Transcripts For CSPAN3 Free 20240705

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Margaret Hoover and trevor potter. Okay. Here we go. Good morning. Good morning, margaret good morning to all you. Thank you for being in celebration of our democracy. Its furtherance elections, Election Integrity and, the importance of free and Fair Elections in a democracy. One small topic. I wonder if we could just maybe start start small. Who votes . So you referred to it as a democracy. We have all spent last day and a half here discussing is that a republic . Is it a democracy . Is it a Representative Democracy . Which is what i think it has been from the start, what nowadays . Political scientist call a liberal democracy, meaning majority vote wins, but it cant take away the rights of minorities, which has been a issue throughout american history. So who votes is obviously most basic question and as weve talked about a little bit already, we started as a country in which white males, but not all white males. Many states White Property owners were the people who voted. And over time we have evolved to a much broader, more inclusive democracy starting with non Property Owners and the populist movement under jackson. But then the two huge changes, of course, of the postcivil war amendments of black americans being able to vote black males. And then in 1920 women, the half of the country, 18 year olds in the 1970s. So the french rise has significantly and makes us a modern democracy rather than the much narrower one we started with. But even at the beginning not a direct was a democracy. A democracy, but not a direct democracy. So weve shifted on that too, which in a way makes sense because not the country we were 200 or more years ago. The founders, as weve all talked about, a Representative Democracy, see the only office that was directly elected at the federal level, the house of representatives, and that has changed over time. President s were to be selected by electors, as they still are. But those electors were selected by state Legislature Teachers who were themselves elected. So you start with the power from the people that changed. Gosh by 1830 or so, because voters said, wait a minute, why are you people electing those electors . Why we, your constituents, elect electors from the state. And so the state legislatures, one by one changed the rules and said were going to give you a chance to vote. Were to follow your results. So thats the presidency becomes slightly more significantly, more directly than the senate. On the early part of the 1900s move from elected by state legislatures to being elected directly by the people. The other thing weve seen over this 200 years and our westward expansion is that the original colonies, even to this day, are more restrictive about what voters, have the power to. So if you look up and down the east coast, there are relatively few states which have a direct democracy. Initial or something where voters can petition to put something on the ballot and then approve and it becomes law. But if you move west, you see it. So states that were coming into the union in the late 1800s or the early 1900s have much more direct democracy because the idea of democracy changed. Can you put a finer point on that. Why why did the idea of democracy change . Why did california start having Ballot Initiatives and, you know, missouri or, new york didnt update their constitution to adopt that approach, as we all know, updating constitutions is hard. So when youre drafting a new. But if it was so compelling, it presumably would have people that it was worth it. So current home state of virginia in order to update the constitution when the legislature has to approve a ballot to go on the ballot for citizens to vote. But first, the legislature has to vote to update it twice in two consecutive sessions because the drafters in virginia being old style, did not want to make it easy for citizens change the constitution. You get to calif. Know 1890s gold rush before that and you had people who were much more directly involved i think as part of westward is that you had people who gave up a lot of the formalities of the east and wanted more direct involvement. And in government theres a quickly theres a great story in arizona where their new constitution had to be approved by congress and signed by the president. And i believe it was taft refused to do so because it in it a direct Citizen Initiative to pass laws and arizona had to revise its constitution. It approved. Without that, they became a state. They immediately revised constitution to put it back in. So we moved to this more direct democracy. Weve also moved on on how we vote. Thats thats right. I mean, the idea here, i will do sort of a survey of where we started and how weve developed in terms of having instituting and implementing free and Fair Elections. And then well get to we are today and what the challenges are moving forward. Free and Fair Elections have been a battleground for a long time. Weve talked about hoover oats. Weve talked about how we change how we how we voted. Why, how we voting. So we all know we vote on the first tuesday after the first monday. I think it is in november and you know why do that . Its very logical, right . We do it because that market day thats when we all take our produce the town square and were all in Town Together and we do because we vote in public. You did. Then you join. You went to the