Registration policy. This is about one hour. Elections are under attack from so many different arenas, russian meddling from 2016 and that has expanded with china and iran and other foreign actors. A lot of the misinformation coming out right now is coming from sources in addition to russia. It can be from canada to campaigns and social media, facebook, twitter, there is a lot of misinformation out there. It moves toward the problems with voting by mail. The mail seems to have been a National Story now as to whether you can trust the mail or not. That is what covid19 has brought to the fore. We need to provide those options and should never put someones health at risk to exercise their constitutional right to vote. Thats where many people have turned to the mail including West Virginia and within balance of law, thats one of the key points, you have to stay within your state law. The elections are run by the states and by the counties. While people may hear of something thats happening in another state that may be working in the vote by mail system, they have to take that into context that in those beens, perhaps they have working on that for 15 years. They have been working on the voter list maintenance and getting the proper machinery in place to be able to count the votes and drop boxes on those sort of things. Just because something sounds good another state, may not apply legally within your state like in West Virginia where you cant just jump into a vote by mail system, you have to operate within the confines of the law and still provide flexibility to allow voters to get to the ballot box. Situation, we gave people the opportunity to vote using an absentee ballot. We were one of 16 states that require a voter to request an absentee ballot. We are not a no excuse or vote by mail where you send ballots to everybody. I dont advocate that because of vast opportunities for fraud. When somebody requests an absentee ballot, you know there is a live person on the other and then you have an accurate address to send in the ballot to and it works wonderfully for us. We perhaps had the best primary across the united states. I was asked to testify because of the success West Virginia had during our primary, the best practices we implemented to prepare for a general election. With the mail in particular, let me give you a quick example of how the mail can be a problem. Anont want to take this as attack on the postal system, they have great workers and a great system in place. 95 of the time, mail is delivered on time schedule to the right address. What that means an Election Year is thats 4 of the time that there could be an issue. If you have a paper application for an absentee ballot, 4 of those may not arrive at the Clerks Office on time as scheduled. When the clerk males the ballot out to the individual, 4 of those may not arrive on time. When the individual voter sends the ballot back to the clerk, 4 of those may not arrive on time. You can see how this complicates or multiplies the effect of inaccuracies, opportunities for human error or perhaps opportunities for fraud to occur like purposely throwing away a ballot. What we found in West Virginia and in one specific situation, 500 absentee applications were set aside by a trainee who is undergoing the training process and then he left for various reasons and they werent identified for another two weeks. Iswasnt nefarious, there nothing wrong going on but it was a complication that when you use voting by mail, these things enter into the process and can cause problems. An introductory to whats happening in West Virginia and i would be glad to answer any followup questions. The just want to say that 4 figure you are talking about is the Inspector General of the Postal Service releasing a report last november on the 2018 election and they said their standard for ontime delivery of alexion mail, which includes absentee ballots, was 96 percent, not 100 . Oft means at least 4 alexion mail ballots may not get delivered in time. Said there aret worse delivery times in several states and they only achieved about 84 of the time. That means Something Like 16 of ballots might not be delivered in time. If i can bring in christian adams, if you will turn your cameras on, secretary warner talked about the potential problems and some states with inaccurate Voter Registration lists. I know that the Public InterestLegal Foundation has done a lot of work on that issue. I think you all just recently released a report on that. Can you talk about that issue and some of the problems you are seeing in states when it comes to mailin ballot thing . For doing this important event every year. Its critically important to defend the constitution. In contrast, secretary warner was talking about, in West Virginia, this system they have working there. A great example to the contrary is nevada. One of the things we looked at carefully was the rush to automatic mail ballots in the primary where the data showed things did not go very well. Take clark co. , one point 3 million ballots were automatically mailed. Roughly bounced back as undeliverable which means there is bad voter rolls, bad addresses, people are dead. Back out of 1. 3 million. 