any secure Voter Registration rolls. It seems what russia and iran may have accessed our rolls that are publicly available to parties, to campaigns, so they can reach out to voters. That makes it incumbent on all American Voters to be careful, and be wary of what you are seeing. Do not forward that email, do not repost that post or retweet that tweet, if you have not verified the information inside it. I do think because we have done such a good job at, certainly hardening the election systems in this country since 2016, our foreign adversaries have fewer options to disrupt the process. One of the ones remaining, and one of the easiest ones to do is turn americans against each other and undermine confidence in the legitimacy of elections. It is incumbent on all americans to make sure that is not happen. Host one method of doing that is fellow americans using social media to spread misinformation, either intentionally or unintentionally. What are your views of what the social media giants have done to try to curb that in this election season . Matt i think are trying to go on the right direction. I do feel they sometimes have no good way of working. If they do one thing, one party does not like it. And if they do another thing, another party does not like it. Theyre trying to slow down the retweets. I know twitter is putting a screen over retweet so you can think about it before you do it. I think facebook is doing a little more when it comes to Fact Checking and providing factbased answers to common questions. This is all good. But again at the end of the day these are social media platforms. Onetoone from other americans or foreign adversaries. Who wants you to push their storyline. It is something we as voters have to be discerning about. If something does not sound right or sounds sensational, it may be that. There are ways to check the truth. That is usually your local election official. They have the best information. If you have a question, that is where you should go, not to social media to find your answer. Host lets talk about Election Night 2020. What do you anticipate it will look like . Matt i do think we are going to have some states that are going to be reporting data surprisingly fast. I do think the narrative has been because of all the vote by mail we would have endless delays or waits for results. That may be true in some states. It depends on how states process the vote by mail ballots that come in. Some states are already processing those ballots. Other states cannot open those until election day where they can start going to the millions of ballot backlogs they have. The state of florida, they will report the vast majority of their vote by mail and early ballots early in the evening by about 8 00 p. M. Eastern time. Then we will have to wait a couple of hours to get in person voting. Florida may be a state that can be called by 11 00 on Election Night because they will count so much of their early voting quickly. We have other states like pennsylvania or michigan that can be determinative in this election, and they limit how fast they can count early ballots, policies. If we are waiting on those to be called before an outcome, that could be where we have long delays, thursday or friday, before we have enough ballots counted to be pretty certain about the outcome. Host should voters have confidence that even if their state is not one of those tossup states, that if they have submitted a ballot, it will be counted . Is every vote counted . Matt there has been a persistent myth for many years, decades, about absentee ballots, that they are not counted unless they have to be, and that is ridiculous for many reasons. No ballot is a single race ballot. There are many contests. Absentee ballots always counted. The process lays out when that can happen. Again, for many states, that is a longer process. What we are seeing for this cycle, certainly, states have extended the deadline after election day to have ballots returned in some states. It may have to be postmarked by election day and they will accept it three days or seven days after the election date so the counting continues after election day, and they will count all of them in the cycle. Any voter who casts a provisional ballot at the polls, after the state counts there their absentee ballots he will count provisional ballots. So the official count could take one or week or more after election day to complete. Host susan page of usa today tweeted a prediction, massive mail in and early voting is here to stay post pandemic, with repercussions on who votes and how many vote in future elections. Do you believe that this is going to change things forever . If so, how do you see it changing the way president ial Candidates Campaign . Matt i do agree with susan page that once voters have access to these convenience options, voting by mail and early voting, they are not going to accept policymakers who do not extend that in the future. So i do think even though we have seen a slow trend toward more voting by mail in the past two decades, this is going to be a spike this year and i do think we will see the higher level remain forward. What we have seen this cycle is it requires the campaigns to act earlier. The socalled october surprise cannot happen before election day like in 2016 because many, many ballots have been cast already. As you said, as of one week out we are talking about 50 million ballots already submitted for counting, a huge number. I do anticipate that