Transcripts For CSPAN2 Election Officials Discuss Election Administration Integrity 20220719

From. [inaudible] at the state and county level. And im really excited to be joined here by excellent Election Officials. A very Bipartisan Group of two democrats, three republicans who ive known for years and ive come to respect a great deal. Im going to briefly introduce them all and feel asleep to elaborate or rebut anything i said when your turn comes but to my immediate left any of you might know secretary Jocelyn Benson of michigan. Jocelyn and i have known each other for years. And she won election to secretary of state in michigan and oversaw the 2020 election and also importantly she literally wrote the book on secretary of state before she took office so i encourage you to read it. I dont know what to say about that. On the one hand i can tell you what i really think of his work but hes not used to mesaying i think that. Ill just say mass has served at very high levels s of the state of ohio office and served as Election Assistance Commission are. Its served as Cyber Security Infrastructure Security Agency and now he works at microsoft. He educates people on all these things especially. [inaudible] to matts left is al schmidt, former commissioner for the city of philadelphia and currently leads the Nonprofit Committee in philadelphia and many of you might recognize him from his hearings on tv is before the january 6 committee as well. To his left is wayne sorely, former election directorfor the state of nevada. He was transitioned to his job in 2020 with the legislature but foolishly still stayed in to help run the november 2020 election in the state of nevada which we all know there were no perceived issues at all. It was a textbook way to run an election thanks to the secretary of state as well as county Election Officials and we will be talking more about that later. Acting secretary of the commonwealth, lee chapman. [inaudible] and secretary chapman has been filling that role for a few years and hes been in elections for a few months, for quite some time and now serves as secretary of the commonwealth overseeing his program so with that i want to talk a little more about each of your interests. That you seen both in 2020 and today. Its been days since the 2021 election and there were so many new things happening in michigan and have nothing to do with coded threat all kinds of new election rules by the state of michigan and then it hit, ill just say march 10 was the primary 2020. I was literally in michigan visiting polling places when we started getting worried about how bad it could be, those of you that remember next day they started shutting down the nda which was what brought it home to me. And so you might not have seen too much of the primaries but we had a lot of issues going. Things that were true things going on inmichigan. [inaudible] you set it up right. My colleague secretary raffensperger and also the mayor and expert of elections in michigan chris thomas you all know. Were fortunate enough to have the demon of all election directors in the state of michigan for a long time nationwide so a lot of our preparation frankly april 20, 2020 started long before 2020 and it was with people like election director thomas and jonathan bringing experts to the state to help us implement new changes that were connected by voters in 2018 and ill talk briefly about that but also wanted to say david deftly laid out both realities of what we lived through and continue to live othrough one our elections in 2020 all four of them that we had h throughout the year in every election since i spend extremely smooth. Highly secure with extraordinary turnout was. And every one of our 1600 clerks at the state for the most part stepped up at every turn to ensure we did and could meet the scrutiny that was placed on us but the story of our elections in michigan like in many states is one of Great Success in spite of being at the eye of the storm and the other reality is this kind of misinformation available that covers everything. A cloud of confusion. I believe was intentional for various reasons but very is very clear misstatements about what we really experienced. And the other thing ill just emphasize is as a lot of you know as david mentioned , i will this book on guardians and the democratic process in 2008 trying to tell a story of how democrat and republican secretaries of state like then secretary greyson blanchard is my time and many others were doing great things that were going unnoticed in the state and i took those best practices and when i was ouelected in 2018 as an academic as well, former dean of the law school i just brought experts including many in this room and some here in this battle, Bipartisan Group of people to come to michigan to advise us on how to implement automatic Voter Registration, election day registration. Postelection audits as well as online Voter Registration. And so by bringing those experts and by following the data and by implementing best practices and learning from california and oregon and other states that have implemented a lot of these things we found and i send this to my team after the 2020election. If you follow the data, if you look at the best practices, you learn from others experiences and do the right thing every step of the way recruiting good people, following all the details, making sure every clerk has the resources and machines they need, you succeed and its a great thing to experience. To say you know what, it is a very professional operation that we run in michigan and our clerks run as well as the local level. Turns out if you lead from a bipartisan standpoint, follow