7000 of those were rejected as defective, having some sort of problem. Those people lost their vote and probably dont even know about it that their vote wasnt counted. Therefore, they were disenfranchised. If they had gone in person, the 7000 votes would have counted. You mentioned our Research Study. A number of years ago, pew did a Research Study where they look at the voter rolls around the country and found roughly millions and millions were bad. I think they said there were 2 million dead people in the voter rolls. We replicated that study the Public InterestLegal Foundation where we got the voter rolls amalgamated them and normalize them and put them up against commercial data. There was other private data thats out there that you can see whos alive and whos dead and whos duplicated and so forth. Example, thats the state that rushed to vote by mail, they have thousands of people improperly registered at commercial addresses which are not supposed to be in nevada. If you go to our website, you will see a video we did last week going to many of these addresses, visiting and knocking on the door, asking for the voter who invariably is not there because they dont live in an abandoned mine or they dont live in a vacant lot or they dont live in an Auto Repair Shop or they dont live in a casino or they dont live in a liquor store. If you go to the video, you will see what the state of the voter rolls are in the battle. When you have dirty voter rolls on one hand and you have vote by mail automatically on the other, it equals a disaster. You cannot do it that way. Thats what nevada is doing and thats what new jersey is doing. Lo and behold, other places as well. I want to close on one last thing it involves language. I think its important to reiterate something i said to another audience recently. When people care about these issues, when people do work in the states, they are called vote suppressors, nasty names and so forth. My message then and now is do not be afraid of these labels because they are smears to try to get. You uninterested of people participating in this webinar online care about this issue and want to see something done to protect the integrity of the election. That doesnt make them a racist or a boat suppressor. Or a vote suppressor. People have to not be afraid of the smears because we have a lot of work to do in this country as it relates to election integrity. Thanks, christian. Hemingway, real clear investigations did a terrific report, an investigation into vote harvesting. Has been carried on like in texas and florida to the extent where you had individuals going in and basically coercing and pressuring voters to vote a particular way or actually filling out their ballots for them. Talk a little about some of the investigations you all have done and particular how it relates to this push for mailin ballot thing we see now in the selection. Been a lot of complications related to mailin ballot thing. Weve done a lot of stuff on outdated voter rolls and the problems that states have had and in keeping those voter rolls up to date. A lot of it is building on the that has been done. A lot has been building on work done by conservative nonprofits. This information is out there. Its kind of shocking. California as of last year or so had a Voter Registration rate exceeding 100 . That means they had more Voter Registrations on file then people who live on the state. Bad voter files have been. As we transition to mailin ballots for the reasons there were just illustrated, imagine what was going on in one county in nevada but spread that across the country. You start to see this is a really big problem. Necessarily even a nefarious thing in some ways. California, they have transparently resisted legal attempts to cause them to comply with federal law, that require the keep their voter rolls clean. I am large, a lot of this is simply the fact that we dont spend a lot of money investing in a rental an election infrastructure in this country. Its an afterthought in many states. I think thats the place in a lot of cases because we see the same problems with Voter Registrations in red states and red counties. I think a lot of it is simply making people aware of the problem. Unfortunately, as has been hinted at, this has become so politicized. This is fundamental Good Government issues we should all agree on and yet, any time you raise the specter of these problems come immediately get smeared. Think its a huge problem but i think we turned a corner this year with covid in the sense that there has been such a strong push for mail in balloting gradually happening over time and the fact that it happened all at once force people to confront some particular issues. When issue is that there is incredibly high rate of ballot rejections when it comes to mailin ballots. Like 30ey did something elections in may all by mail and there was Something Like under a 10 ballot rejection rate across the state. In one particular case in new realtime investigations were instrumental in making it a National News story. Democratic ag indicted a sitting member of paterson, new jerseys major voter fraud efforts involving absentee ballots. There is so many issues out there. I am both appalled and surprised, unfortunately, that most of my colleagues dont seem to see these issues for what they are which is a genuine threat to free and Fair Elections and not necessarily issues that need to be politicized. They are basic matters of following the law, proper civic governance and restoring peoples confidence in the process. Say what you want about whatever competitive advantage you might gain with a partisan catfight over suppressing votes, the overall confidence in our electoral system has been seriously undermined this year. Specifichere are very reasons for that that the media are not covering and are not aware of. Thank you. Secretary warner . I want to validate what i heard from both of them. Its interesting that the figures that were cited for nevada, i dont want to think i dont want people to think that nevada is an aberration. Its almost identical to what we have in West Virginia, 1. 