Process what you anticipate results start coming in next tuesday. This is an hour. Ook at the voting process and what to anticipate when the Election Results are coming in next tuesday. This is one hour. Days away from the election and theres a lot of information out there. Here are three things you need to know from the bipartisan policy center. One, they will be a surge in voting by mail which is safe and secure. And two, you likely wont know who won on Election Night and will take longer to count all the ballots and report the results. Finally, your usual polling sites might be different to keep you and pull workers safe. Check out can i vote. Org if you are not sure where to go by planning ahead and knowing what to expect you can make sure your voice is heard at the ballot box. Welcome to dpcs last election event before election day. My name is matthew and i direct the election because the bible partisan policy center. We knew 2020 would be exciting for election nerds like me and for those on this panel president ial election years are always eventful however we did not expect all the craziness. According to the u. S. Election project out of the university of florida more than 79 million ballots have been cast that includes 27 million early ballots and 52 million absentee ballots and 32 million outstanding in some counties and states we are nearing the point when more ballots are cast for election day 2020 and during the entire 26 team. This will be the First National election with more than half the ballots are cast prior to election day and the shift occurred during a once in a century pandemic forcing Election Officials to adapt. Election administrators of the stowed local letters and voting happening right now and processing is happening right now and we decided to assemble a group of voting experts who have been Election Officials or have been for their entire careers to discuss what to expect as a unprecedented election season nears its end hopefully. Before i introduce them i ask you to please submit questions about this event either through facebook and youtube in the Comment Section or on twitter using the bpc life. Also and what you to register for the event will be holding virtually on december 132020 voting experience and goals reform cosponsored by the Democracy Fund and the Carnegie Corporation of new york. Find more information on our website. With that let me briefly introduce todays panelists. Doctor Laura Atkinson is the professor of Political Science and director of the center for the study of voting elections and democracy and leads research at the university of mexico. Internationally recognized expert in the area of election science, methodology, voting rights, election and political behavior. Haley patrick is Senior Advisor and in 2013 was selected by president obama to serve as commissioner on the president ial commission on western administration. This is to further the work of the commission paired prior to that she was a federal Compliance Officer for arizona elections for 11 years. Ricardo cortes is a junior commissioner of elections and current Election Security advisor at the Brennan Center for justice and hes also served as the general registrar in fairfax county, virginia at the Elections Commission but finally, Christopher Thomas is a bpc fellow and special advisor to the detroit city clerk. Chris also served as commissioner on the president ial commission on election and administration was a long time election director for the state of michigan for it think it all the panelists for joining us. With that let me jump to my first question i will ask ricardo who is entitled action security advisor and i want to Start Talking about the press Conference Last Week held by the director of National Policy and the fbi director about election interfering. What are the greatest risks remaining in the last few days before election day on election day and in the days that follow . Thanks so much for having me with you today. Yes, i think the announcement last week was big news but for me one of the biggest parts of the news was that the federal government identified an issue and made the public aware of it that made Election Officials where of it quickly which is a big change from where we were four years ago in this process and so i think heading into the election i mean certainly there are some risks to the system still in a lot of the issues that we anticipate heading into next week revolve around the Technology Used in polling places and not necessarily, you know, that there are foreign after threats which there are but i think just keeping it though systems running and there is a unprecedented use and we seen slowdowns during early voting and so i think having the appropriate backup in place for Election Officials and the one area of concern that we have been looking at is postelection in the Election Results and the need for everybody to be patient as Election Officials work through counting all those ballots that have come in already and not being kind of taken aback that the vote total changes the night progresses and as the days progressed and ballots continue to be counted from the selection. Thank you. Same question, in 2016 we had some concerns about interference that was about mostly our Voter Registration databases so what are your concerns for this cycle . Im not immensely concerned about that versus just general things going on and in precincts i think there are certainly things going on out there but i think the thing is the difference between being concerned about them and having information that something really is happening and mucking up the system and one thing i think we can say about our system is the fact that its so fragmented is a wonderful thing for security and our system of election is quite secure. Thank you. Tammy even focused a long time on absentee voting and is the fact that we will be doing more absentee voting this year another area of more risk . I