The university of florida as of this morning where than 79 million valid seven casts and that includes 27 million early ballots and 52 absentee ballots and 39 million absentee ballots outstanding. In some counties and states we are nearing the point where the more ballots are cast for election day 2020 than during the entire 2016 voting time. It also mean this will be the First National election were more than half of the ballots are cast prior to election day and the shift occurred in a once in a century pandemic working with electric show officials to adapt. Election administrators deserve all our respect and admiration in voting is happening right now and processing is happening right now weve decided to symbol a group of voting experts with men Election Officials who been studying it for their entire careers to discuss what to affect in its unprecedented elections years and hopefully. Before i introduce them i ask the questions throughout this event either through facebook or youtube in the Comment Section or on twitter using the bb p life. I invite you to register for event we will hold virtually on december 13, 22 devonian experience and goals for reform cosponsored by the Democracy Fund and the Carnegie Corporation of new york. Find more information on a website and will briefly introduce todays panelist. Doctor Laura Ackerson is professor of Political Science and director of the center for study of voting in election and democracy and the institute of new mexico. Nationally recognized expert in the area of election sciences, methodology, voting rights, Public Opinion and political behavior. Jimmy patrick a Senior Advisor of elections at the Democracy Fund. In 2013 she was selected by president obama to serve as commissioner on the president ial commission which is led to position as a Bipartisan Center to further the work of the commission and prior to that she was a federal Compliance Officer for arizona elections for 11 years. Ricardo cortes is a former commissioner of elections and current Election Security advisor at the Berman Center for justice. Hes also served as general registrar for fairfax, virginia. Finally, chris thomas is the bbc fellow and Current Special advisor to the detroit city clerk. Chris also served as commissioner of the president ial commission on Electoral Commission and longtime director for the state of michigan. Thank you for the panelist for joining us. With that we jump into the first question and ill ask ricardo who is title include Election Security advisor and want to start with talking about the press Conference Last Week held by the director of National Intelligence and the fbi director about election interference. When the greatest risks remaining in the last few days before election day or on election day and in the days that follow. Think so much for having me with you today. Yes i think the announcement last week was big news but for me one of the biggest parts was that federal government identified an issue and made the public aware of it and made Election Officials aware of it quickly which is a big change from where we were four years ago in this process and so i think heading into the election i mean is certainly there are some risks to the system still and a lot of the issues that we anticipate heading into next week revolve around the technology in the abuse in polling places, not necessarily that there is foreign actor threats, which there are, but keeping it though systems running and there is unprecedented use of slowdowns during early voting and so i think having the appropriate backups in place for Election Officials, i think the one area concerned that we been looking at is both elections in the Election Results and the need for everyone to be patient as election work official work through counting all of those ballots that has come in already and not being taken aback that the vote totals change as the night progresses and as the days progress and balance continue to be counted for the selection. Same question. In 2016 we had concerns about interference which is mostly our Voter Registration database so what are your concerns for the cycle . I am not immensely concerned about that versus just general things going on in precincts and there are certainly things going on out there but i think the thing is the difference between being concerned about them and having information that something really is mucking up the system i think one thing we can say about our system is the fact that it is so federal and fragmented is a wonderful thing for security and our system of elections is quite secure. Thank you. Tammy, even focused a long time on absentee voting and is the fact that we will be doing more absentee voting this year another area of more risk . I think that is a great question and im not had anyone frame it in quite that way before, matt. I think the question that has come up quite repeatedly is that there is this narrative around voter fraud and that we shouldnt trust vote by mail or absentee voting and i think that is an ill place and illfounded. We talked about the security of the system for me is the question it doesnt mean the voters have selected that way of voting and do they have the opportunity to effectively get their voices heard through that channel and so we do know the vote by mail has some opportunities to misstep and they can fail to find the signature block or they can return it to late which are the two largest reasons for rejection so there are opportunities for missteps on the part of the voter and not having their ballots be counted but i do know that in this moment many states have taken on policies, either through governors, executive orders and directives from secretary of states and others to make sure the voters have the opportunity to get their ballots in and postmarked by election day and we know that many places are, in fact, allowing for drop boxes and things of that nature so we wont have hopefully as many late ballots. Imagine there is still outstanding tens of millions of voters having their ballots on their kitchen tables or counters or on their desks who need