Transcripts For CSPAN Voting Rights Act And The Federal Government 20141109

Was a covered jurisdiction. Shelby county had been kind of a modal of Voting Rights, to be honest with you, for a decent time. There had been cities and towns that had problems but Shelby County itself was pretty good. So we signed them on. They decided to file a complaint. And so we did that. One of the thing that is we decided to do from the outset though was to bring two claims, which ended up being important, i think. The first was a challenge to section 4 b itself which was the coverage formula. The second was to bring a challenge to section 5. So because of some thing that is the court had said in northwest austin about coverage being outdated we thought breaking it down that way would crystalize the issue for the courts. That is the way we proceeded and ultimately the way that the court ruled. It ruled on the section 4 b issue finding that the coverage formula was outdated and did not respond to Current Conditions. Did not rule on the section 5 issue. So basically the base line that we have today is if congress creates a new coverage formula section 5 will be back in place. But as of right now its not because theres no valid overage formula. Let me just start by thanking i fmp es for bringing us all here today, for inviting me and to thank all of you for being here. It is a great honor to be among such a group of people from around the world who care about emocracy as much as we do. The foundation of democracy any democracy is the right to vote. This right has long been recognized as fundamental by our Supreme Court even though our constitution does not explicitly protect Voting Rights as such. Our courts since the 19th century, however, has said that the right to vote is fundamental because it is pre servetive of all rights. None of our interests, be they in education, employment, health care, whatever it might be, are safe unless we are able to vote around participate as equals in democracy. I say this by way of introduction because although this principle has long been proclaimed in the united ates, it has not always been respected. And even today in the United States there are practices which diminish, dilute, or impair Voting Rights by some of our citizens. So let me in my brief remarks start by providing some context, both on the United States unusual electoral system, and on history, before moving to the question of what the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights act were and werent doing at the time that the Shelby County case, which brendan discussed, was decided last year. So, first some context on the u. S. Election system. We are very unusual in two major respects here in the United States. The first is the profound decentralization of our system. Elections are not run at the National Level in the united tates. We have no entity with general responsibility for managing the elections here as is the case in most other countries. Rather, elections are run for the most part under the laws of the 50 states and they are actually administered at the local level. Literally by thoups of counties thousands of counties and municipalities each of which has authority for actually running the daytoday operations of our Voting System at the local level. So we have not just one Voting System, nor even 50 in the United States but literally thousands. The other distinctive characteristic some would say pathology of the u. S. Election ystem is partisanship. What i mean by that is that in most states the chief election official is someone whose ther elected or appointed by their party and runs for office as the candidate for their party or is appointed by someone who is elected as a candidate of their party. That is to say, the chief election official in most states is in that sense a partisan. This creates an inherent conflict of interest between the chief Election Officials responsibility to serve the i want rests of all voters to create a level playing field, and that officials interests in serving his or her party and advancing through the ranks of his or her party. It is a party that is, by the way, well recognized i among other democratic countries, which is why the chief Election Authority in most countries enjoys some degree of insulation from partisan politics. This, however, is unfortunately a lesson that we in the United States have yet to learn. Next, let me give a little bit of historical context. For most of this countrys history, racial minorities most notably African Americans have been systemically denied the vote in much of this country. That was still the reality 50 the ago in 1965 when Voting Rights act was adopted. There is no question, as brendan pointing oud, that things have changed considerably in the intervening period. At the time of the Voting Rights act, blacks were systemically kept from voting or even registering throughout the southern states, which are still for the most part the states that were covered at least as of 2013 when the court ecided the Shelby County case. So what was the Voting Rights act doing and what wasnt it doing . There has been in recent years a lot of discussion in the United States of vote suppression practices that allegedly make it more difficult for eligible citizens, especially racial minorities and poor people to vote. Voter id, which you will be hearing about in the next hours panel, is the most prominent subject of criticism by those who complain of vote suppression, but there are other practices such as registration rules, limits on absentee voting and early voting, that have also been criticized as instances with vote suppression. The perception is that the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights act were an effective tool against these vote suppression practices. The reality, however, is that they were quite rarely used to top those practices. Where the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights act were most often used was with respect to what we call delusion at the local dill lution at the local level. For example, new lines were drawn for City Council Elections in the United