the data do it with an air of professionalism over all along the way to ensure every voter can vote, you can succeed even if theres storm cloud of efforts at misinformation which is what we reendured and continue to endure so the bottom line is we did and we will continue to succeed in managing a fair and secure democracy and if the people leading the systems follow the data, remain nonpartisan and professional and implement best practices and try to meet the needs ofevery voter. Thats great. Im going to get over you which im going to do a lot. Cai want to go to our second because just as michigan was implementing a lot of o plan changes but a lot of things that were challenging for Election Officials and voters to understand. Pennsylvania and philadelphia in particularwas doing as well. This was all pre coded. New technology polling place for the first time. Youre allowing for absentee voting. For more voters that had previously been allowed to do that. Can you talk about laying the groundwork for what you were seeing in philadelphia in particular in the lead up to 2020 and how that played out in november . Sure even though a lot of counties including ours into 2020 kicking and screaming about a lot of the requirements that are state was having us implement including new voting systems with a voter verifiable paper ballot , we were so fortunate that the department of state made that a priority for every single county and commonwealth because i cant imagine the sort of additional misinformation would be going on had we not have that system prior tothat we do not have voter verifiable paper ballots. There were candidates main human readable incorporated bond paper results that we use fornot one but two audits after the fact. In the lead up not only have we just rolled out a new voting system, for inperson voting in pennsylvania we had a whole new system of voting with voting by mail other than in the past it had been absentee ballots. You had to have an excuse obviously you are absent or incapacitated in some way, unable to cast your ballot at the polls on election day and we went from having almost no voters or very few rather voting by mail to half of our voters out of the gate in an ballot voting. Half of our voters voted by mail in the primary and half in the general election that was375,000 voters voted by mail in that election. That on top of the trans am environment and one thing i sometimes forget is we had civil unrest in philadelphia which was a real concern for us about having polling places that were close about our voters being able to make it to the polls to vote on time so it was all constellation of challenges that we face and we had a bipartisan board that was always the right amount of tension between im a republican and i was there with two democrats and its designed that way to have sort of checks and balances but i think at the end of the day it helps to resolve it in the most safe and secure electionin the history of philadelphia. Thats not an exaggeration. I dont even think its subjective because we had me paper ballots that we never had before. A great point and it was not just pennsylvania that made that change. Georgia seems to have made the change to all verifiable paper ballots in 2020 and North Carolina Election Officials went verifiable paper ballots in 2020 and one of the reasons we saw much greater ability to transparently verify that the outcome was correctly determined. In 2020 as compared to any election weve ever had in history. In nevada what you saw was a little different because nevada had already had a history of mail in voting. There was paper ballots throughout the state of nevada. Many of the rules hearound elections, there were slight changes but a lot of them were the same they had been in previous elections but you saw kind of predilection and postelection scrutiny on the process totry to delegitimize it. Can you talk about what you are saying . Nevada has a long excuse of no excuse voting although voters didnt take much advantage so it really was an issue of scale in nevada rather than new processes but there are other changes going on innevada that added to the complexity. Prior to 2018 Election Administration in nevada had been consistent. There hadnt been a lot of changes at the legislative level to the processes and our countyElection Officials a couple of which are here. Id like to give a shout out to janice, former registrar in washington county. Deputy secretary of elections. We had to make changes because of what the legislature acted in 2000 and 19 and also because the voters in 2018. So are Election Officials were working on implementing Voter Registration at the dmv. Implementing election day registration at polling places and then the pandemic hit. We had also put a lot of money in the state level to purchasing new Voting Machines prior to the election. We were still using the Voting Machines we purchased with the influx of e dollars and so theres a lot going on and all of a sudden our Legislature Said every voter is going to be mail the ballot for the 2020 general election and in the prior president ial election we only had about 6 and a half percent of the voters in nevada to devote via mail outs. They all have the opportunity to so i dont know if its excuse absentee, just hasnt been used because we put a lot of emphasis into our early dovoting program which is a twoweek period in person voting but the voters have graduated towards. All of a sudden in 2020 we had under 50 percent of the voters voting by mail and the general election so it became an issue of scale. Not necessarily implementing new processes so it was a real path to try to educate voters