to make sure the voters read those instructions thoroughly and get the ballots back in because for me that is the real challenge is making sure that voters who have mentioned or shown they want to participate, either by registering to vote or by effect requesting a ballot that they have every opportunity in a Global Pandemic in the midst of a third wave, third spike that we are seeing here getting their votes back and making sure they are effective and counting. The last part of that is we also know there are challenges when voters go to vote in person and are given provisional ballots so we do know there will be a confluence there and we seen it already in early voting that voters have ballots at home and have in fact decided to go vote in person and are having a provisional ballot so those will be some of the ballots we will look at after election day and as we do every election and have for a very long time. We had those procedures and policies in place. Of course, to meet in two minutes we could sum up all my concerns and we promise you will get to them and eat but we now work at the federal level in the state level and at the local level and election so what are your biggest concerns about security at least for the next seven14 days . Really, going into the Election Security make sure everybody vote is counting. Thats what voters are concerned about now. Weve got drop boxes across the city of detroit and on cameras and monitors so security from that viewpoint is to ensure the voters that the balance that they drop in the drop boxes and collected in process and any camper will have an ongoing basis. We have this voter county board here that probably has over 700 workers in it that is where everything will be processed beginning election day. We have that lockdown and we have the precincts lock down and we are working with the state and insured of security in terms of Voter Registration but its really the issue security in a broad sense and the kinds of intimidation has us concerned really. We had a ban on guns that have been overturned by the courts and on appeal right now and there is a concern in michigan that the votes are lockdown earlier in the spring and we hope not to say that. Chris, im on the phone with you once again but imagine earlier historic levels of turnout before election day and it may be that up to two thirds of the ballots but that still means that upwards of 50, 60 me people are likely to turn out on election day and so certainly throughout the early voting process especially in the first day we see in long lines. Is that will be expect or should inspect to see on tuesday . Should be expect to see long lines due to the social distancing and limitation that come with those in person . Are not expecting long lines like we see on tv from other states. The question is with the increase and mail ballots how far do states allow their local Election Officials to validate and if they consolidate too far [inaudible] as our studies have shown over the last several election cycles the lines are generally have gotten shorter. In michigan there is no allowance so we have every single precinct open and we have an abundance so i do not anticipate, at least in michigan but obviously with sanitation of the polling booth and social distancing things will be slowed down a bit but as long as jurisdictions did not overly validate the precincts they should be okay. I could ask the same question. You studied lines before so what are you expecting to see both in new mexico and around the country . Im expecting to see some lines on election day and just today iowa has consolidated and closed a lot of precincts for election day and that will affect voters so covid will affect voters in some places but theres always lines in some places on election day and i think obviously the social distancing is going to impact that as well. Weve seen lines happening in early voting and people hanging in those lines and get processed and vote. I think for the most part for the vast majority over 90 of voters or more they are going to go into a voting location and not have any weight or hardly any weight at all but certainly there will be some lines we have had a huge number of voters who vote early in new mexico either in person or by mail but there is also a large number of people as tammy mentioned who have not voted yet. We have not gone their absentee ballot in but did request it so i dont know if they will be turning it in light or walking it in late or not late but by election day. There is still a lot of outstanding people to vote, either through the mail and there will be substantial number, much less the majority people and perhaps as much as 60 will vote probably more, 70 will be voting before election day. Thats a great segue into my next question which is for kami because its on absentee voting and absentee ballots clearly will be the story of this election and not only because of the huge amount of usage but also going to be, i think, phone to be litigation and has been a lot of litigation around them so could you speak with some of the issues we been seen with voters assume more than one ballot or the naked ballot issue or i had to bring it up to analyze this but one of the things that are likely to be issues and then potentially litigate in the week actor after election day. I thank you are spot on. There will be quite a litigation around both absentee vote by mail ballots as well as provisional ballots and anything that is not determinative or already counted will come into question potentially in some places if the race is close and the races are close and we have a lot of others of course to get contests on the ballot and so part of the challenge we have here is thinking about in this moment around the increase use of vote by mail many jurisdictions were caught off guard because you have states where traditionally they have had singledigit participation in vote by mail, whether it was because the voter needed to use an excuse in order to get their ballot mailed to them or whether it was because in that space the culture was to go vote in person anyway