the number of ballots going to be submitted prior to election day will be more than 15 of the entire electorate. It moves everything back earlier into the cycle and that does have real implications for how candidates run campaigns. Host a closing comment from you for someone who spends their professional life studying the u. S. Electorate . How are you thinking about the fact that so many people are interested in this years election . Matt as voters care about the process, this year more than ever though, i see voters and celebrities and many people talking about the actual voting process. About how we need to make it voter centric and easier for voters to actually participate. It is not all about vote, it is vote early because you do not want to wait until election day when there could be a problem. Or make sure you are casting your absentee ballots accurately. And following the instructions. That is very exciting to me because we want to make sure voters are doing it right. This year, more than ever before, voters are paying attention to the process. They are telling us what they want the process to be. So i do hope moving forward, policymakers are going to listen to voters and make sure theyre improving the voting experience. That voters really turn out and the process is as easy as it can be. Host so you expect there will be rules and regulations changes in the years ahead in preparation for the 2024 elections . Matt i really think so. And i think again policymakers will be responsive to voters and what voters want. When they see how easy absentee voting is, and early voting is, i just do not see states that do not have so much of that going back to the old ways. Host i think anybody watching or listening to this interview would agree with you there has never been so many exhortations to vote in so many aspects of our lives as this year. Thank you for spending time to talk with us today, matt, to talk with us about how 2020 election polling is changing and how many people are participating in the process this year. Matt thank you for having me. Host for the second part ofour our conversation we are going to turn to the Voting Technology and changes in that. We are talking to laura hautala, who covers technology with Cyber Threats for cnet. Laura hautala, does it strike you as ironic that, as you have been reporting on Voting Technology, the biggest advances are paper stories, mailin ballots and digital voting paper records . Laura that is not surprise me at all. Election security advocates have been pushing for paper records for years. This is sort of the culmination or the furthest we have gotten on this process of making sure we have paper records to audit elections and let voters be sure that their selections have gone through as they wanted it. Host before we dig more into paper records story, i want to start with paper mail in ballots. The numbers are surprising everyone. As we are taping today, more than 60 Million People have cast early ballots, the majority of those paper mailin ballots. How are those mailin ballots being processed at the other end when they are received . Laura paper ballots are typically processed with the same technology you would use on a scantron test. These are optical scanners. They can tell whether you filled in the right bubble. They are counting it with the technology that can read paper and tabulate it on a computer. Host how long have these scanners been in use in the voting process . Laura scanners like this have been in use starting a little bit in the 1960s and then picking up steam towards the end of the last century, where they became one of the top ways for precincts to count votes. Host what are the advantages and challenges of using the optical scanners . Laura the advantages are that you have a paper record. You are not recording a vote directly onto software or a machine that then becomes difficult to audit. That is probably the number one failsafe that Cyber Security experts have pushed for over the past couple decades. This Technology Makes that possible. It kind of is the best of both worlds in their mind because we need to be able to count those physically. Its part of what makes the election feel accountable and legitimate to voters. When you can find out who won right away. But this also leaves a paper record so when there is an issue you can go back and check the documents. Host i was going to repeat the question about the challenges. Are they vulnerable to hacking . Laura all vote Tabulation Software could be vulnerable to hacking. Any machine that is connected to the internet could be vulnerable to hacking. So, voting agencies have to be very careful with this technology when they update the software, when they do anything that connects it to the internet because that is a point of failure where, even if there is a voting machine not connected to the internet, where you are writing on paper, which is free from hackers, once Software Comes in a picture you have to make sure hackers have no or very limited access to that software. Host staying with optical scanners, there was a great increase in volume that states are experiencing. Did you out they were prepared, from a hardware standpoint, or have states bought enough to be able to process the amounts they need . Laura thats a good question. I think some of the issues that people are most concerned about, with paper ballots being returned by mail, is less to do with whether or not machines can handle the volume, its whether