most of whom i think. Voted by mail and the 20 20 electionhad never voted by mail before. So educating those voters about the process and that this isnt a new process that v we just kind of put together at the last minute. Is the process that have been in place for many years as a matter of scaling it up. And so i dont know how successful we were at the educating part. Prearly are things we could have done better i think thats something i think Election Officials across the country can look at how we can educate voters and the public better about our processes. Theres been a lot of misinformation comes from a lack of understanding about the process. So even though it was, we werent implementing new process we were immune from the criticism that came from all the other Election Officialsin the state or in this room receive. And it was a difficult time. Ill be very honest. The secretary of state level where we are really at the kind of administration level, county Election Officials are doing the heavy lifting in the trenches doing most of the work. And getting most of the fire. Even at the state level it was a difficult time. Personally professionally from my family, but i think theres judges on this panel , it was an extremelysuccessful election. Despite all the challenges and that is a great testament to the work of the Election Officials particularly at the local level. To implement either new processes or scale up preexisting processes. And to do that in the middle of a global was just amazing. To see how successful it was. Im going to come to you matt. Matt, you were at dhs in Cyber Security infrastructure. And you kind of saw the things that we was talking about across the nation. The if we all think that for amoment especially those of us in this room , the knife, we didnt hear a lot of problems on november 3. Im trying to think back to where they are news reports of long lines at the polls . News reports of problems and machines not working, not really. Everything was moving smoothly and it wasnt until the outcome started to be known that the disinformation started d occurring on a massive scale. What are you seeing up to election day and talk a little bit because dhs in particular individuals within dhs in particular. Really tried to set the record straight on these things. I dont know if we can talk about political pressure that was applied but i think everyone who worked with dhs that that was an incredibly professional group and it was important at the postelection period. To be in this room honestly its humbling that the Election Administration in this country that wayne said wrist their own lives and health of themselves and their staff and their country to ensure democracy got administered is overwhelming im thankful to be here, incredibly humbled to be able to serve on this panel with these folks sitting inthis room. At six up we had worked since the Critical Infrastructure designation in january 2017 to build relationships and engage with state and local Election Officials across the country by the time we 20 20 not just november 20, 2020 20 as a whole we had relationshipswith all 50 states, territories and thousands , literally thousands of local Election Officials through the information sharing and Analysis Center through work we were doing with our field reps with Cyber Security and really our focus heading into 2020 was to improve the overall Cyber Security of the systems after what happened in 2016 where russia targeted are election infrastructure and attempts to undermine confidence in our elections. We have spent so much timeand energy working to build those relationships, to support those electionofficials. To implement those best practices secretary benson referenced as we sat there , we had done everything we could think of to support those Election Officials to assess risk rent we had published Risk Assessment around how we can better security elections and work with the Election Officials across the country to implement many of and has been said now several times between 95 percent of ballots cast being auditable records in 2020 and the vast majority of states having postelection audits of those ballots, the fact that states have implemented everything from multifactor authentication to Network Segmentation Incident Response plan. We had literally done tabletop exercises with thousands of local Election Officials and state Election Officials across the country so all that to say as we headed intoelection day 2020 we were confident in the resilience of the process. You even if something was going to happen we were confident that the state and local Election Officials had prepared soulfully and have adjusted those procedures in the face teof coded and prepared for that. For those that have worked in and around Election Officials you know Election Officials and their time asking themselves what could go wrong, how do i prepare for that and one state in those steps ask what else could go wrong. Introduced other risks. There is a personalities. Best Election Officials are total control freaks in the best way to ensurethat the administration process. We had in july today, were in our operations enter in Arlington Virginia and can connected through a chat room with thousands of state and local Election Officials and its quite quiet things here, things there as there always are elections. As you always are when you a involve literally millions of t people participating in the process but it was nothing major. Nothing alarming. In fact at times the chat room was people just joking just sharing information and joking because it was soquiet. Ive been in elections since 2006. It was the quietest election day ive ever experienced and at every level. It was quiet. To see what weve seen is stunning in part because of how quiet it was on that election day and the level of coordination and communication we have. There was something larger going on. One the Election Officials would have known it and im confident they would have communicated with us about it we can provide support and that did not happen. The things i think often people dont realize 2020 compared to last elections we had 150 Million People vote, 20 million more ballots cast than weve everhad before but the number of people who voted and election day was lower than 2015. 