2 andion registered voters when we sent out these applications for the ballots, 230,000 of those came back, the exact figure he cited from nevada. Thatmay be an indication thats about 1 5 of all registered voters who may be inaccurate. Manyis after i had taken names off the roles. Off 200,000take after the selection. Thats when we can take it off. Get out what wouldve happened in West Virginia if we had a vote by mail system where you sent ballots out to everybody, 1. 2 million ballots would have gone out, four hundred 50,000 people who participated, that means there would be more ballots sitting in peoples mailboxes unused than there were people who actually participated. Think of the opportunities for fraud and regularities and irregularities and its simply not a good idea and thats why i will not advocate for getting away from voting in person. Voting in person as the Gold Standard and is the most secure and you are adding voting precincts where questions can be answered. When you sit at home, you can vote however you want on a paper ballot. In one county in West Virginia, we had over 1000 over votes. Sometimes they voted for three for a candidate and those votes are now invalidated. Those votes were not counted and thats why we want people voting in person if possible thats why we have gone to Great Lengths to get the ppe entering the coworker train the poll workers to make sure the health and safety of the voters are secure in West Virginia. They are being required to wear masks when they vote in person but thats what i encourage people to do is vote in person and only if you have a legitimate covid19 concern. Then we make it as easy as possible for people to vote by absentee. Mentioned there were more people registered then there was actual voters. We still have that in two counties in West Virginia. I am working hard to clean up the Voter Registration list. Its a seven year process to get somebody removed and i am only think of the full message sent to the people . Can they trust the system when you have more ballots than people . You cannot. Its the threat of lawsuits that really concerns the clerks and thats why they came to me to run for office and run on the platform of cleaning up the Voter Registration list. Sometimes, you have to threaten the lawsuits or followthrough when you had those terrible situations where people are no following federal law and thats what my predecessor did not do for eight years and thats why its important to have these organizations that are the watchdogs to make sure the integrity of the Elections Come through. You mentioned lawsuits and i want to go to that topic with all three of you. One of the other things you said in answer to the first question was you talked about operating within the law. At leaste law states in West Virginia, they have put in certain safety and security protocols for absentee ballots. In order to cut down on the opportunity for fraud and other problems. Many states have witness signature requirements. Fill outquire you to to p ballot form that you then sign so you can have some kind of authentication. My understanding of whats been going on across the countrys there have been all these lawsuits filed, mostly by progressive organizations. They are trying to not only force everyone to vote by mail but at the same time, getting state lawsvoiding like that, like saying you shouldnt have to apply with a signature requirement, he lawsuit in alabama saying the state should not be able to apply a voter id requirement. Have you seen that in West Virginia . Im sure other secretaries have seen that in many other states. We have and it was mentioned about labels and boating suppression. Attacked in various newspapers about letters to the editor and opeds and so forth that by implementing a Voter Registration law, i would say we have a week voter identification law but at least we have it. 18 different licenses, all kinds of Different Things you can use but its not a photo id. Its a week voter identification law or requirement. The people in West Virginia, we are a conservative state by nature and they expect it and what the integrity of the process. Not one person has complained legitimately about having to produce. That theythe idea come in with their car registration or drivers license, they want to show who they are. You have to stand up to the culture of the state, because of the history, you have to have a notarization to present a ballot. I dont question any of those states. In West Virginia, we have had a checkered past with regards to Election Fraud going back to the election of john kennedy and the democratic primary in 1960 that occurred here in West Virginia and after that Hubert Humphrey was out of the race. And thatolen from him was the legacy i grew up under, knowing that has happened here in West Virginia and people were out of it and thats a culture that im trying to overcome in West Virginia the introducing and keeping the voter lists ensure the voter identification is in place. Aree sort of techniques needed to ensure the integrity of the election. Christian, talk about the lawsuits. Think you are participating in some of them and filing briefs and an attempt to void the security protocol the states have in place when it comes to absentee or mailin ballots. Groups filing these lawsuits, lets think about it. A democratically elected Legislature Like in virginia, a democratically elected legislature, everyone of those seats in the house and the senate have a law that says you have to have an absentee ballot signature if youre going to do that and they did that to protect the voter and protect the system. That law went to the democratically elected governor of virginia who signed the law come making it represent the