voters can fill them out correctly. Paper ballots have a high rejection rate, which means they have more errors than ballots turned in at the polls. Because of that if you have not filled in your bubble correctly or used the wrong color pen, there is no check on that to let you know you have made an error to fix it. I know a lot of Election Security people are concerned and they are hoping voters can take extra time when filling out those ballots. Other things like making sure you are using the signature you use when you registered to vote and putting your ballot in the right envelope not putting two , ballots from your household in the same time. It will be a question of how much time those voting agencies have. Some states are limited in when they can start processing ballots and others arent. It could be a crunch in the places where those optical scanners are running overtime. The people in the election agencies are really trying to get those processed as quickly as possible. We also see slower election return. So i think that is going to have an effect on Election Night when we have states that cannot count their ballot until a certain time. They will take a little bit longer to finish counting the ballots. Host let me turn to the big change since 2016, paper records for digital Voting Machines that people will encounter when they vote in person. This was necessitated by the 2016 election. What happened then that necessitated the big change . Laura in 2016 there was a culmination of years of concerns about security and Voting Machines. Since 2000, states have been purchasing a lot of electronic Voting Machines. They are called vres. Many of those dont have any paper records that a voter can verify to make sure their votes were counted correctly. That raised a lot of concern. Computer scientists immediately pointed out that anywhere with software can either have flaws or be vulnerable to hackers. And they said, even though these Voting Machines are supposed to never be connected to the internet, even though you have to hack them in person and each state has different machines at a county by county level, that makes it a difficult thing for hackers to break into but not impossible. The real problem is not being able to say have hackers have access to this. Could there be a change in these votes . And paper records are a vital part of being able to answer that question and reassure voters it was counted correctly. Over the past 10 years or so states have been moving away , from those paperless Voting Machines and have been investing in technology that has, even if its a touch screen, has a paper record that voters can verify. Not only that, Election Officials can use those paper records to do audits. Those audits are called risk limiting audits. They are the Gold Standard as far as Election Security folks are concerned. They let elections agencies have a small but significant number of ballots and look at them for any inconsistencies. That is a statistical thing that can flag a larger problem that could trigger Something Like an audit or a recount. That can find things like hackers. It can also just find misconfigured software that are recording the wrong thing. It is important for all kinds of things but really for the integrity of the vote. Host what percentage of the machines that americans will be using this election day and week for early voting will have paper records this year . Laura quite a few more. I dont know the exact percentage, but i can tell you there are still some used in some counties in texas, a lot of louisiana, and other states. It is a small handful of populist states that have these machines. And that is still definitely a concern. It will be good news if it is a smaller target if hackers did want to target those, they would have to really focus on those areas. Also, it isnt the only concern that Election Security officials had in 2016. The other major thing that happened was that allegedly russian affiliated hackers targeted Voter Registration databases. They probed systems in all 50 states and it looks like in , about four counties they were able to access those databases. Of course that is not affecting votes necessarily, but it could affect who can vote. That is another major concern that has been addressed the last two or four years. Basically having worked with election agencies in the federal government to secure those systems and make it a lot harder for someone to access them. That wasnt very robust security for those databases. So that has been improved a lot. One of the things the federal government has been concerned about going into the selection into this election is a ransomware attack. That is when hackers basically lock up files with an encryption. Typically they will demand money , in return for those files and files, hence the name ransomware. They dont always get the files back. Something the federal government specifically said to sow chaos and deny access to voter record s in the lead up to the election. That was another thing that they worked on locking down and making sure it would not be vulnerable in this election. Host those kind of Ransomware Attacks would not necessarily be the work of foreign interference. It could also be domestic people who are interested in sowing discord. Laura its not something that necessarily takes a wellfunded operation to carry out, depending on the particular database. Anyone who wanted to create chaos could do it. The federal government has said