and what we saw in the primary season is that many voters were taking the primary, im sorry, the pandemic seriously and decided to request the ballots via mail. Local Election Officials were inundated with applications and having a hard time getting the ballot to even out in time when people were using their preexisting policies and materials to satisfy a much larger volume of voters and that is where best practices werent adopted but they have been sent so over the course of the summer weve seen more space in jurisdiction revising the design of their envelopes so its more intuitive as to where a voter needs to sign it, adopting policies and best practices from center for civic design and some of these other things that we think about it it sounds like its really in the lead of a lot of minutia in but we know from studies that when voters know where and when to sign and when the instructions are easy to understand and they know when they need to have it returned by and when, in fact, they are provided with options in that return we have fewer voters having ballots that are called into question as being potentially rejected. I think that we will see a lot of that is the days following election day depending, again, upon how many of these ballots get back early and to alanas point jurisdiction that i was and we had hundreds of thousands of voters dropped their ballots off at the polls in arizona on election day and they are seen voters bringing them in earlier and so on Election Night for the majority of states we will have a lot of the returns of those absentee ballots so i think its important for voters that are still have that ballot in hand to know that if you get it in early you will be part of the first ballot counted. I turned to chris. Michigan has been marching towards more absentee voting over the past couple of years but certainly everything they are seen this year due to the pandemic has been much greater because what are localities doing to prepare for this onslaught . So, the localities learned a lot in the primary election and that was the big learning curve for everybody to handle that much more than we typically had been handling 25 of the vote by mail so we had some experience we dont have experience with 50, 65 . In detroit they had the largest number of ballots, 81000 in a primary election where almost no serious contest so it was a great time to learn and get all the kinks out, if you will. One thing we have learned in the state and a lot of states ahead of us is the use of highspeed tablets. We have a very long ballot for the president and for like the School Boards we never been able to use them in the past and weve had them around but they would not work consistently with the long ballots but the Voting System vendors have fixed that so in detroit we had 18 high speeds in the primary and we had some Going Forward and his many cities in our state that have larger populations. That will move things along and regarding the application process we were in our secular state issued absentee ballot applications everybody in the state in june ahead of and those applications for dual applications which means you fill that out and get the ballot for the primary and the general election so we were basically frontloaded the member so when ballots became available in late september we were pushing out statewide over 2 million ballots that we didnt have to wait for another request to come in so that has really saved the steps towards drop boxes never before in michigan so that is a first. Satellite offices most of been a first. [audio difficulties] also with valid tracks Michigan Voter Information Center to keep track of whether their ballots had been back and that is what we see is an issue for november and when there voters have not been returned and they show up at the polling and so we put our procedures in place to handle that and to allow them to vote for callbacks to the Clerks Office toiling the absentee ballots and to go ahead and vote in person. I would ask one more question and i will move into election day in a moment and i want to put on your hat and there have been a lot of changes to the processes and some have been done by legislators and some have been done by courts and some are being undone by other higher courts so my question for you is there now been several big cases and in the circuit courts around ballots and when those can be received after election day so what is your recommendation to voters who may be concerned that the rules are changing and work five days before election day and what would you tell to someone holding onto one of their absentee ballots . Thats a great question. At this point for voters return that ballot in person and return it prior to the polls on election day after your message allows states have provided drop boxes for voters and most states, at minimum, allow you to drop off your ballot at the local look Election Office in person and so some states are now allowing you to drop off your voted absentee balance of the polling place in election so take a look at what your options are and drop it off in person so that way there is no question about whether it gets counted or wrapped into these agents around ballots that are postmarked by election day whether or not they are counted. Thank you for that. Forgiving the panelists a few more seconds because we want to remind our viewers if you have a question and are watching on her facebook or youtube feed you can ask your question in the commons will try to get to many as possible. If youre watching on another feed you can go to twitter and tweet at us with a bpc life and will to many as possible. Polling, voting of the polling place will be different and we knew that and again back in january we thought everything would be crazy we did not think masks would be a polarizing issue that was going to have to be dealt with so tammy, what are Election Officials doing about voting at the polling place. Are they mandating that and what happens if they come without masks and what they should be doing . There is a variety of approaches depending on how the state