Toer that joe biden speaks block religious leaders in souls to the at a polls. Then President Trump campaigns in north carolina. Host we are looking at what has become a scene this year, long lines at polling places. Matt, you study this for the bipartisan policy center. Covidear with the pandemic to we have baselines to understand electorate going into this election . This election is unlike any in the past so it is hard to know if theres a good corollary. Already we have seen far more early and absentee voting then it 2016 so it is really off the charts this time around. That lookse a chart at early and in person voting and how it is trended the last couple of years. As folks can see from watching it, the trend has been for more prior voting, either by absentee or mailin ballot, then in person on election day. What is happening in thinking about the conduct of elections, that has led to this . And then accelerating this trend this year . Matt sure. It has been a trend 20 years in the making. Ever since colorado, Washington State and oregon state made it easy for their voters to go. Vote by mail, we are at sea that once voters have the option, they like the option. Clearly during a pandemic, voting by mail is a good and safe option as well. Already we are going to have no and proactive voting by mail and 2020. An additional five states are also this year, mailing ballots to every eligible voter. That makes 10 states plus d. C. And other states are also making it much easier. I must estimate 84 of americans are going to have the chance to vote by mail this year. Host going into this discussion, how about providing baselines that will help people understand how large is the eligible u. S. Electorate in 2020 . Matt the eligible u. S. Electorate is in the range of 180 million. I think we expect 150 million ballots cast in 2020. We had130 million ballots cast in 2016. Host the anticipation is how many this year . Hunter 60000,0001 million 160 million. Dave wasserman he studies house races for the Cook Political Report tweeted last night breathtaking state like texas surpassed 80 of its total 2016 votes cast, leading the nation. And there is still a week of voting to go. Is that what other states are seeing as we lead into election day . Matt yes, it is breathtaking. That is the right word for. In 2016 we saw 33 million absentee ballots cast. As of one week out before the election, we already have 40 million returned. There are 40 69 outstanding according to u. S. Elections million there are 46 outstanding according to the u. S. Elections project. Host i would like to help people understand the challenges and opportunities for states and the overall tally this year. Let me start with in person voting in advance of election day. How many states are allowing that this year . Uptick ingain, and trend . Matt i do not think it is an uptick in trend. We are seeing more states move toward early voting. Most famously this year we see new york state and new york city voting having early voting options in a president ial election. It has been a trend that has slowed down, morbid trend in voting by mail. Most states are trying to extend the early in person voting option. In the washington, d. C. Area, virginia started its early voting in person today and maryland tomorrow, about one week out of actual election day 2020. There also have been covered related experiments in states. One i want to call to your attention, the Supreme Court got involved in an effort in alabama to start curbside voting, because of the pandemic. I am wondering, how many times this year with experiments for cobit courts have had to get involved with things states are wanting to do . Matt yes, curbside voting is an option many states. It is not something states advertise that much. In some states it is limited to voters of a certain age or disabilities. It tends to be resource intensive. That is what was happening in alabama when they expanded it. And then the court pulled her back a little bit. I think these are good options and we should certainly be looking at them in the future. Because the voters are expecting new and more convenient options. And i think Election Officials want to be where voters are. Host as you have been monitoring the weeks leading up to election day have there been ports around the country of intimidation have there been significant reports around the country up intimidation with early voting . Matt we are seeing scattered reports. But voters have to be discerning when they see those report. One report in one place does not mean we are seeing weisberg concerns across the country and does not mean we are saying widespread concerns in any one state or locality. Again, those are scattered reports. I think what we are seeing more of it is of very long lines or what seem to be long lines and part of that is because of covid social distancing requirements. Is due tof it problems Election Officials i think are trying to quickly address so that it does not persist to the last week of voting on a and on election day. Host you mentioned the social distancing. You have been participating in seminars where they have been warning and having states plan for cobit related staffing issues. Issuesd related staffing with enough people to work at the polls. And enough people to sign and people as they come in. How is that turning out as you have been monitoring it . Matt that was certainly the concern i had early in the pandemic, that there were not going to be enough warm bodies to provide significant, robust voting in person during early voting or on election day. I think i was not the only person calling for that. And really, many people have stepped up. There are many groups out there that have certainly recruited a new class of whole workers and it is impressive. For the most part we are not seen the kind of sort is just that we were most concerned about. Again, even just using data from 2016 and 2018, about