there are motivated foreign actors who may be interested in targeting it. Host is there a story to tell our viewers our tradition in this country is that all handle states handle their own elections individually so you , have lots of different systems, rules and regulations. Is there a story over the last decade or so of public, state, federal and the private Tech Industry coming together to help address election related issues . Laura that is definitely the case. Elections are run by states. That is sometimes also counted handed down to the county level. This creates quite a Patchwork Quilt of different policies, technologies, and protocols. That is something that adds to complexity to our election system. To improve things, you have to work with each and everyone one of these agencies. The federal government is not in charge. They can offer assistance. This has been a story of the federal government offering assistance to a variety of agencies. And many states taking them up on that. States can also choose to get similar help from private vendors. There is a large industry of vendors out there working to help these election agencies do a better job of securing these vital systems. There is also a lot of participation from a cybersecurity community. There are tension between people holes inhere to poke systems and clean out the flaws and the people who are trying to help people vote. That is not always a warm relationship, but there has been interesting partnerships of trying to suggest ways that you can have more secure technology and maybe build it together. There was a collaboration in texas along those lines. They actually invented their own machines that attached a printer and allowed for the machines to create a paper record. That machine did not end up getting built and used in the mainstream, but it was a part of a larger conversation that this needs to be better and this is what it needs to look like. Host the machines in widespread use today started to come online in the early 2000s after the 2000 contested election. You have written some interesting history pieces about voting. I wanted to spend time on that. In 2000, the bush v. Gore, and people will remember the story of the hanging chads and butterfly ballots in florida, states were using a different kind of technology. What was the prevalent type of technology 20 years ago . Laura the florida ballots were punchcard ballots. The reason we ever had punchcard ballots is interesting to me. These were paper punch cards that voters made their selections by punching a hole through the card in the appropriate place. The reason we had these is the we had mainframe 1960s, computers that took in data through punchcard. You could program them or you could put in data with a punchcard. This is literally Computer Programming tool we were punching holes into. It was a huge improvement in a lot of ways because the previous machines were huge and difficult to maintain. When you live in a really populist county with a lot of things on the ballot, those machines were covered in dials and knobs you had to turn. It was just cumbersome. So they shrunk the ballot down onto these punch cards and you could make your selection. So that was a major improvement. It allowed for a really speedy counting of the vote. Of course, what we learned was that it was a really close election. If voters dont mark their ballots clearly, if they do not punch all the way through, if they leave a hanging chad, it was really difficult to figure out. That became quite a problem in 2000. That marked the death knell of punchcard ballots. They were still used for a little while later. In fact in the 2003 governor , recall election in california, there were 135 candidates vying to replace then governor gray davis. L. A. County still had punchcard ballots. They had ballots with all of those candidates on them. They did go away after that point because that caused so much chaos. The federal government said, we need better technology. These are punch cards from the 1960s. What can we do . Since the 1980s, electronic Voting Machines have been used. Were originally just as big as those dial and lever machines. They had the whole ballot on one giant screen. It was electromechanical. It would record it with the pressure of your hand. Those developed then into the touchscreen and dial computer ballots that we are used to in many places in the country. At the time even though computer , science has said this is a problem, these could be hacked, that was what was on offer for a lot of states. Some states went for more optical scanners. They invested federal money into optical scanners after the 2000 election. But other states went to these paperless sheens that later became problematic in their own regard. It has really been a progression of moving from one Older Technology to another. It is kind of a story of Voting Technology moves slowly because government funding moves slowly. The technology of voting is typically not in line with where we are with the technology of computers in our daily life. Host i dont want to leave the history of computer processing of votes without getting the name in of the 1964 machine. Just because it is so 1960. It was called the votomatic. How large a breakthrough in technology was it in 1964 when it was introduced . It was right up there with these were the computers we were using to make calculations for the space program. This was a major advancement to be able to count votes quickly. The lever