100 Million People voted earlier by mail and 2020 and i have the same experience. I know we talked about this, those that were running elections, it was so quiet in afternoon i took a walk around the mall in dc which was something i would never do on election day. Normally we would be talking about crisis happening around country. Leah i wanted tocome to you. Youve been on the job for a few months and youre the third secretary since 2020. In pennsylvania and you oshave seen firsthand the effects of fraudulent claims about the election in pennsylvania. Youre seeing it in kansas, is occurring in the states. Can you talk a little bit about what youre seeing in your office and also throughout the countys as i know and i talked to how about this and others there is turnover in the county and taking a toll on county Election Officials. Can you talk about what youre seeing now today. Ive been in this role since january and its been quite a long six months with everything happening in pennsylvania from the recount to redistricting to all the court cases that we are defending right now in federal and state court so its been quite busy but what a concern that i continue to have is the rampant misinformation and disinformation that continues to happen throughout the state of tennessee and really looking back at 2020 how the election was administered and also mail in voting which is a new culture g in pennsylvania. The 2020 election was secure. It was safe. 2022, same thing but we c continue to hear this narrative that there was one thing that was mysterious or voter fraud which we all know does not exist and we debunked multiple times. But the concern with this misinformation and disinformation is directly relates to two Election Officials and Election Officials have been doing this and i know how definitely experienced it and its unfortunate. It really is unamerican and has no place in democracy but we are concerned that there has been turnover. Weve seen around the Election Officials at the county level wedepartment their positions since 2020. Some of it has been been because of threats, some of it has been been because of planned retirement or undergoing other counties under a lot of turnover to the department of state where doing everything we can to report counties, support Election Officials who might be in the role and we had biweekly office hours. We have monthly meetings with commissioners so everybody is aligned with this message as well as just ministration of state election and how their state resources. One concern we are continuing to see is right to know a public records request. Counties are being inundated by this right now because of the misinformation about the 20 20 election and counties are doing more with human resources. And they dont have time to respond to all of these right to know request that our issue. Were just trying to support the county as much as we can but another issue in pennsylvania, also which we are trying to manage and we have been since 20 20 is the lack of the ability to precanvas and preprocess mail in votes which also leads to disinformation because after elections , national media, state media there saying why is pennsylvania still counting votes days after the election. And its nothing thats nefarious. Election officials doing their job and making sure they are counting every vote and until the Legislature Passes a bill or a law to allow for preprocessing of ballots we are going to be behind and thats just how the noprocess is working. We just ahave to make sure we are aucontinuing the message of making sure that this is the process. And that elections are secure and pennsylvania can feel heconfident in the integrity of the elections process. Thats the point about pedisinformation is about how long it takes for instance, dean logan from los angeles or county. Many people dont realize california is counting ballots to. The most of the states were still counting ballots. It takes a long time to count 165million ballots and audit them effectively. That shows the process is working but the criticisms only applied in state were close and didnt like the outcome. [laughter] [inaudible] ill say it so you dont have to. The margin of a victory in michigan was 15 times that, hundred 50,000 votes in 2020 compared to 2016. I think the environment you just talked about with the disinformation leading people to apply stress to Election Officials. For people who couldnt see it when we mentioned theyre all Different Things in different states. The public records request, the very good process that governments have to be transparent being abused in a frivolous way , a duplicative way to apply burdens to Election Officials. That is something we are hearing in every single state and the nods amongst Election Officials from all across the country just confirms that. If we can go back to michigan, there are some similarities between pennsylvania and michigan. The inability to preprocess ballots. The way the counting of ballots was characterized to try to create a false impression