States state and local legislative bodies generally have responsibility for not only running elections but for drawing the district lines from which people are elected to office. And allegations are sometimes made that those lines dilute the strength of minority votes. So the preclearance provisions that brendan discussed were mostly used and in my view were most effective with respect to e local practicing practiceslocal levels redistricting and so on. That was what was really lost in the Supreme Courts decision in Shelby County. Im not interested in relit gating that decision here. I disagree. I tend to think that the places that had problems 50 years ago are still the places with the worst problems of race discrimination today. That said, these issues that ive discussed and i presume well discuss further in this panel making it more difficult to vote and have ones vote counted, these are really national issues. And at some point i would like to see the United States Congress Take action to establish a baseline of uniform rules for registration identification and early voting so that the many people who move across state lines in the United States know what the rules will be for voting when they move. As it stands now, if you move across state lines you may face entirely different rules regarding registration, identification, when you can vote, and so on. We have in my opinion a lot to learn from the rest of the world when it comes to the way we run elections including the protection of Voting Rights in the United States. I think adding to that list of federal issues ought to be the way the interaction people have with voting. Whats the machine or type of voting that takes place . So its consistent. Because some machines are more accurate than others. Also, a huge issue in the United States is absentee voting. A lot of issues come up with absentee voting and that is different for each jurisdiction. But i think now we can turn to what happened after Shelby County and what has happened since then. Brendan. Sure. So, you know, basically the there was a call almost immediately to update the coverage formula which was what was struck down in the Supreme Courts decision in Shelby County. It took a little bit for a draft bill to come out but eventually one did. And so i was asked to kind of think a little bit about what are the options for updating it if there was a desire to do so, and kind of whats the situation if they dont do that. I think i will start with that latter question, first, which is section 5 was, as i mentioned at the beginning, only one provision of the Voting Rights act. Section 2 applies nationwide and does address a lot of the dilutive principles and practices that the professor was speaking about. In fact, its mainly used for those purposes. The trouble not trouble with. The unique feature of section 5 was that it stopped things in its tracks before a practice took place where section 2 was after the fact. That was actually lost as opposed to the ability to target these practices generally. So there is still a judicial meckysm for targeting these practices in section 2. Theres also section 3 which is called bailed in which creates a situation where if a jurisdiction is found to have violate it had United States constitution in terms of Voting Rights, then a jurs that jurisdiction can be brought into the type of preclearance process section 5 used to have kind of as a default rule in certain areas of the country. So that is directly responsive to ongoing constitutional violations and is can respond to Current Conditions in jurisdictions. So and then of course theres the constitution itself. Theres a cause of action to bring an action against the state, a local or a local jurisdiction based on a violation of folks constitutional rights. So all of these things still exist. The one thing that does not exist is the prior restraint the things that stop the practices before they can start. So to my mind, whats going to need to happen is folks are going to have to think lopping and hard about is that prior restraint something that has to come back . Or are the claims and causes of action that currently exist on the books sufficient to deal with the types of voting discrimination that everybody agrees still exist today . Because there are things that go on across the country and nobody will deny it, i think, that violate the United States constitution. And so thats the question in my mind, is whether thats going to be necessary. To my mind, the draft bill that was released i dont think appropriately addressed that particular concern. I think it was more of a move to do something quickly as opposed to trying to strike the right balance. And so in that respect there was going to be a modification of that section 3 bailin that would have responded to not constitutional violations but other types of violations. In my mind, in reading the Supreme Courts decision and this is just as an outside observer, i well, i wasnt an outside observer. Reading the Supreme Courts decision in which i have no particular insight any more than anyone else, i dont think that type of bailin would be constitutionally sufficient. And then i think a coverage formula of the type that is not going to respond to constitutional violations but is going to respond to some other types of violations, statutory violations, is probably not going to pass muster either. So those are things theyre probably going to have to think about. Im just exind of observing this from the outside but to my mind if congress was going to go that route it would probably be subject to challenge again and would have a reasonable chance of succeeding. So those are my views of kind of the landscape of where section 5 stands after the Shelby County decision. I dont know if we have any discussions about specific states. Whats happened. Sure. Let me actually talk about two things. First, the legislative picture at the federal level which brendan addressed. And secondly, whats gone on in the courts. The bottom line in terms of what our congress is likely to do is nothing. We have enormous Party Polarization and stalemates. There