machines were tabulated by looking at little dials that were like odometers, writing down that number and adding them altogether. Being able to just insert the votes into a computer was a huge advancement. And the name does sound like something out of the jetsons. Out of the 1960s. It was just an era of everything. Host some of our older viewers may not know about it. Im sure many of them will remember the gears and lever machines you described. They were in widespread use for a long time in precincts around the country. Lets move to 2002. The federal government did get very involved after the election and passed a law called the help america vote act. Lets listen to president george w. Bush talk about that legislation as it was signed. [video clip] pres. Bush today im proud to sign into law an important reform for our nation. Americans are a selfgoverning people and a central commitment to selfgovernment is free and fair elections. The help america vote act of 2002 is a bipartisan measure to help states and localities update their systems of voting, and ensure the integrity of elections in america. [end of video clip] host how much money did that pump into the system from the federal government . Laura millions. The states went on shopping sprees and their counties as well. It was quite a bit. It created a rush on Voting Technology. Its interesting because it was basically a onetime deal. The effect was that what states got was what they got. For that reason, a lot of it is still in place, although there has been a huge effort to replace the paperless machine. That influx of cash really shaped the landscape today of Voting Technology. Host we are talking about some of the challenges along the way to Voting Technology, but particularly this year. In one of your stories, you talked about the federal governments involvement in hardening systems against the risk. Quoted the director of the cisa and he said the u. S. Is still at risk in addition to the challenges of voting in a pandemic. His agencys biggest concerns are ransomware, which you talked about earlier. It exposed Voter Registration database as electronic voter rolls. As a result, they launched a program to help state Election Officials make sure they are securing those systems. Americans may not be familiar with the cyber and infrastructure security agency. What has this mandate been doing to help elections . Laura it has security in it twice. It is an agency that is tasked with securing our infrastructure. In that regard, the election system has been made part of the Critical Infrastructure system of the united states. That includes things like the electrical grid and the financial system. The agencys mandate is to help secure it and be aware of vulnerabilities, warn states of the risk, centralizing the information and understanding of the risk to the systems and , communicate with states because it is such a patchwork of agencies that are securing our elections. It makes it so that if there is a known threat, getting the word out about that really falls to somebody outside of that system. That is where they have stepped in with their cybersecurity system expertise. Host in one of your most recent pieces, you reported that , because of all of these considerable threats to in person machines and the hardware, and also because of the pandemic, that there is a renewed interest in online voting. Are we close to a workable online Voting System for this country or even individual states . Laura the short answer is no, with a caveat. Cybersecurity experts told me we are not even close to having this technology needed to secure online voting for the general public. That being said, we do have it for a small subset of voters. Those voters include military and oversee voters. As well as some disabled voters. It does not look the way you think. You are not filling out a ballot online and hitting send. It is essentially receiving your ballot in a pdf file or downloading it from a web portal. A small section of those voters can mark the pallets on their computer and print it out and mail it in. And a smaller subset of those voters can save an image of that filled out signed ballot and return it by email, fax, or on that web portal. It is a small group of voters , and it enfranchise his people who either have to deal with the International Mail system or who could not vote independently if they did not have an online ballot marking process. That includes people with mobility his abilities or lowvision who may not be able to see a paper ballot. I spoke with a blind voter who would have been an absentee voter, but she could not fill out her paper ballot without help from a friend and she did not feel comfortable with that, so she did not vote. Now the voter lives in pennsylvania and she is looking forward to be able to mark her ballot on a computer screen with the assistance of her screen reading technology. Now she can mark her ballot out, and, print it mail it back in because that is what pennsylvania requires. Some voters in other states like delaware could return it by email or other states can send it back on the web portal. Host you write about the real challenge of turning something in by email or by fax is the loss of privacy. Why is that so important . Laura the reason that is important is because you have the right to a secret ballot. That is a really big deal. We embrace the private ballot, the secret ballot in the united states. In the 1800s, it became a major cause after the