or the local health apartment has laid out parameters within a given jurisdiction so we know there are some states where the governor has issued a directive and left it up to the local counties to roll it out so it really is a patchwork and i think part of the Election Officials and poll workers will have is that no matter what the declared policy will be we will have individuals who will show up to vote who forgot their facemasks. In that instance poll workers are being supplied with extras that they can provide to individuals and been advised that they can offer things like curbside voting if someone doesnt feel that they can come in to the polling place but we know they will be some who want to test the system and who, without a face mask because they will refuse to wear it and that is where we are having training that is been provided some good training materials the local Election Officials have been able to leverage and utilize from healthy elections. Org adjusts and for mit project and to really talk about to deescalate that situation where if you have individuals standing in line and because of the social distancing the lines are going to look line we want to focus more on the wait times there but if you have voters standing in line and the person is 6 feet away from you were using to wear a mask how does a poll worker deescalate that situation and how does it offer the right healthy option to make sure that everyone stays safe, including the poll workers themselves. The answer is always an asterisk, it depends. It seems that this is one of those situations where we just try to make sure that the general public and poll workers and Election Officials know that there are but a few arrows in the quiver and how we can handle the situation to maintain the health and safety of everyone. Thats great. Similar question. How are you hearing your national about how Election Officials are planning to deal with those situations at the polls. Yeah, its a patchwork like tammy said and varies a lot by state. In texas its very clear that the governor that you dont have to wear a mask if you dont want we cant force people to wear masks. It is our recommendation and it varies a lot by state. Here in new mexico its also a recommendation that people were masks and people, of course for the poll workers is mandated for the people in the polling place is mandated but most people around masks and i have a survey in the field and im getting back information that most people are Wearing Masks while they are waiting in line and in the polling place so i think there is good news on that. Thats great. I will stay with you doctor atkinson right now. Early in the pandemic its a lot of energy towards trying to find the resources to pull off an election during a pandemic and congress did pass the cares act which included 400 million for election but nothing else and in that time we seen primarily the Zuckerberg Foundation and Schwarzenegger Foundation stepping up. Maybe just comments on whether or not thats the best way to Fund Elections in this country . Certainly hearing in new mexico weve used resources for ppe and the polling places i think thats been going on across the country but we do not get enough and it was for the primary and general and we could do more and helpful to have individuals helping us out but the best way to fund our election system is through our taxes and through normal governmental means and that is we dont want to rely on that because its not a reliable way to venture elections but we are sad that it does come to this particular election which is very unusual and normally we dont have a pandemic going on which has change the entire structure so maybe to this particular election those resources were appropriate and helpful and we are thankful for them. I would ask you ricardo a similar question. Bipartisan policy sensor we had the need that 1. 5 billion in the Brennan Center pointed at closer to 2. 6 billion so clearly we thought there were a lot more needs then were met by the 400 million from the congress and another 500 million or so so do you think that Election Officials have everything they needed to run this successfully . I think ultimately the next week the election will be successful Election Officials will get the job done. I think that they certainly could have used more resources, particularly from the federal level. Elections are run at the local level but those local Election Offices are running elections, not just for local offices but for state and federal offices as well and so being a shared response ability should mean that funding gets shared appropriately to and so the Brennan Center has been pushing for congress to appropriate more funding and i think we will continue that push Going Forward and there should be should not be dependent on there being a pandemic to provide the level of funding necessary to run elections appropriately but there should be a pretty consistent stream of funding at the federal state and local level to ensure that we can run elections the way they should be run. They are the cornerstone of our democratic process and its a core function of government and we should be funding and we should be funding them appropriately so people arent having to deal with the challenges that we have talked about today in terms of facing hunger wait time or having equipment that doesnt work and all of those things could be greatly helped with the use of appropriate funding. I want to turn to you and just to walk us through the polling place experience. Obviously Election Officials have changed things up and they are not running the same voting as done so one of the biggest changes your same on election day and in person voting for this year . In some states we have the legislators and others listen to local Election Officials allow them to be flexible and serving their electorate and other states didnt so in the same way that we talk about resources i think we need to take a moment after the selection and reflect on what policies aided the voters the best in this moment and some of those policies were things like allowing for