has been a bill proposed th mostly democratic support which, as brendan mentioned, would create a new coverage formula and would require disclosure of the impact of voting changes. There are some features of this bill i really like, others about which im less enthusiastic. But the bottom line is that in its ery divided congress not going anywhere. Nor is any Voting Rights bill going to go anywhere. As i mentioned earlier, i would love to see a bill that imposed greater standards at the federal level over all these issues and might resolve some of the contentious debates that weve had in recent years, really since 2000, over voting. But thats not likely to happen any time soon. So, as is frequently the case, where these controversies wind up being ultimately resolved is in the courts. We have seen significant increase in litigation over voting rules in recent years really since the 2000 election which first brought these atters into courts, and some of the restrictions that i mentioned earlier voter identification, limits on where and how you can register to vote, restrictions on absentee and early voting, rules regarding the counting of provisional ballots, voting technology, all of these practices have been challenged in court. In fact, in my state alone every single one of the practices that i just mentioned has been challenged. Right . This is to be expected. When you have partisan legislative bodies making the rules for elections, when you have partisan elected officials for the most part running elections, questions about this conflict of interest that i mentioned earlier are inevitably going to arise. And in our system the institution that is most insulated from partisan politics is the courts. So in my view its quite appropriate that the courts be the arbiters of these disputes regarding the fairness of election rules and whether or not there really is a level playing field, as chad earlier mentioned. And weve seen litigation very recently over election rules or cases four cases are especially notable. In ohio regarding relickses on elir voting as well as same day registration, a case in North Carolina involving a law enacted right after Shelby County that imposed a variety of restrictions on voting including on early voting, same day registration imposing a voter id requirement, and then lawsuits in two more states wisconsin and texasboth involving voter identification rules. The lower courts have not come out the same way on all these cases as we lawyers say theyre still percolating through the lower court system. And it remains to be seen exactly what the Supreme Court will do. The Supreme Court actually issued or got involved in three of these cases just this past year but did not issue an opinion on the merits in any of those cases. I tend to think that its involvement had more to do with its concerns about court orders issued very close to the election than it did about what exactly the court thinks on the merits of these cases. But at some point i suspect these issues are likely to come back before the United States Supreme Court possibly very oon. Just in particularly in the context of section 5 since thats what were here to talk about, i think its important to point out that of the states that were just mentioned, North Carolina was partially covered by the Voting Rights act. There were roughly 40 counties, i believe, 40 of the hundred counties in North Carolina were covered. The state of North Carolina was not and the state of wisconsin is also not. Particularly in right of the fact that the Supreme Court ruled on the coverage formula, i think this is an actually good illustration of some of the issues with the coverage formula as it existed at the time when at the time of reauthorization in 2006 and at the time it was struck down. Were seeing a lot of these hot button fundamental Voting Rights cases coming out of the country like ohio and like wisconsin that and i think theyre anybody could agree that theyre just as likely to come out of those areas of the country as they are anywhere else. We could debate whether coverage should properly have covered a lot of the original areas today as well. But i think everybody would agree the state of ohio in the last three to five years has been as likely a place as anywhere else to have a big decision come out on fundamental Voting Rights. And its per tained to early voting primarily but same day registration, as you mentioned, theres some other things as well. And then wisconsin has been in the news as well for voter id. So in terms of the coverage formula, i think thats actually instructive. And what weve seen before, during, and after kind of the timeframe of when the shelby decision came out from the Supreme Court, is that were not seeing this isolated problem in certain areas of the country. Were seeing a lot of the were seeing problems come out of other areas as well. If i could just respond. I really almost entirely agree with what brendan just said. You know . And i do think that this goes to a common misperception about the Shelby County case. The perception is that weve seen this massive wave of voting restrictions since Shelby County. Well, theres really one state where you could say voting restrictions were adopted as a direct response to Shelby County, in my view. North carolina. Right . Whose state legislature enacted this bill that i mentioned a few moments ago. What really triggered these changes was the fact if were going to be very honest about this that in 2000 republicans did very 2010 republicans did very well in elections across the country so that in 2011 we had a lot of republican governors and republicandominated state legislatures. Right . And in this country racial minorities particularly African Americans and latinos, vote overwhelmingly democratic. So the allegation and the perception at least among many mocrats is that republican legislatures have adopted these rules in order to make it more difficult for democraticleaning people to vote. Thats at least the perception. But it was really the turnover of state legislatures in 2010 that triggered this wave of voting restrictions