civil war to end political corruption to keep coercion out of the vote. You are waiving your right to privacy because in part your name is attached your ballot as it travels to our Elections Agency electronically. Your Elections Agency electronically. Its hard to separate your identity from it right away. Eventually it will be processed anonymously, but it is so exposed to hackers. Email and fax transmissions are not secure. They are not a secure way to send information. Its supposed to be anonymous and extremely secret. That is a big deal to waive that right, and its something that people who want to use those systems, if they are eligible need to weigh. , host what have the experts told you is the timeline from my for online voting for the majority of americans, given the ease of being able to do it on your own timetable from your own device . Laura i have been told anywhere from at least 10 years to decades before we can all vote online. And the reason for that is that voting is not like banking. Banking is not anonymous. Your name is attached to every aspect of your banking transactions. So we dont have the technology that can secure the vote and keep it anonymous. We would need a lot of advances. The other aspect, and this is a runofthemill thing that affects everyone, is we would be voting on our personal devices. We are not yet at a place where our personal devices are completely secure. We have software on our computers to hopefully keep them safe from hackers, but it is not a guarantee. If hackers could install malware or redirect you to a malicious website, they could get access to your computer and change your vote after casting them. Then there is a whole internet infrastructure that you are sending your ballot across when youre returning it to your election agency. There are servers in other countries, and we dont control that infrastructure, so we would need really solid Encryption Technology to lock up those ballot files as they cross the internet. Security ask for it say were just not there yet. The last thing is fraud detection. With banking, fraud is built into the cost of doing business. It is somewhat of an acceptable risk. Its something those institutions work hard to reduce, but its something they know is going to happen and they can account for it. They know exactly how much it will cost them. With voting, there is not an acceptable fraud risk. Its not something you can build into the system. I guess there is a certain percentage of corrupted ballots that hackers got their hands on. And finally, to address that problem, we need Fraud Detection Technology that can tell votes are corrupted before they are counted. We also dont have that technology yet. If we are going to ramp this up to the general public, there is going to need to be a lot of advances. Host i will close with election day 2020, really just hours away. What can you tell our viewers about your level of confidence, after all of your reporting about the security of this years election and its ultimate validity . Laura i think Cyber Security experts are less concerned right now about the threats to both vote counting than they have been in years past, and thats a really good thing. Thats because of the increase of paper records and increased coordination among the states and federal government. There are a lot of reasons to feel good that the security of this election will be better. I think that the major areas of concern have to do with how the election is perceived. The fact that there could be delays in vote counting for a variety of reasons. Whether all of those millions and millions of mail in ballots get processed and get returned on time, are marked clearly, and all the other reasons we may not know exactly who won right away. That leaves a big opening for misinformation, confusion, and even intentional disinformation paigns live i that can campaigns to amplify that confusion. If there is a feeling like something is going wrong with the way the votes are counted, that could lead to a lack of trust in the election. I think that is where a lot of cybersecurity experts are focused as election day nears, to see whether that will turn into a major problem where people are losing trust. Host thank you so much. You have been writing about this for many months. We appreciate your information for cspans q a. Laura thank you for the invitation. All q a programs are available on our website or as a podcast at cspan. Org. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] our Live Campaign coverage continues today with a series of events in pennsylvania. Vice president mike pence visits western pennsylvania at 11 30 a. M. Eastern. Avoca at trump in two 00 eastern. First Lady Melania Trump makes a stop outside charlotte around 4 00 eastern. Live on cspan, online, or listen live on the cspan radio app. Tomorrow is election day, november 3. Stay with us to learn who voters select as the countrys president and which parties will control congress. Live coverage of Election Night starts at 9 00 p. M. Eastern and continues through the washington journal at 7 00 p. M. Eastern. Share your experiences as results come in and hear from the candidates. Watch live on cspan and cspan. Org or listen live on the cspan radio app app. For an unfiltered view of politics. This morning, we invite your calls on the president ial race here and for the next hour, phone lines are dedicated to supporters of President Trump
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