town square and the people for one candidate lined up on one side and the people for the other, they held their hands up. There was secret ballot until the late 1800s. So that among the things that has changed as got secret ballots, the absentee ballots, you voted on market day. And if you werent at the market on market day. You didnt vote. Then the civil war came along and all those white who were eligible to vote were at home. What are you going to do . Well, lincoln and the union came up with the idea of absentee ballots so you could vote in the battlefield or wherever were and then have those sent home and counted. And over, of course. Right. Which you to 2020 in a rush over time you youve had much broader opportunities for absentee voting or voting days before election day not just on the day itself. So as we look toward the current challenges to and Fair Elections. We could look to 2020 to examine. There were challenges or. Differing opinions very strong differing opinions about the integrity of the 2020 elections. First, why dont we just spend little bit of time on what happened . Because the pandemic and how that changed how we vote in some states. I wouldnt say that the pandemic radically altered how we vote, but it sped the changes that had been dramatically. Heres an example of a gains of the more traditional states had not allowed absentee balloting to someone to ask for an absentee ballot without a specific reason. In in virginia i had to fill out a form and i had to swear that i was going to be out of state on election day or that i was going to be a workplace that made it impossible me to vote or i too sick to physically go to the polling place. I had to have a reason. Now, much of the rest of the country again it happens to the west had no excuse absentee balloting. 2020. So arizona had and has a permanent absentee list when you go register you can say i want register in person and want to vote in person or i would like to be put on your permanent list. And if im on your permanent list, they will automatically send me my absentee ballot. I dont have to do anything else. And i a right to that in arizona without any particular excuse. Five states before 2020 had gone to all permanent absentee balloting, i. E. Mail and call it mail in balloting. A lot of them used boxes and there was sort of mix and theyre a mix. Its colorado, utah wyoming, washington, oregon, oregon and hawaii. And hawaii. So this is these are this is i mean, you you there is no more red state than utah. I mean, maybe alabama. But i mean. Right. So you have red and blue states because its sort of mix. Voters love it. Its convenient. When colorado when it was a purple state, it was up till 20, 20, more than 50 of the voters in arizona were already on their permanent absentee ballot. So there are parts of the country were very used to this. There are other parts that werent. The example is pennsylvania. In 1929 18, the legislature there in the fall with regular change law moved from having to have an excuse to saying anyone can request an absentee at the time they did that about 4 of pennsylvanians voted absentee. Then covid comes roaring in and the change is nobody wants to be in a crowded polling place. The election workers dont to be in there with all these strangers and. Voters dont want to be standing in next to other people. So idea of how can i vote with out coming in physical contact other people becomes a really important question. We never had, i believe, an election in the middle of a pandemic. We had to deal with Something Like that. So in pennsylvania, which had already changed its law to allow absentee voting, you went from 4 of the population voting. Absentee to 40. Now, the system hadnt dealt with anything like that before. There are very complicated procedures for getting absentee ballots, checking the signatures, making sure theyre from the registered voter, making sure that register registered voter hasnt also voted in person or early and they were overwhelmed by those numbers. Lets just spend a second pennsylvania, because as we think i mean, i think the value here to look at what happened and try to figure out how how do you fix it in order to move forward. So we have a High Integrity high we have high degree of confidence in the integrity of the election to 2024. So was controversial. It was, of course, one of the four states that was contested and what was it exactly about the laws that were implemented in pennsylvania that were that was problematic . So there are a couple there. The first piece and i just i think its important to be clear on this the first piece is that we had president of the united states, the leader, one of the two major parties. Quest well, before the election, whether this election was going be stolen or not, and specifically citing the threat, the alleged threat of theft from absentee ballots in a country which was suddenly voting very large numbers, absentee so you had a an initiation of a lack of trust before the election based on the allegations by, somebody who was an important position of Public Authority leads a major party based on the allegation that the that if he it was because of fraud and it was being stolen in front of our eyes because of all these paper ballots and not really caricaturing it, some of the comments were paper ballots that were flooding into our election system, china. And you could tell because there was bamboo in the paper. So there is that. But