that there was a problem and the effect that thats having today on Election Officials through your states. Republicans and democrats alike. We have a centralized system and we rely on a lot of public service. Can you talk about what effect is having . Its similar. We have here with us as well Justin Roebuck of ottawa county. A clerk and former clerk can emulate what im going to talk about which is what weve seen, the weariness and the challenges that secretary chapman so eloquently laid out. The other side of it is weve seen clerks and clerk roebuck is a great example of it, step up and go above and beyond to promote transparency and show innovative ways of prebunking misinformation at all of that is in response to what we learned from living through 2020. What i found every step of the way this year is yes, the threats continue to escalate and metastasize in all the ways we talked about today but weve gotten better as well and there are a lot of clerks in michigan who are working harder than ever to do that work in a time like this. To step up and ensure voters know that their votes are going to be counted and have confidence in the system. Were still seeing a multifaceted continual attack and misinformation about voting by mail or voting absentee. Were seeing record lknumbers of people in michigan choose to vote from home and vote absentee so were seeing in some ways that yes, this is all of this is real and the escalating costs of meeting the voters during this challenging time is also real time when everything is less fundingfrom the state legislatures. We need more of that investment so that we can vcounter the security threats and all the rest of the same time ive been incredibly inspired by again the clerks who have gone above and beyond to meet the needs of democracy but also of citizens because 5600 people signed up in the last two months as coworkers in michigan. Through our democracy mvp website on both g the sides of the eye. People who are coming at this from the perspective of states who are also seeing a lot of people engaged and stepping up and the results of the truth thats coming out and when we combine that with the fact of what weve been wethrough has made us as an Election Committee stronger and more ready to tackle challenges and charged ahead. I am cautiously confident that were going to continue to beat the very most , better than we were in 2020 as the community in meeting the challenges today and i think that knowing the challenges again will allow us to do it anyway. Im as guilty of it as anyone about the threats and harassment and stresses and pressures of displacing Election Officials one of the things i get inspired by his how resolute Election Officials have been through all of this. How tough they have been. The people who have you know, in the face of all this say hell number and this is it continues to be an inspiration to me. As we come out of all this after all the damage that is ongoing its because there were people who play these roles. These Civil Service rules. To have just said no, im going to stand up foramerican democracy. Im going to stand up for my vote and for the process. Just an incredibly tough group of people and we didnt really know how tough they were until you were inside this incredible crucible where pressures were being applied. I think in life all of us tried to come through this stronger. If we as a community can take the challenges to make us stronger you will emerge from this moment. We will beencouraged in this moment. And thats really p inspiring. Yes. Superquick. One im an optimist by nature but ive been very pessimistic that shes remained optimistic which i also appreciate and talking with you about this. Two is to this point. If you look its not just that its individual clerks. The way they Work Together and the colorado clerks many of them are here. The board of supervisors of elections who on a bipartisan basis have said this is what were about. This is how we respond to those of you that are not behaving in this way, we reject that behavior because that is not who we are as a community and that is consistent. That is a thread ive seen across all 50 states is this commitment to mistreating the process together as a community that builds trust and respect. That embraces s transparency and bipartisanship and professionalism and that is what also gives me optimism that you were talking about. Its just a rejection of the denial is him but also of that invading their ranks. Thatis not who we are and we will not tolerate that. Thats the bedrock of whats happening. Were going to go to questions now so if you likea microphone , s. As you are thinking about questions to ask i wanted to asask how if you have any further thoughts because i do like this optimistic, this optimistic push that jocelyn has infected us allwith. [inaudible] just a quick thing, the summer of 2020 mentioning david not exactly pessimistic but he called me up sort of blue and said weve known each other a little bit before he said if youre not f scared, you should be. Because it was very clear what was coming our way in philadelphia and i know we all feel burdened especially in philadelphia and pennsylvania quis in no way over overrepresented on this panel. We brought everyone american democracy. And im sure city commissioner omar and Seth Bluestein share that but i know everyone sharesthat. Is committed to counting votes. To be clear i dont make it a habit of calling Election Officials and trying to scare the crap out of them but it was becoming clear that pennsylvania, it was becoming clear pennsylvania was going to become more highly scrutinized and pennsylvania in particular and now