rather than Shelby County. And it is certainly a national issue, Voting Rights, which is why i would in the end would like to see a national Voting Rights act, for this century. I would prefer that to the geographicically limited coverage formula that we had under the old Voting Rights act. I think in this conversation i think its interesting to know that the coverage formula from section 4 determined which states that the Civil Rights Act really applied to in regards to preclearance of election law. And then section 5 was what allowed the federal government to look at those laws. But theres still section 2 in the Civil Rights Act that allows the federal government to prosecute individual cases when they find something that runs counter to the constitution or the Voting Rights act. I dont know if either one of you to put you on the spot. If you think about how, turning to section 2, if its still an effective tool. Yes or no. And i think the reason why its interesting, because thats more the way in which you all would prosecute something would be an individual action of an individual person or party, which is Still Available under section 2. Since brendan responds to this earlier, why dont i take the first crack at that question. And its a very important one. Section 2 of the Voting Rights act prohibits election practices that result in the denial or abridgement of the vote on account of race. Its mostly been used in vote dill lution cases in the past. For example, in cases challenging the way that legislative districts are drawn on the ground that they weaken the collective voting strengths f a racial minority group. So the important difference between a section 2 case and the old regime under section 5, as brendan pointed out, is that plaintiffs have the burden in section 2. Hey have the burden of showing a discriminatory result. And these cases, as im sure he knows as well, can be really, really expensive to litigate for both sides. So there are differences in the Legal Standard as well. But i dont know that we need to get into those here to understand what was really lost by the Shelby County decision. O what was lost i think is the ability to check voting practices at the local level that are never going to be the subject of the lawsuit. Some local School Board Adopts new legislative districts that are at least alleged to weaken minority votes. The Justice Department under our old system had responsibility for reviewing all those changes and either granting preclearance, denying preclearance, or as it did in many cases requesting more information. And so i think that the preclearance requirement of section 5 was a pretty effective check on minority some of these cases. It did impose burdens but they were modest burdens certainly to the comparison to the burdp of actually marshalling the expert evidence necessary to bring or to defend against a Voting Rights lawsuit. So i do think that something important was lost by the elimination effectively of pre clearance. Brendan and i may disagree on that point but i do think that we agree that thats for better or for worse the main work that the section 5 preclearance requirement was doing before Shelby County. And i think whats interesting is the burden of proof almost always is on the plaintiff in an election case. So i think in most of the countries that we work around the world the person filing the complaint has to prove the claim by the standard of evidence. And as weve all known, how does that plaintiff get access to the evidence they need to prove their case . And in the election situation the timeline can be so short that it can be really difficult to gather that evidence. And so theres an interesting election issue here in regards to how a plaintiff can actually prove their case and move it to the next level. As a litigator, how long did it take the Shelby County litigation . We did not have 48 hours. This was a facial challenge to the act, though. And so this was not a challenge to a particular practice in Shelby County. So which is what you would find if someone were challenging a new voting restriction or Something Like that. So it was brought by the county against the attorney general. So the goal was to declare section 4 b or section 5 unconstitutional. It filed the complaint in april of 2010 and it was decided in june of last year, 2013. So thats a good three years and it was expensive. But section 2 cases are actually even more expensive. Theyre very fact intensive. And the professor is right about that,. As chattles have pointed out, thats the norm in our legal system and many Legal Systems is the plaintiff has to prove their case. So when we were looking at section 5, not only was it a prior restraint on the change and practice but it was also it put the burden of proof on the jurisdiction to prove it wasnt discriminatory, which was a huge change. So thats i would argue as difficult if not more difficult than a plaintiff having to prove their case kind of after the fact. So proving that youre not discriminating is difficult. You can do it with statistics. You can do it with testimony from legislators. You can do it by taking a resultsoriented approach. But if the end, if you dont prove your case you cant change the law. And actually in a representative state of florida in a preclearance case that had to do with early voting and some other changes a couple of years ago, that burden of proof was a huge issue in trying to convince the court that the change should be precleared. It was a cutback in early voting hours. But early voting days rather but the same number of hours ended up being provided. So the question was, ok, does it discriminate or not discriminate . So there are a lot of different ways of proving that. And as the jurisdiction having to prove a negative was very difficult. Some would say it was intentionally set up that way. But i think that would have been a particular instance in which addressing it after the fact would actually have shed more light and we would have ended up in a better place than trying to address it before the went into effect. Thank you. We want to get to a point to