then was also this question about when you start to count the ballot, does do you start to count the absentee ballots on the date that it is postmarked on the date, three days after the postmark, there were questions around just the process of counting the ballots which were going to be fair, fairly counted and which werent going to be counted. So aside from the sort of caricature of, you know, wholesale robbery of the elections were actually there were some sort of fair quibbles around how how do you implement the processing and the proper counting of the election of the of the absentee, you know, in a world in which every state has different rules. So some states say that ballots that are received by election day count and if it comes in the next day, it doesnt count other states say they have to be postmarked before the election. And if they arrive afterwards, they are counted as long as theyre postmarked. Then go into the weeds and discovered that the postal has new machines that often dont put postmarks on ballots. What do you do with those . What do you do with ballots in pennsylvania that in their system but have been from the envelope they arrive in and give me a nerdy moment here when. You do for those who dont. And absentee ballot in every state they have a system where you fill out your ballot, you stick it in an envelope on the envelope. You put your identifier on information, who you are your address may be the last four of your Social Security may be your signature. It may have a witness the outside of the envelope saying that they saw you put your name on it. But the whole key to this is, they know who you are and can put you on the rolls and mark you as voting. Check your identify nation. And then they separate the ballot from the envelope. The ballot goes in another pile. Nobody knows whose ballot that once its left the envelope. Well, in pennsylvania, they were ballots that left the envelope without proper checking of it by. Both parties. So the republican said their ballots over there that are no longer attached to envelopes. And we dont know if the signatures got checked or not. And so that became a court case. Another piece of pennsylvania, which you heard in this mornings discussion about is the legislature. The only state authority to make laws is that the way the modern world works and, actually, as we heard this, the Old Fashioned world, too. Its a joint effort. The legislature passes, the executive interprets laws and their election official interpret laws. And the state Supreme Court interprets what the legislature did. And in pennsylvania, it was clear you could get absentee ballots. But there were other issues that were less clear where the state Supreme Court stepped in and said it is appropriate to do x and, not y. And republicans in the said, wait a minute, thats wrong. Were the people. We have the constitutional, whether its x or y, not state as per the constitution for these constitution. So state legislatures have the ability decide these questions. Okay, so we saw a version of pennsylvania to varying degrees across the country in 2020. There are efforts underway to in many states to ensure that not just there is High Integrity elections because i think we we know that the elections are secure and they are fair. And we know the 2020 election was secure and it was fair. But theres for the most part not Everybody Knows that. The question is how we increase a degree of confidence in our elections because politics is perception. We know that if we all have confidence in the integrity of our elections, thats going to go a long way towards ensuring the validity of the outcome. Id like to talk about what is happening in the states to prevent some of these, you know, real challenges that happened 2020. And there are i know there is a there theres a bill in the legislature in wisconsin right now that perhaps may get a vote next week to standardize the processing of absentee ballots so that we dont have the same challenge. You hadnt in pennsylvania and wisconsin in some where what states are moving forward. So in addition to what weve already said about pennsylvania or some of the other issues that states are now facing and we will face. 2024 also came about because of covid and they were the advent drop boxes, many states and was one of them. The Election Officials said, well, if were going to let people vote absentee, they certainly can put it in the mail. But and i will tell you, i became an expert, the u. S. Postal service, which i had never expected, be in the middle of the 2020 and nominated to be postmarked. There were battles over the processing machines to process mail and whether the postmaster had deliberately tried to slow it down. But i think its reasonably accepted the Postal Service on occasion, mail on occasion. Its slow. There are the the anecdotes of somebody with a bag of ballots in the back of a postal truck that never got delivered. So people were worried about that. And the changes in voting led municipal to say well were going to put locked truck boxes on the corner and you can put your ballot in that. You can just drive by. You dont have to go into a building or you can go in to the town hall and put it in a different box. That became an entire world of its own, of conspiracy theories, of what was going in the drop boxes, which goes back to education. It goes back to the fact that Many Americans dont understand, you know, surprise this. Its complicated. Its