with arepublican in the blue county of llc a , i thought it highly likely and nothing against commissioner deeley who also contributed greatly to elections in philadelphia but i thought it highly likely that on november 4 we might be, everyone might be getting to know you a lot better. And im not right on a lot of things that i was right on that one. It became, you pointed out early but it became very conspicuous. At some point bad things happen in philadelphia. As mentioned much later. While you can see someone throwing a punch your way its still another thing when it hits you. But we were prepared. Any questions from the audience . I like to say thank you to everyone. Its good to know youre not alone but thank you. You msaid earlier the claims of fraud were from states that didnt like theresults. A lot of those attacks on Election Officials were viewed as africanamerican and latino. Was the only one africanamerican on the city elections hicommission in and im pretty sure i just want Election Officials, sometimes i think you see over africanamericans. And some of those attacks to get rid of that declaration, that at the department of corrections level. They spread disinformation and are going at the Grassroots Level. Going doortodoor these neighborhoods. So as trying to spin our electionstheyre doing work at the grassroots community. At the barbershops, if the hair salons. Those are the locals that we want to have those conversations with. And i just want to encourage you just that we invite them and have that respect as well. So a lot of people attention. They say the book warning elections. Particularly because were also finding a lot of this targeting is happening. After 20 elections, they came to philadelphia, detroit, phoenix and so it seemed all that we know that our role as Election Officials is to have that trump misinformation. But we can provide the content but weve been convening and in fact when i go back to michigan later this week were having a number of breakfast with local mayors and local Election Officials and faith leaders about in philly and pontiac, in detroit and other cities all throughout michigan. Basically to say how can we partner to counter misinformation and the interesting thing weve seen and weve had a number of these conversations already is first, Community Pastors and others are like, we just want people to vote but this has got deeper into it and at least they will provide toolkits. We will provide everything you need to know to communicate e to people who trust you. To give you the cost and information necessary. Its been another source of my optimism and reflection of how were working harder than ever before to counter misinformation by really going at the glass Grassroots Level of those communities most targeted but also im eager to hear other things. We had an issue before the primary and one of our counties that are 30 percent latino where the local District Attorney asked the detective to monitor drop boxes. To prevent ballot harvesting or people returning more than one ballot. So thats concerning. One of the counties that required under section 2 of the Voting Rights act to provide bilingual materials i did send a letter to that District Attorney in that particular county to tell him we were concerned as state level with voter intimidation and the impact llit could have on voters. And he said he wasnt going to do it again for the november election. I think we need to see things pelike that as important for folks at the state level to seek out. To prevent any other of that from happening because its all about Voter Participation in a nonpartisan way and we want to make sure everyone can participate and when we see certain communities that are targeting its important for us to call that out. Next question. I warn you im going to talk if you dont. Look at that. Lets go to governor meyer. Both presentations have been very interesting. Ive been in elected office for four years. And you had its well prepared coming from national actors. And we look for that, prepared for that. [inaudible] all i can say is having been in elected office as much as i have, this is one of the toughest jobs to convince people that everything is on the other end up. And we can have it all the balance. But still they thought the Voting Machines were evil and half of them were quoting Voting Machines that werent even in michigan. But i dont think it would have mattered. It didnt give them the results they wanted. So im concerned that the selection for two things. One its hard to create an election because of cold. But its harder to do it with these people get angry. So were going to have a hard time recruiting. And vothe other prong the voters approved a new wave of Voting Rights ranks choice and were the only state and the federal elections so i think may does it for federal elections only but with ranked Choice Voting theres no way to do a headcount so therefore we have to certify elections so were going to be dependent on the algorithm of an equal voting machine ti and that concerns me because theres people voting now for Lieutenant Governor and for the fundraiser what theyre saying is that you come to our fundraiser and contribute , will take a swing i didnt go to that fundraiser. And i dont think its coming in on it so that you keep that out there. And just saturday of course its an election in louisiana. He was of course promoting Lisa Murkowski as well as sarah palin who is running for congress. So again, they brought up the election that was cheated but that issue is going to keep out there. As you mentioned, many of the groups which is my group, republicans but again, i just cant compete with the