the consolidation of polling places. We have seen all across the country coliseums, arenas, hockey rings and other places being utilized so nontraditional polling locations being used and well as an expansion of early voting opportunities in places where they either did not have early voting or they expanded the number of days and hours and that sort of thing. Voting in person looks different this year. We have drivethrough voting in johnston county, iowa and we have locations where curbside has been fairly predominant in the south and in some places like North Carolina but that has become an even more expanded and we have nontraditional locations that are being used, as i mentioned, the coliseum but other of wide variety of facilities where Business Leaders have stepped up and offered up their facilities so its important that voters who are planning to go to the polls on november 3 know to look at what their polling place might be because it might be different and it could be that you dont have just a single place that you have to go to but you have a variety of options that you can select from. Those are some of things we need to contemplate in a couple of the other changes that have taken place in this moment have to do with individuals who will be working at the polls. We know that traditionally our poll workers have been of the vulnerable age who are susceptible to this unfortunate pandemic so we have seen an influx of younger people and other people who have never yet served in the community as poll workers so in this moment is important that we tip our hats to all those who have stepped in to assist and i think as voters we need to also remember that that means that might be the first time they work this particular vision and to have patience as well with your friends, family members and colleagues that have, in fact, risen to the call. Be sure to double check where youre going to be voting on the third because it will be an important that you know what your options are and they probably have changed. Great point. I want to second your kudos for all of those who stood up to the poll workers this year. I do think i was firmly among the people who early on that in person voting was not going to be an option because there just would not be enough for workers and im happy that i was absolutely wrong about that and that people did step up and groups out there been recruiting. Chris, tammy mentioned that you wrote an oped about this earlier in the year so could you focus on that for a little bit and what makes arenas really good options, especially this year. Well, arenas are set up with a lot of room and a lot of interspace so if there are lines people are out in the elements and those here in the Northern Tier its been a cold day so size often the centrality in the parking is all available and that you can spread out to whatever field and platform they have at the center of the arena but it really allows the Central Location to really process a lot of people and i remember watching the kentucky primary and, you know, up in louisville they did a nice job with errors and there was another one down by the university of kentucky and they had some challenges there but that is adding Additional Resources so they had a number of places that exhibited what the benefits are in terms of processing the number of people comfortably, out of the elements and not relying on small, cramped quarters and people particularly now with the spikes that have happened if people want to be assured that there is plenty of room for them to spread out not on top of one another so i think the beauty of this is out of necessity of course of innovation and i would hope to see this arena move forward in the future even after the pandemic as an idea. Great. Its been touched on by a few of our palace but want to focus on and ive been calling this a sleeper issue of 2020. There are a number of people who, as we know have reflected ballots, absentee ballots and some places they requested it may be not realize it because they submitted a dual app for the primary and in many states this leads to provisional ballot so walk us through what a provisional ballot is first of all and how that gets counted or not after election day . , a provisional ballot is a failed based ballot if there is a question about whether you are able to vote on election day and that could be because of registration issues or the way you talk about in terms of having the question absentee ballot in the provisional ballot will let you cast your vote but the determination about whether or not the count happens after the election so in terms of the process it usually there is sort of envelope and information involved with the form you have to fill out when it comes to absentee ballots that have been issued the way those will be dealt with in the states as they will be before counting your provisional ballot they will make sure that there was not an absentee ballot submitted and counted from you. If there wasnt then they will count that ballot. One of the things weve done at the Brandon Center this year heading into next week is pushing states and local Election Offices to have sufficient provisional ballots materials on hand and to have sufficient balance on hand to issue provisional ballots and the materials for issuing them because we are concerned that there will be in a scene this during early voting in a number of states because of delays in getting ballots out or delays in receiving them through the polling service where voters get antsy and they have not gotten there ballots and so they go in first to cast their vote and they have to go through that so we really have been urging people to have sufficient balance and materials on hand to account for that heading into tuesday. Doctor atkinson what is usually the case with provisional ballots and are they a big deal or is this going to be an unusual situation in 2020 . They are always a big deal because they are important failsafe to the election system into the voter and maybe this means we have more of them but they can be processed pretty quickly after the fact