not something is common parlance. But Many Americans dont understand what actually happens in the voting process, how are those ballots processed . How are those signatures checked . So if you look forward to what states are trying do is be more transparent and be clearer about what their processes are, how the machines work, how they are not individual Voting Machines are not connected to the internet so that the idea that, you know, theres a satellite, italy, that is changing votes in colorado doesnt actually a true allegation. The allegation at least that isnt how it works. But people dont know that. And again, to go back to my point, if you look at polling the result of 2020 and the battles saw over legitimacy are, that a significant number, the members of one Political Party say, they dont trust the election system, whereas the others in a majority say they do. So you put that in a local situation and you have people who are convinced last election was stolen and are very worried about the next one being stopped. So i actually this is a great point to great opportunity to pull up a poll that that man fernand has conducted. And theres this we have a slide that well show here. So this this is a poll that was conducted on Election Integrity. Americans called for Campaign Finance reform and Stronger Security measures. One of the questions dealt specifically with the confidence in the integrity of the us. And you can see here, i mean this to me is a quite troubling slide, because here you can see that the confidence in the integrity of elections breaks down along partizan lines in a really, really severe way. Right. So republicans have 44 confidence in the integrity of the elections. Democrats have 68. And you on hold only only just little bit more than half of americans have confidence in the integrity of our elections. Take that, trevor. Whats the challenge there. What happens when only 54 of americans have confidence in the outcome of an election . Well, the obvious answer is that they therefore have less confidence in, the legitimacy of the government and in a democracy. The whole point is that citizens elect, their government and if citizens theyre not electing their government that somehow it is being manipulated and stolen, then its much harder to have any acceptance of what the government. So what strikes me is the way the, way to fix that is to at a on a state by state level alter change the laws to improve them in a bipartisan way. So you absolutely have to have republicans and democrats working together to update the laws and this may sound fantastical but its actually happening and the bill that i mentioned in wisconsin is is by a hispanic republican named senator rachel coburn. Rivera and she the one who is putting forth shes just testified in the state assembly this week. She her bill is hopefully will pass out of senate next week. Again, totally bipartisan effort to fix the challenges with the challenges, by the way, now with processing and counting absentee ballots, but doing it expeditious only because it sounds it strikes me that one of the places where and id like you to comment on this, of the places where you really start to waver in our confidence in the integrity of the elections is when it takes too long to count. And its id love for you to comment on this. You know, florida used to not so much be the paragon high Election Integrity. Right. I mean, you go back, we have to remember, i mean, we remember the nightmare of 2008 hanging chads and and that the problem with florida slowing down the entire. But now florida has two time zones. One of the most populous states in the country. And the time california ballots and polls close on the west coast. We know who won florida. So florida has has tightened it up. Theyve locked it up. And theres a high degree of in the integrity of how florida conducts elections. Now, if everybody was like florida, i should actually say its sort of sounds like a laugh line, but wed be in a much better place. I think its going back to 2000 and all of that, no one actually questioned the integrity and suggested that elections were act had actively stolen. What they question was, had the votes counted correctly. And that leads to the confidence. That becomes confidence. Youre absolutely right. It becomes i dont have integrity in the system because i cant figure out whats going on in 2020. The spotlight was on states that took quote, long to count votes or what was happening. And thats a great example what states can do because florida was one. The other example was arizona. You may recall all the controversy over arizona being for biden and about oclock at night or 10 00 at night eastern, something that not long after the polls had closed in arizona. So how did they do that . The answer is they had carefully thought through their system they have all those absentee ballots in because they had always had all those absentee ballots coming in. They had developed and a set of procedures where those ballots came in in the weeks before the election, they were process. They were examined. The signatures were looked at. They were separated. Then under a Bipartisan Team of from their envelopes. They were put a pile to be counted on election day and included in the precinct votes from the people who were voting in person on election day. And that enabled arizona to know almost all the votes. Overseas. Votes have longer to come in arizona, but they knew