think thats a great question and i have not had anyone frame it in quite that way before so i think the question that is come up quite repeatedly is that there is this narrative around voter fraud and that we shouldnt trust vote by mail or absentee voting and i think that that is ill place and illfounded us when we talk about the security of the system for me it is a question of it doesnt mean the voters are selected that way for voting but do they have the opportunity to effectively get their voices heard through that channel so we do know that vote by mail has some opportunities for voters to miss steps. They can fail to find the signature block and they can return it to late which are the two largest reasons for rejection so there are opportunities for missteps on the part of the voter and not having the ballots be counted but i do know that in this moment many states have taken on policies either through governors, executive orders and directives from secretaries of state and others to make sure that voters have the opportunity to get their ballots in and postmarked by election day and we know that many places are, in fact allowing for drop boxes and things of that nature so we wont have hopefully as many late ballots and he mentioned that there is still outstanding tens of millions of voters have their ballots on their kitchen tables or counters or on their desk who need to make sure the voters read those instructions thoroughly and get the ballots back in because for me that is the real challenge. Making sure that voters who have mentioned or shown they want to participate either by registering to vote or by in fact requesting a ballot they have every opportunity in a Global Pandemic in the midst of a third wave or third spike we are seeing here of getting their votes back and making sure they are effectively counted. The last part of that is that we also know there are challenges when voters go to vote in person and are giving provisional ballots so we do know there will be a confluence there and weve it already in early voting of voters who have their ballots at home and decided to go vote in person and having to vote a provisional ballot so those will be some how the ballots that will be looking at after election day and as we do every election and have for a very long time and we had those procedures and policies in pla place. Of course, tammy, and the two minutes who are able to sum out very succinctly all my concerns about the election but i do want to ask chris you now work at the federal level, state level and on the local level of election so what are your biggest concerns about security for the next seven14 days . Really going into the Election Security is making sure everybody votes count and that is what voters are concerned about. Weve got drop boxes across the city of detroit and we have those on cameras, for example and monitors and all recorded so security from that viewpoint is to assure the voters that the ballots they drop in the dropbox are selected and processed and any tampering will be viewed as [inaudible] we have this absent voter accounting leader that has over 700 workers and that is where everything will be processed within the election day. We are have that lockdown we have our precincts lock down and we are working with the state and making sure that security in terms of the statewide voter distraction but its really the issue of security and broadest sense of any kind of intimidation that has us concerned and we had a ban on guns that has been overturned by the courts and that is on appeal right now and there has been some concern in michigan with folks that walked onto the capital earlier in the spring we hope not to see that. Chris, i will stay with you for one second but i mentioned earlier that we are seeing historic levels of turnout before election day and it may be that up to two thirds of the ballots before election day common but that still means upwards of 50, 60 Million People are elected to turnout on election day and so certainly throughout the early voting process especially in the first day or two of early voting across country receiving long lines and is that we expect or should expect to see on tuesday . Should we expect to see long lines due to the social distancing and limitations that come with voting in person . Im not expecting long lines like we are seen on tv from other states. The question is would the increase in mail ballot and how far to the states allow their local Election Officials to consolidate so that they consolidate them perhaps there will be lines but as our studies have shown over the last several election cycles lines have generally gotten shorter and in michigan there is no allowance so we have every single precinct open and we have an abundance of workers and were not short in that regard and i do not anticipate that lisa michigan there will be long lines. Obviously was sanitation of the voter polling booths after each voter and social distancing things will be slow down but as long as jurisdictions do not openly consolidate the precinct they should be okay and there should not be lines. s in question. You study lines before and so what to expect to see both in new mexico and around the country . Im expected to see some lines on election day and just today iowa has consolidated and closed a lot of precincts for election day and that will affect voters so covid will affect voters in some places when there is always lines some places on election day and i think obviously the social distancing will impact that as well but we have seen lines happening in early voting and people hanging in those lines and it processed and vote i think for the most part for the vast majority over 90 of voters or more are going to go into a voting location and not have any weight or hardly any weight at all but certainly there will be some lines we have had a huge number of voters vote early in new mexico either in person or by mail but there is also a