if you are just checking to see if someone has already voted in as a simple thing so i dont think its incredibly complicated but important failsafe for the voter and you no one should be concerned about if they are worried about their ballots and i think they should take advantage of that. Some states actually allow people whose ballot is not arizona, montana and in those states if youre ballot if you dont think youre ballot has arrived then they can run down and vote on election day so it depends on you live in whats happening in if you are all worried to give vantage of the system. There has been in recent days over the past couple weeks some criticism of the fact that Election Night that on Election Night and when the ballots are counted so chris, in michigan theres concerns about ballots because michigan will be a swing state and its important that only as of this year can jurisdictions processed those before election day so what are your expectations about how counting will work and how long it will go and is that something to be concerned about that we just dont have results right away . To your last question it is not a concern and there have been many elections that have taken place [inaudible] i think that what we are looking at was the amount of mail and this is just going to take more time but not the extent that a lot of people and theyre still counting and i do not see them counting unless theres been some instance that has intervened so we got ten hours, temple hours to preprocess on mondays before election so that was passed and signed into law october 6 the long process and we are very grateful and we cannot put any ballots in the tabulator but we will open them and we have ballot numbers in michigan that we will check the ballot numbers to make sure it is set and then we lock them all up overnight and come back at 7 00 a. M. And begin to have a living. This the jump on the day going into election day. We expect to issue partial results at 8 00 oclock Election Night. You will have a very large number of ballots already tabulated by the time 8 00 oclock comes around. I know that earlier these highspeed tabulators make all the difference in the world. As you know and people are tired of hearing, michigan is run by a municipal 1511 of us running the election. There is only 70 that are above 25000 population. Smaller jurisdictions below that they are not going to have any problem processing and it may not be 10 00 oclock at night or it may be two in the morning but that is not the end of the world and the highspeed jurisdiction and the larger one they will, at the latest, and up sometime on wednesday and maybe some will go into wednesday afternoon but i dont think those are unacceptable times and were not talking about friday or saturd saturday. I want to turn to the question we received on twitter from Nancy Boswell is talking about Voter Suppression and some of the court cases so are you seeing Voter Suppression nationwide or to be expect to see it on tuesday . I think we certainly have some concerns about some of the things weve seen and the rhetoric around, especially having people at polling places trying to either block access or do things intimidating to voters and weapons learn the selection and on the front of voter intimidation and other issues i think the need to revisit some of the federal legislation that provides protections in the election process and prohibits some of the practices weve seen in the selection will be helpful as we come out of this but i think by and large Election Officials are prepared to handle these situations and have been working at the state, local and federal level on this and making sure there is appropriate coordination with Law Enforcement to deal with any issues that come up so i want to stress that if they see something they should report it and absolutely but they should not be afraid to go to the polls and exercise their right to vote either now during early vote but those states that are in in the early vote. Or on tuesday for the election day. I want to ask you the same question but we seem long lines and what we know about the impact of long lines on the vote . Long lines always mean some people might get out of lines and not participating in the process but what we also know people when you stand in line a very long time people have been standing in line for hours and this is why early voting has been so important this year. Weve extended early voting of people have been taking advantage of all the early voting because they are concerned about election day and waiting till election day. Iowa, this morning, collapsing there precincts in closing many of them with covid and no one knows a lot of people are uncertain about what is going on and its arranged peoples behavior that president ial commission that president obama started with all about moving people to early voting and that has been a real success this year. I think that success is going to play out on election day mostly positively and though there are certainly instances of voter intimidation it is not widespread and most people are going to experience a good election experience. Another question coming from one of our viewers very barnett and what is a sacred place to present people from voting in two different states in the same election. There are a couple of safeguards and one of them is eric which is electric or Electronic Registration Center and at some awful so we call it eric but eric is a consortium of states that compares the Voter Registration list with your department a model motor or the death list in a wide variety of other data sets to compare one set of registrations from one state to another and that has been around now for a number of years and i dont know the exact number of the latest count but we have more than half of the states are members of eric so thats one way of identifying if people are exactly registered in two states and then they can follow up on it. I will say that is a minimal number of people who are in fact registered in two states and even fewer number that may potentially vote in two different states