almost all the votes that had been cast shortly after the polls closed because they just could feed them into the machines on election day and have a final result. The other end of scale, which caused enormous trouble was pennsylvania. You had suddenly 40 of the state voting absentee overwhelmed pennsylvania, a different law. It said you cannot touch those absentee ballots until election day. You cant look at signatures if you have a question, you cant try to track down the voter and see if its theirs. You cant separate it from the god forbid. So they were way behind the curve when they have 40 voting and they cant even look after them until election day. So what in pennsylvania, you will recall that President Trump saying that absentee ballots were fraudulent, told republican to vote in person. Well, what does that practically mean. It means the majority, the people who voted on election day, whose votes were clear when the polls closed and the machines counted them, were going to be republican. The democrats were telling everyone to vote absentee and get it in early. And therefore, the majority of the absentee votes, when they got counted would be democratic. And how would they out . Well, what happened in is that when we all went to bed that night, trump was ahead in pennsylvania because were only looking at machine votes. And the next morning, biden edging ahead because theyre now counting the absentees. But it is not irrational to say what happened overnight. If you dont know, if you dont understand that now, i and my organization months trying to explain to the press exactly that the socalled red mirage to explain to people that in states that dont do anything with the absentee ballots until election day or afterwards. It will change as theyre and you need to Pay Attention to the state. The press, i think, did a really good job of explaining that. But, you know, in one ear, out the other, not everyones listening to all of that, i think it led to to real distrust. So one of the things that we are urging states to do this round is what youre talking about in wisconsin find a way to get ahead the curve pre process the absentee ballot envelopes, be ready to count them on election. Pennsylvania still has not made that change and i like trying, but it just blew up. Well, i have to say i like your bipartisan example a lot of wisconsin. The problem here is that all of this is inherently intensely political. Every Legislature Looks at it and says which side does it help . Which side it hurt . Or in the pennsylvania case where it probably doesnt help or hurt except confidence in the system. The republicans and Legislature Say we know that Good Government types want to do this what can we horse for . What can we get in return for changing the system and. There is a lot and james carson, a question he says are there some is there a sort of model laws being developed to help states ensure the ease of voting and integrity elections . And if so, what are some key examples . I mean, when you talk about the horse trading, you know, i think there are a lot of. There are a lot of Different Things you can do to, give confidence to either side sort of republican coalitions and democratic coalitions in state houses about confidence for Election Integrity. And where are we on voter, for example, because, you know, for as controversial as voter has has been in the past, it seems to be one of those things that that coalitions are trading for and sort of settling on. It seems to have gotten slightly less controversial in recent cycles. That fair . Its gotten less controversial and probably more, which is unfortunate and heres why. Never mind whether there is actually person fraud in terms of someone walking in and saying, im trevor and voting when im not trevor potter, there are, i believe, no examples that there is. There are examples people voting twice absentee and other things. But people still and todays world think, well, i have to show id for all sorts of things. Why i have to show it for voting. Its a it seen as a way to ensure confidence in the system. I think that is a perfectly good confidence builder as long as it is fair and nonpartisan. But what happens is that partizan Legislature Look at this and say this is an opportunity to shape the electorate. It is an opportunity to make it easier for my voters to vote and, harder for their voters to vote. And so you have a number of examples where states texas is, a prime one recently idaho, have said that they will not accept as id that will enable you to vote student ids, student photo ids, student photo ids issued by state universities that they say is not valid id. On the other hand, what states are they not like in idaho idaho, idaho, texas has done that for a long time, texas says. But on the other hand, concealed weapons permit ids are okay. So whats happening here is youre taking a perfectly legitimate election confidence measure and you and you trying to say, i dont really want students to vote because im conservative legislator in idaho and they dont tend not to vote my way. And do want concealed weapons owners to vote. So these become partizan battlegrounds and so then the question is, the courts say thats two partizan criteria and you get the same issues. We go back to now a democracy where virtually everyone gets to vote, but it is only not entirely what happens when the voting officials put the polling place in an area that people cant to. This is a