large number of people as tammy mentioned to havent voted yet and who have not gotten their absentee ballots but did request it so i dont know if they will be turning them in late or walking it in late or not late but by election day so there is still a lot of outstanding people to vote either through the mail there will still be a substantial number, much less, the majority of people perhaps as much as 60 of the people voting or more will vote, probably more 70 will be voting before election day. Thats a great segue into my next question which is for kami because its on absentee voting and tammy is our expert on absentee voting. Absentee ballots will be the story of this election and will not only be because of their huge amount of usage but also going to be because there will be litigation around them so if you speak to those issues we been seen this is with voters more than one valid or getting the wrong ballot or the naked ballot issue and i had to bring it up. What are the things that are likely to be issues in the next week and potentially litigated in the week after election day . So, i thank you are spot on. There will be quite a bit of litigation around both absentee vote by mail ballots as well as provisional ballots and anything that is not determinative or already counted is going to comment to question potentially in some places if the race is closed and races are close. We have a lot of others up and down contests on the ballot or ballots but part of the challenge we have here is thinking about in this moment around increased use of vote by mail that many jurisdictions were caught off guard because you have space where traditionally they had a single digit participation in vote by mail, whether it was because the voter needed to use an excuse in order to get their ballot mailed to them or whether it was because in that phase the culture was to go vote in person anyway. What we saw in the primary season is that many voters were taking the primary or the pandemic seriously and decided to request their ballots by mail. Local Election Officials were inundated with applications and having a hard time getting the ballots even out in time and people were using their preexisting policies materials to satisfy a much larger volume of the voters and that is where best practices werent adopted but they have been sent. Over the course of the summer we see more jurisdictions and states resolving revising their envelopes to be more intuitive about where of voter needs to sign. Some of these other things that when you think about it it sounds like its really in the weeds and its a lot of minutia so how will that make a difference but we know from studies that when voters know where and when to sign and when the instructions are easy to understand and they know when they need to have it returned by and when, in fact, theyre provided with options in that return we have fewer voters having ballots that are called into question as being potentially rejected. I think we will see a lot of that in the days following election day depending again upon how many of these ballots get back early and to lanas point the jurisdiction i was in with hundreds of thousands of voters dropped their ballots off at the polls in arizona on election day and they are seen voters bring them in earlier and so on Election Night for the majority of states we will have a lot of the returns of those absentee ballots so i think support and for voters that still have that ballot in hand to know that if you get it in early you will be part of the first ballots counted. I will return to chris but in michigan has been marching towards more absentee voting over the past couple of years and certainly everything they are seen this year due to the pandemic has been much greater then they could have ever participated. What are localities doing to part prepare for this onslaught . The localities learned a lot in the election and that was the big learning curve for everybody to handle that much mail. Typically have been handling 25 of the vote by mail so we had some experience but we dont have experience [inaudible] in detroit they had the largest number of ballots 81000 in a primary election with almost no serious context so it was a great hot time to learn to get the kinks out if you will so one thing we learned in the state is the use of highspeed tabulations. We long ballot with the school board and weve never been able to use them in the past weve had around and was now [inaudible] in detroit with 18 high speeds in the primary and as many cities and our states have had larger populations and that will move things along. Regarding the application process we were saved. Our secretary of state issued absentee ballot applications to everybody in the state in june ahead of our [inaudible]. Other communities so there were ways to make it easier and also with the Voter Information Center to keep track of whether the ballots and that is what we see in the issue for november 3rd when the voters look at the about what so we put our procedures in place and allow them to vote and back [inaudible] im going to warn the other panelists. I want you to put on your hat there are a lot of changes in the voting process some have been done by legislature and some by courts. What is your recommendation to voters who may be concerned with the rules may be changing . That is a great question. At this point its to return the ballot in person and prior to the closing of the polls on election day whatever method allowed. Some mentioned drop boxes. Most at a minimum allow you to drop off your ballot at the local Election Office and so some states are now allowing you to drop off your absentee ballot. Take a look at what your options are so that way theres no question about whether it gets counted. Im giving a couple of more seconds and then going to remind the viewers if you have a question and you are watching on the facebook or youtube page you can ask questions and we will get