which is illegal to vote in two different states in the same election for say in a president ial election. There are mechanisms in place we continue to encourage states to join the eric consortium so that we can, in fact, not only identified where voters are registering into places but in this moment is also an important element in tools for states because it identifies eligible but unregistered voters within your own estate and people may be have moved in and got their drivers license havent yet registered to vote so its a tool thats used in that way and that those types of tools and policies where the legislators have listened to Election Officials to be able to join consortiums like that and put policies in place to service their voters best is important and i want to tag on to the last question because i think its a good segue. In this moment where we talk about Voter Suppression and talk about having that balance for security and access eric is a perfect example and restrict voters from identifying voters from being registered in two places and remedy that situation and it reaches out to voters who are unregistered and in this moment weve seen states all across the country implement Practical Solutions that they needed to do in order to service the voters well. Allowing voters to drop off a ballot at the park in madison, wisconsin to their Election Officials should not be controversial but we know that unfortunately there have been more than 300 court cases to try to limit Election Officials abilities to service their voters well in this moment and its done everything from how many drop boxes you can have or if you can have drop boxes and if the postmark matters in all these things need to be looked at after the fact and im hoping that voters are paying attention on which Election Officials have the state and local levels as well as federal levels have their best interest at heart. Well that allows me another tip for the event where we will focus on all the bullet to the changes needed that we have learned we needed for next year so thank you. Another question from the view viewer. Im sorry, i also failed to plug your recommendation of the Bipartisan Policy Center recommendation that court cases have come into play and dpc has issued them as nonpartisan policies and i think that we would be well served if more states offer them. Again, tammy, this is why we have you on the panel but this is a tidily excitingly entitled legible election policy came out in january and was written by 21 state and local Election Officials across the country and it does seem like in a pandemic a lot of those logical election policies work well for the states. We have about time is off so if you want to submit a question i will take another question from one of our viewers and this is and it talks about election databases or infant jointed on election day with multiple factors. Willett, could could it impact Election Day Operation places . It certainly could have an impact. We have seen, not necessarily hack season but the increased use of a system and the systems not being able to handle the use is getting in the lead up to the election has caused system failures and it does narrow the ability to impact but on the election is a little less impact full because the information in your polling place is already going to be whether their electronic poll votes or that information has already been downloaded there locally and so again this is where things like provisional ballot and those sorts of failsafes come into play. We can sure Election Officials are prepared for next week if there is some sort of system failure whether its malicious or unintentional i am in virginia on the registration deadline there was a rogue construction crew that cut a fiber cable and they cut off access to the statewide data center and brought down the all line registration system. Its not a malicious act but something you have to kind of deal with and be prepared for and so i think all of the backups that Election Officials hopefully have in place and things like paper books and having provisional ballot material so they can keep people voting even if their systems go down for those places using ballot marking devices is a primary foam of form of voting or have emergency paper ballots so the machines are working they can still vote people and keep the lines moving. All those preparations that we been pushing for a lot of Election Officials have adopted and hopefully prepared for heading into next week. There is some potential for negative impact but i think the planning and Mitigation Strategy and the resiliency planning that Election Officials have been doing will hopefully offset anything that happens on that line. I will not let you off but id forgotten about the fiberoptic cable incident of 2020. I was thinking more about we had issues on Election Night with the voter Voting Results according systems going down Election Night and i caught controversies so i guess my question would be how should how should allamericans be looking for trusted information about Election Results on Election Night in the heat of the moment. I think on Election Night the first key for everybody was [inaudible]. Chris talked about how they are hoping to push out at least the first batch of result apparently were early on in the evening but the process of counting ballots and reporting them out takes a while and not just in a pandemic situation but it just takes time and i think in terms of trust in terms of information your state and local election websites that are pushing out information about results in doing that pretty frequently throughout the night and as a results are being updated and tallies are completed at the polling places and reported up the also have kind of the backup entities like the Associated Press which also has they have a program where they have people stationed at local Election Offices and places around the country where they are expected to be close races so they can also click results there is the point where they are reported and publicly posted and so there are a lot of different ways