huge issue. Tribal reservations in the west because people often dont have cars and you make it hard for them to vote absentee. We Campaign Legal center had a case in north dakota where the legislature, a law that said you have have your residence address on your government issued photo id to vote facially sounds reasonable. I suspect everyone in this room thinks, okay, i can have a drivers license with my address on it. But presumably the legislature knew that there are no resident addresses on tribal reservations. They dont exist. People get their in a post office box in one place and the houses have numbers, so they disenfranchize anyone on a reservation and thats the sort of battle that we have back and forth depending on the state who runs the elections. I want to i want to ask you about sort of trouble on the horizon for 2024, but i also want to look at the bright spots. Weve had some reform since 2020, especially at the federal level, i think are important to underline. So if if there are close elections, you know, we dont we dont have a national right. We have a National Election day. 50 states, have we . 50 state elections for electors to write those electors then go and vote on in the Electoral College for the president. Arizonas passed them laws not trying to expedite the counting, actually to slow down, recounting in the case of a very close. And what we know is that arizona a history of being very close these days. And there some state laws that suggest that the the slow down for the recounts in arizona could force arizona to the deadlines for the counting the electoral ballots. So theres theres a scenario where arizona may not have electors to send in to the Electoral College in a tight election. This could make the difference between. One candidate getting 2 to 70. And then you have a constitutional crisis. What are what are look, this is not fear mongering. What are actually the concerns we should be thinking about as we approach 2024 in the states that where there really could be things done to improve the efficiency and the confidence in the integrity of those elections. Yeah. And we have here is some tension between the idea that we want to include increased Public Confidence in elections by having more more when there their issues or the tension between that and the fact that the Electoral College on a quite tight schedule as we all now know congress meets this time it was january six. Thats pretty early in the cycle after election for states to follow their state procedures for recounts. And what margarets to is that the Arizona Legislature in a lot of all desire to increase confidence in the system agreed to lower the threshold for a recount. It used to be i think half of a percent and theres now a 10th of a percent in practical, that means that in a president ial election with millions of votes, if they are closer than about ten or 15,000, there will have to be a recount in. Arizona and the method in which they recount is not a particular i mean there are risk limiting audits. There are all sorts of reforms that have happened across these states to counting and sort the security and just the veracity of the count one that that incurs confidence from the from electorate. But if you have to take three weeks to recount the method for the recounting arizona. So that is actually not the most of gain and thats a of this unfortunate partizan divide where you have people who are convinced the election is being stolen so they are demanding that paper ballots be counted and recounted hand. Some of you may have noticed that there was a a pretty chaotic private Company Effort to count just in Maricopa County and it took weeks and they kept coming up with different numbers. Thats because people arent quite as good at it as machines. But if thats what youre going to have, then you get arizona seems to be the hotbed this. Then you get county officials in arizona saying we are going to refuse certify the Election Results in our county because think there were problems elsewhere, the state and they have to have hand recount first or we dont trust machines. Were required by law to use the machine count. But were going to do a parallel hand count that will take forever. And this happen in arizona. And they ended up with the arizona Supreme Court ordering the local officials to their Election Results. But if you put all that in the tight time frame of the Electoral College and the drop dead date where they have to certify to get the to congress, your scenario is possible that you will end up with states failing because of more state audit procedures to get the votes certified time, which then puts it congresss lap is what do you do . They arrive late. Michael stack has a really smart question. If complicated Financial Transactions are secure, why is online voting not being considered . Maybe talk about utah. I dont know how familiar you are with the theres a pilot in utah for the implementation of the use of blockchain for overseas voting. So where where are interesting innovations happening in terms. Yeah its its a great question. It actually has a Pretty Simple answer at the i think technology is moving blockchain in maybe be helpful but if think about whether its complicated Financial Transactions or just going to the the key to all of those is verify buying your identity, knowing that youre the person telling your bank to transfer the 10,000 or to get the 200 out of the machine. If you think