have questions from the audience. I would like to say the discussion is interesting because as we discussed the voting right that is are enshrined in our constitution are being defined by the courts. I think bush v. Gore from 2000 pushed a lot of these issues to the forefront. Its interesting to see where weve come. Are we better or worse . I dont know. One thing to consider is election administers, a lot of the machines and reform that took place, or a lot of the machines that were purchased are now 14 years old. So whats going to happen and youll see this when you go out and look at when you go and do observation, youre going to see old machines, different machines. Its very interesting. But it is unique i think that the course are trying to be the the courts are trying to be the referee. But with that, i thank the panel for their remarks and i want to open up the floor to questions. Inaudible] what is the language of section 5 and 4, what is the substance . What changes are introduced into the law by way of section 5 and section 4 . What have been removed that existed previously, legislation of 4 and 5 . If you would kindly tell us as to what is the language and what is the substance . What is the motive of section 4 and 5 . Great. Let me i will try to repeat the question. And for the future questions if you could just identify who you are and then so we all know who is asking the. The question is, whats the specific language of sections 4 and 5 and how has litigation change that had . Changed that . So section 4 created the formula and thats all theres a bunch of other stuff as well that pertain to literacy tests and things like that which are kind of not jermaine to this. But section 4 b basically created a formula wrsh the jurisdictions that were singled out would be subject to additional restraints. So section 4 said any jurisdiction in which voter turnout was below a certain threshhold in particular 1972, s, 1964, 6, then would fall within the formula. That was generally the way that it worked. And so what that did was you would have an agency of the United States government go and take a look at the statistics and say these particular jurisdictions fall within what Congress Said formula would cover. Then for those jurisdictions, theres the additional regulation of their local elections whereas normally there would not be otherwise. So in section 5, section 5 was one of the things that happens by virtue of falling within that formula, that coverage under section 4. There are other ones as well ving osh servers deployed to jurisdictions. That was another thing, and theres a couple of others. But basically the consequences come later but section 4 was targeted just at who was going to be subject to those consequence. Section 5 was the provision that created the restraint on changes in election procedures and said you local jurisdictions, if youre covered, you cant change anything until we say so. And set out the criteria for determining whether the change could be made or not. And i think section 4 and maybe we can discuss further, was based on hit torquele practice. Like who historicically had i dont know if professor but i think that who historicically had discriminated. And then once you determine you met that equation, then the other sections apply to you. And thats what was kicked out by this case. And so just to very briefly sum up. Ction 5 requires certain covered states to obtain advanced permission from the federal government before changing their voting rules. Section 4 prescribed which states had to go through this process. And originally when the Voting Rights act was enacted in 1965 it was exclusively southern states. Those were the states with the worst problems when it exame to the disenfranchisement of African American states like mississippi, alabama, south carolina, georgia, they had the lowest rates of African American registration and participation. So the formula was designed to capture the states with the worst problems of voting iscrimination in 1965. Thank you. Im from indonesia. You say that elections in the u. S. Is decentralized. Each state has their own regulations. So if some voters live in virginia, on the voting day they must travel to california. You have the right to vote on the voting day are going to the voting station. And if they are allowed, what kind of valid papers do they have to punch . Is it virginia a valid paper or california a valid pape center thank you. Great. Thank you for the question. The question is, if someone travels to another state during election day, can they vote at the other state. And if so, what kind of a provisional ballot would they use and what not. So if someone is going to take your example on vacation or a business trip from virginia to california, theyre still resident of the state of virginia, they are citizens of that state under our constitution and therefore would have to vote a virginia ballot. The state in which they reside, which is going to be very different from the ballot that someone in california would see. So if youre going to be away on your jurisdiction election day, what you would typically do if you want to vote is cast an absentee ballot before the election. Every state allows people to request an absentee ballot that is typically sent through the mail and returned through the mail. So that is how you would vote if you were someone from virginia who was going on a trip to california and was there for going to be away from your home on election day. And i want to add to that that in a lot of the litigation now there are recounts or challenges to an election in the United States many times the question of abseptee ballots and if theyre legitimate voters and what not this is where a lot of litigation happens is looking at these absentee ballots, as you can imagine. Yes. Cameroon. From the electoral board member. In my country we organized democratic elections since 1960. Ut [inaudible] of elections. Andidates who didnt get the voters they were expecting would like the persons to be notified so we have a lot of protests at the Supreme Court of our country. Government and the