to refute that information in the one thing i would caution people again is that Election Results will get posted on Election Night are on official in the process of both counting the ballot and of confirming those counts keeps going after the election and Election Officials have a lot of processes they go through to make sure that not only have they counted all the ballots that are they can be counted but did those reports are accurate and they go back and double check everything in the polling places and go back and double check what is done at the county level and we hope we will have a number of states is your from doing audits of the Election Results so there is a lot of steps in that process so we get to the final results of that election. I think in some way or the other you could talk about there may be results and we did get a question from isaac about when we thought or you thought all of the ballots would be counted so want to give you tammy a chance to weigh in so when do you think we will have enough ballots counted to be pretty confident in the results . I think the first few days after the election we should, unless the race is very close have a good idea of what is happening and even on Election Night i think that you know, things could be clear and of course we want to be ready to be patient but states like florida and North Carolina in those states have processes in place that should be able to provide us all there absentee on Election Night and it is michigan and wisconsin in pennsylvania that are more iffy so i think that depending on what the map looks like arizona is another state that is real prepared and already counting their ballots and so i think we might be surprised that, you know, we will see something reasonable on Election Night and have some idea of what is happening and we will have an idea that there is a few states that going to be close and it is whether they are in the balance or not to make that difference but then a few days after the election, certainly not more than a week you should be seen and having a clear winner. So far i like doctor atkinsons prediction the best. Tammy, will be be surprised . Youll love my my answer. Its aligned with that in that i was more worried about this when we didnt know if soldiers would be returning the ballots as early have they have been so i think we will have a lot of results in on the night of november 3 so we will have a lot that we can look to at that moment but i think its that ned foley discussion around the production of a winner but i do think the other question of when do we know all the ballots will be counted so the state with the longest counting. Is the state of california. They allow kansas 20 days so Election Officials wont have more than likely the official result in california until the end of the month. Those are two very different questions but when we feel comfortable projecting for the winner will be and when will those final counts be done. The other piece as many places will be triggered to be close and might trigger a recount and we need to use the r word but its quite possible that there will be a recount triggered, not looking at you florida but you seem to like them these days or have them, i should say. That seems to be where i think we will fall. It all depends on what the final numbers are, how close they are, whether or not we go into recount and how much of it gets challenged and drug to the court and all of that really will tie into the timeline. One minute left. Chris, you are the only one of these panelists was on the ground right now in a local election jurisdiction but what is your 152nd piece of advice . Leave on the web site as well. Thank you very much and good luck voting. With five days left until election day on november 3rd when Voters Decide who will control congress and occupy the white house next year, stay with cspan. Watch campaign 2020 coverage every day on cspan. Stream or on demand at cspan. Org or listen on the cspan radio app. Your place for an unfiltered view of politics. American history t on cspan3 tv on cspan3, i ebb exploring the people and end. Events that tell the american story. Election day, november 3rd, well look at president s and president ial elections. Saturday at 10 p. M. Eastern on real america, a look at four films that explain the american electoral system, a tuesday in november, the election of john f. Kennedy, president of the united states, richard m. Nixon, the new president , and election 1976. On sunday at noon eastern, the final president ial debate between Vice President al gore and governor george w. Bush. Then at 2 30 p. M. Eastern, the first president ial debate between president george w. Bush and senator john curry. And at john kerry. And at 8 p. M. Eastern, history Professor William crawley on the personal fews, leadership and achievements of franklin roosevelt9. Exploring the american story. Watch American History tv this weekend on cspan3. The competition on. Be a part of this years cspan student cam video competition. Middle and high school students, be the start of a National Conversation by making a 56 minute documentary exploring the issues you want the and congress to address in 2021. Be bold with your documentary. Show supporting and opposing points of view and include cspan video. Be a winner. Theres 100,000 in total cash prizes including a grand prize of 5,000. The deadline to submit videos is january 20, 2021. Be informed. Youll find rules, tips and more information on how to get started on our website, studentcam. Org. 35 u. S. Senate seatses are up for election this year. In georgia there are two senate seats up for election. And one of those, incumbent Republican David Perdue faces Democrat John osoff. Next up, the debate between the two candidates. And the georgia Gray Television station present republican incumbent david perdue and democratic challenger johnos osoff in the 2020 georgia senatorial debate. Heres your moderator, mike she eland. Republican incumbent david perdue and john osoff. This debate is also ouring on wrdw in augusta, wtbn in columbus, wctv in thomasville. The