about voting, the whole point is to separate your identity from the action of voting. Thats what the envelope does. Absentee voting, thats what the machine does where youve been checked in, then youre given the ballot. There is no connection between you and actually the ballot. Once its cast, banking is the opposite. You want the connection and the continued verification. So is there a way to have double verify and then anonymous ballot electronically . And i think for ive been in meetings all the Computer People who were miles me say dont even think it because of the dangers of i think it was one of the it was maybe salt lake city, one of the western states said we have a way to do this. It didnt blockchain. We have a way to do this electronically. Were going to do a test election and we are going to dare anyone to see if they can hack our election. The university of the district of columbia hacked it within 4 hours. So there has been a problem there. May be ways to get there because overseas ballots are a problem if you rely on mail it often will not get there in time our military overseas is cutting it the way which is theyre allowing people to fax it in, which is not terrible, but not very anonymous. You go to your commanding office, you fill it out, you put it in his or her fax machine, the odds, somebody knows how you voted, which is to what we hope. Okay, lets do the federal level real quick. We have one minute left. There are some bright spots on the federal level and then there are some things that we hope will will break the right way. The electoral count reform act. Right. The electoral count out of 1887, which is the of the law that had much so many holes in it that it allowed the sort of insane theory that perhaps the Vice President could send back all of the electors of the states and they could recount the electors that has been reformed. Thats the good news. The good news is congress acted really quickly in the dead of night before end of the last session on a bipartisan basis. They changed the law, have clarified it. So we now know there is no role for the Vice President and have these dates for the states to. And we also have a threshold. It was just one member in either chamber that could suggest it could pose an objection. And now its 20 of both chambers in each chamber have to oppose an election have to have a certain threshold for 20 . So thats thats good this is slowed down the the shenanigans that can happen. But one of the other things that has happened is that poll workers in elections across, the country are less inclined to volunteer and we need federal funding to, frankly secure polling places to dedicated to cybersecurity and to frankly encourage poll to come back and administer our elections. There is 75 billion, 75 million, 75 million. Its got to be a million because because ukraine. 105 billion. And theres no way were saying 35 billion on our elections. So maybe we should. 75 million. It is probably to go through. But we need probably another at least 250 million in order to secure elections. Whats going happen at the federal level, in addition to to get the kind of funding to the states to ensure that the Electoral Assistance commission is able to execute our elections. So is asking a really important and really depressing question and as the last one, i think i dont think its depressing. You have your answer. I think its depressing because. If you look at when democracies have failed, when they have been overrun by authoritarian groups, it involves acts of violence and it involves acts of, violence against government officials who are chased out of system. And we have seen and are seeing threats of violence against local Election Officials across the country. And there is no reason for them to stay low paying jobs, less reason to volunteer on election day and get almost nothing for long hours if. Theyre in think theyre in threat of being attacked. States are changing their laws. To say that you open carry guns in polling places, which makes very nervous and people who think elections are stolen are pointing their fingers at the election saying, you must have done it. And if you follow any of this is hard to miss. All these articles being people chased out of office. I was in arizona again. The two top Election Officials in Maricopa County, which is 70 of the population of the state, went into essentially the federal witness protection program. They had to leave their houses with their families and be hidden because of the threats of violence. One of them is retiring from office. As a result. Thats the threat we face. So thats why its so important that we have state laws, federal laws that say its it clearer than it is now that it is a crime to threaten an election. But the optimism start to end on the Optimism Party and on is that there is a bill that is moving to find hava and the Electoral Assistance commission, which i mean, ill go out on a limb. I think its gonna be fully funded. So the lesson there is just, like the founders, we are in a time when there is real opportunity, do this right and a real possibility that it wont work right, they will get it wrong. So it we all have to lean in to doing doing the right things right. Your congressman. All right. Thank you all very much thank you. Trevor potter. Thank so were here at the National Portrait gallery, and theres this. 1898 exhibit. Why is this here in chicago . What are we what are we trying to tell people