electoral body developed important investments. We tried to decentralize our ystem both for local elections , senate elections, house of representatives elections, president ial elections, but deregulation is uniform because we have a united country, not a federal country, not a federal level, state level, no. Our country is a united one. But my question is this. How does the american system build the confidence of voters on one side and decent Political Parties and their candidates on the other side . Because you described many, many differences between states of the American Federation despite the differences the General Information we have from outside and when we can we watch the tv is that the American People have confidence in their elect ral system. How does this system do to uild such a huge confidence . Thank you. Thats a very important the question is, how is there such trust in the u. S. System when its so diversified . How do the courts and the Election Administration participate together to build trust both of the candidates and the voters. I hope i got that right. And ill turn this over to the panel. But very quickly the largest way to increase trust is to win by a large margin. I think also the courts our system, the legal system also is diversified. And so the courts play a huge role. But with that, i will turn it over. Brendan . Honestly, its a long history of doing the right thing. We have got a couple hundred years of history here of folks respecting the rule of law and knowing who the final authority is on whatever the particular question is at hand. And respecting that and abiding by it. You dont have if a Court Decision comes down after an election, bush v. Gore, you might have a lot of complaints about the results but you dont have anybody defying it, for instance. So i think thats the most important aspect of instilling confidence in our elections. Even if you disagree with the result, the state of mind here is that people approach these questions in good faith and that things work themselves out in the end. So you dont presume bad we dont presume bad faith on peoples parts in this country generally when it comes to these. So when you see an anomaly you think its a mistake and deal with the consequences if its not. I think thats the baseline view that we had. How did we develop that . Thats an excellent question. But all i can say is that we have a very long history of presuming good faith and abiding by the decisions for the final Decision Makers on whatever that decision is at hand. Let me emphasize, there has not always been historicically such great confidence in the integrity of the u. S. Election system. If you go back 100 years, boy, we had a lot of problems in our ballot stuffing, bribery of voters, practices of this. These were not uncommon around that area late 19th, early 20th century. Sometimes later in certain places, most notoriously chicago. Even if you just go back a little over a decade, there was actually a survey, a crossnational survey conducted shortly after the 2000 election which found that among democratic countries, the level of confidence among u. S. Voters in the integrity of the previous election was extremely low. I mean, on par with i dont want to single out any country, but countries that are generally not considered to be democratic at all. Now, i do think that confidence in our election system has rebounded considerably since then. Its partly history. Let me suggest it is also i think at least in part the fact that theres at least some division of authority which chad referred to. Es, we have partisan state officials but this decentralization, while it has disadvantages, has an advantage as well. It makes it more difficult for any one party to capture elections say in all of our 88 counties in my state of ohio. We also have divided authority in the sense that courts state courts and federal courts are looking over the shoulders of legislatures and Election Officials to my view this is a very salutory thing that we have courts that are acting as a sort of backstop, stopping partisan manipulation at least where it goes too far. Thank you very much for that. This is going to be the time to conclude the panel. Thank you very much for your attention. I think this is a unique panel in that it really does illustrate how diverse our jurisdictions are and how weve tried to this country has tried to deal with some of these difficult questions in regards to the diverseication of our electoral processes. So it was very good. Thank you very much to the panel for your time. I also have some very quick House Keeping to do. The first i wanted to say that the first breakout session which is about voter i. D. Starts at 11 00 and it will be in the dupont ballroom on the second floor. The second breakout session which is on measuring public opinion, that also is at 11 00. 30163017 in rooms on the third floor. And 1 30 is what is trending, the future of social media in ections, is in rooms 30163017. Finally, the breakout sgs at 1 30 is pointcounter point, the role of candidate debates in political discourse again on the second floor. With that, thank you very much for your time and please join me in thanksing our panelists. [applause] ladies and gentlemen, we will get on our way, and hope that more of our colleagues will join us as we go along. As you know, from previous sessions, we have translation on the head sets and it might be an advantage if you wear a headset just for sound quality and also if anyone should ask questions in ludges that you would like translated languages that you would have translated. Channel 8, english, 9 abic, 10, french, 2011 indonesia. And 12 we have spanish. The point and counter point, the role of candidates in political discourse. We have from 1 30 two 2 30. On screen now you can see a picture from the final debate in the recent election in indonesia. My family and i are fortunate enough to live in this beautiful country, and i was in the audience at all these debates. These debates had a profound impact on a fiercely contested and very important election in asia. In the final debate, only days he took