National News that comes out from the my pillow guy or whoever else but its very challenging. I guess im just voicing my own frustration. Other than just thank you for doing that democracy tour. But i would like to see how youre dealing with overcoming the mistrust of the Voting Machines . I thank you, but that was you in alaska. It was my instinct. Thank you Lieutenant Governor. As you werespeaking , i just want you all to know there were not a lot of people among my colleagues after the november elections who reached out and said are you doing okay. People came to my home and also but Lieutenant Governor might i did and it meant so much and so you really, i hope you know you have unwaveringly spoken the truth every single time every time youve been asked to do so and then youve gone above and beyond insupporting those on both sides of the aisle whove been at the front of the fire and it means so much. So i just want to say thank you and wish you a great deal. Youre not running again right . But im grateful for you and for your leadership and i know that is having an youre committed to telling the truth to everyone even if you [adont say it but hopefully you do. [applause] and to get to the question really on best practices and ways to counter misinformation the bottom line is the truth is on our side. The law is on our side. Everything weve been talking about in terms of reality about the election and on the other side is partnership and in my view political manipulation which is part of the goal. Especially its incumbent upon us and you related so well to be above the fray, to remain nonpartisan. To tell the truth unwaveringly to everyone and thats what i think this moment inspires in all of us and its going to take us through. Grounding that truth in the research and Academic Research and connecting trusted messengers to spread out no matter if you have you want to weigh in. On the truth essentially tits been some of the most effective things for me to e use but i say that to everyone here whos in the academic side of things in voting research. Now more than ever we need that research. We need to know how best to talk about it, who are the most trusted messengers, how to frame an issue or address misinformation. That research has been invaluable because otherwise especially in the immediate days after 20 20 going through those last six months we were doing our best to just speak the truth butwe can always do better when its grounded in research. And again that research has helped me know how to best articulate and communicate it and having supportive colleagues. Thank you. Thats the first time its been used with my name in a sentence ever. I appreciate the kind words. It was Research Done by the electric Integrity Partnership and Kate Starbird at the university of washington and also the work we did around covid and it brings together the two questions which is how we respond, a microphone is not loud enough for Election Officials. That sort of blast, he goes to 11 to use a spinal tap reference. Theyre being blasted at 11. So the response has to be exactly what the secretary said which is a combination of trusted messengers, trusted voices across the spectrum. I was pleased to hear bob talk about engaging with the most skeptical and having those conversations not because youre necessarily going to win a lot of them over but to erode away at that distrust over time and that can be done by having them receive the messages by multiple trusted voices and their community and their society and six simply presenting the message. What weve seen at least initially at theres lots of good Academic Work being done around this at a number of institutions but what weve seen is reinforcing to voters that the elections process has three pillars to it. The first is that its transparent across all 50 states and territories. There are requirements for transparency. How michigan does it and all ohio and pennsylvania may be different but there are requirements and the second is Political Parties are involved. People want to know that their team is part of the process and in all 50 states five territories have requirements around that and thats administered by professionals. That these folks in this room dont wake up at random tuesday and sayi think ill try to run an election today, we will see how that goes. They spend all their time thinking about everything that could go wrong and how they can improve on the accessibility of the process and the nice part about those three pillars is one, theyare true universally across all the states, different but true. Three and allows Election Officials to answer the question there presented with which is i can trust you but how do i know about nevada . Or how do i know about pennsylvania . It is a huge challenge, no question. So matt, youre successfully filibustered to get the last word which i would never give you under any circumstances, but with that we are going to go outside weather is a Cocktail Reception for the next hour or so and then begin the nights festivities and awards at around 7 00 or so. Thank you all for attending. Lets think the panelists for a great panel. L. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] the senate is in recess for their party meetings. They are back at 2 15 2 15. Eastern to continue work on the nomination of a u. S. District judge for illinois. Earlier they voted to confirm nina want to be a u. S. District judge for colorado. When the Senate Returns watch live coverage here on cspan2. Cspan that was a free mobile app featuring to unfiltered view of whats happening in washington live and ondemand. 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