on lection, is shoes and won the election. This is becoming increasingly and as we are aware, we have our guests here with us also themselves are in charge of the debate. For example, in the case of indonesia, it is actually the Election Commission that stages the debate and manages these. This is also an expression of the work done by some of the colleagues that are with us. I know many of you. For those who do not know me, i have been traveling around the world since the early 1990s and specialized in helping our leadership and managing elections, and today im the senior electoral advisor, and i get to work out of indonesia where i also work as director. Im fortunate to be joined by the speakers today. Diane is the Vice President of graduate education and international initiative. She is a professor of communication, an associate Vice President of education at the university, where shes teaching a course on political ebate. She is the coeditor and contributor to the 1992 president ial debates and the lead author on the third agenda in the u. S. President ial debates. Matt dibble who was also with us today is the Deputy Director at the National Democratic institute. For more than a decade, he has organized democracy strengthening programs in 15 countries in the region. Lso serve as indias liaison. In 2004, 2008, in 2012, he took leave from india and served as cpds liaison. He is also worked with the cpd to help groups in more than 10 countries organized televised debates. We will have, that will go first today and followed by diane. Their 15 minutes each. We look forward to your questions. If youll be patient with me, i will get the technology up and running. Over to you matt. Thank you for the opportunity to be with you here today. I like to speak a little bit beyond the midterm elections and look toward wednesday, we will be talking about president ial elections in the United States. I would like to present the u. S. As a case study in managing dates and look at some International Trends we have seen. In the United States, candidate debate has become an integral part of u. S. Elections. Two watershed forms are highlighted to illustrate the significance. The 1858 Senate Debate between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas and the first televised debates between Richard Nixon and john kennedy, in that respect, i would like to discuss the role of the commission in continuing this tradition. The commission is an independent, notforprofit rganization Whose Mission is to sponsor and produced debates for the u. S. President ial and Vice President ial candidates. And to provide the best possible information to viewers and listeners about candidates and their platforms to help voters cast their ballots. Also to make debates a permanent part of the election process. The commission is focused on debates and serves as a neutral broker. It has no other roles or interests that could conflict with staging debates. The commission was founded in 1987, as a result of recommendations of independent studies by groups at georgetown and harvard universities after 1984 elections. The commission has produced every debate since 1988. Most recently, the debate between government romney and president barack obama in 2012. The commission does not organize primary debates. The commissions approach is shaped by u. S. Laws. I would add a few more facts about the commission. It is led by a board of Public Servants including, former elected officials and educational leaders. The commission has a staff of one and one half people. It grows to over 100 people for the actual debates. It is funded by private contributions and grants. It does not receive funds from Political Parties or candidates. The debates are generally held on university campuses, not tv studios, to help engage students and local communities as part of the commissions overall educational mission. I would add, in the u. S. , there is no law that requires candidates to debate and no guarantee that they will attend. Despite a long history of debates, the u. S. Shares the same challenges with other countries of getting candidates to take part. After the 1960 kennedynixon debates, there was a 16 year cap before the fordcarter debates in 1976. In the u. S. , we found the main means of getting candidates to debate is the publics demand an expectation that debates will happen and pressure in the edia if candidates balk. To help create the expectation, the commissions organizational process is designed to be public and transparent. The process starts two years before the elections. Things are starting to get moving now in the u. S. , looking forward to 2016. Although, the u. S. Will take two years to organize, they have been done in a week, which is fast and not a recommended approach but has been done. The process starts by working with tv networks to identify the best dates for debates, to reach the most voters and avoid conflicts with other broadcast events like sporting championships. It also involves creating and publicizing the criteria that determines which candidates will debate. In that respect, Many Americans do not realize that there are often more than 150 candidates for president in the united tates. Which is an impractical number to have debate. The commissions organizational process continues with planning for the big issues which include selecting university hosts, setting up a media center to help promote coverage, making security arrangements, designing the set and format among other areas. A key part of preparations is to select moderators. The commission uses a single moderator. The debates are broadcast live on tv and radio by a special events pool. The Commission Also negotiates with candidates on the details of the forums. The Commission Also organizes debate related Civic Education activities such as debate iewing parties to engage voters. N terms of impact, the commission has organized 26 president ial and buys president ial debates. Exit polling shows that americans say that debates are the single greatest factor in determining their voting. Debates do not generally change peoples minds on who theyre