half of all poll workers are over the age of 60 in the country. That is a risk category for covid, the concerns were real. I think that was born out. The fact that they were able to recruit so many new workers was great. On risk does not appear election day. We are now in a. Of rising covid infections and any one location there could be situations where poll workers are not able to show up on election day because they have to quarantine. That could result in polling places, oneoff polling places having to shut down or not open fully so i do think there is a risk but i think Election Officials have tried to recruit backup and are going to minimize that risk. Host turning to mailin ballot any reference to this earlier in our conversation. I have a chart to put on screen. This is from a report National Public radio did. 2020 mailin ballots, nine states and washington d. C. Automatically send ballots to voters. 36 states, ballots sent by request. This time around no excuse needed or fear of covid19 is accepted as a request five states ballots sent by request and a fear of covid19 is not among the accepted excuse needed. Uptick in and normas mail and balloting this year. I want to go through some aspects of it. First, the states ability to handle the volume as these mailin ballots come in. What kind of technology do states employed to process melton ballots . Dusty process mail it to process mail and ballots . Matt many states did not have a lot of technology to process these ballots. As recently as a few years ago the most states in most states were not seeing huge proportions of electorate voting by mail. Most states had fewer than 15 by mail. So it was a human driven, oneoff process. The request came in and somebody in the Elections Office had to process it and sent out the ballot. There are technological solutions. I think we are seeing states deploy more of those. Many states have upgraded capacity to process these more automatically as opposed to having to handle it by humans. Host are they getting support from the federal government in upgrades . Or is a state driven . Matt the federal government did appropriate 400 million in the cares act and may. Most Election Officials, most policymakers, thought that was step one in the process and that there would be additional federal support and that did not materialize. We have been seeing and i think it was unfit expected, we are seeing civil society, philanthropists, stepping up have, andess may certainly the Zuckerberg Initiative has given 400 million to states and localities to upgrade voting equipment and absentee voting processes. The Schwarzenegger Foundation is doing the same. I think philanthropy is stepping in where congress was unable to find an agreement. That is certainly helping states run elections this year. Host a second aspect is the capabilities of the Postal Service to get ballots to people and return them to state officials in time. Folks watching this are familiar with the hearings Congress Held where the Postal Service commissioner was called to testify. Lots of criticism from congress about changes made to the postal system. How do things stand as we head into election day . Matt at this point, one week out from election day, we are kind of at the moment that if you are going to use the Postal Service, that is the time to get the ballot in the mail in those states where the ballot has to be received back by the election official by the close of polls on election day. Certainly the Service Standards have been slower. I we do not want voters to unintentionally disenfranchise themselves i not getting ballots back in time because even though we know only 1 of ballots are returned and cemented to counting yet rejected, a huge proportion of those ballots they get rejected art rejected because they missed the deadline and that is the last reason we want ballots rejected. Host voters concerned about using the Postal Service have access to drop boxes and this has been a point of conflict in some states, accessibility of drop boxes and confusion about which boxes are official and which are being done either for malicious reasons or in an attempt to help voters drop. Give us an overview of the dropbox situation across the country. Matt drop boxes have a lot of promise. They have and use west where we have seen more voting by mail and they have been used for many election cycles. These are safe options. For me, i think they are among the best options for voters to vote by mail. A dropbox is a one one connection between the voter and election official. There is no middleman, no Postal Service. The only people who have access to a secure lock box, dropbox, are Election Officials themselves. So i think they are great option and they are not an option everywhere but some states have done a great job of rolling them out quickly. Certainly here in maryland, we have not had them before. I was able to go to my local Elections Office and drop it in the dropbox. There were 200 locations in the state. I think we are going to see more of these in future years because this is a simple solution. A voter convenience option, safe and secure. And from my perspective one of the Better Options for voting by mail. The accessibility of drop boxes has been a point of contention. In texas the governor limited them to one per county including the states most populous county. People criticized and suggested that makes it less accessible for lower income people or folks who do not have access to personal transportation. Can you, on that and courts got involved and upheld the governors decision. How do we understand her house reprocess decisions like that to limit availability . Matt the texas decision is more because the state does not have drop boxes per se. They really have drop site where they are staffed by election people. That is what is required by the law. You have to have a physical presence at all of these sites from the Elections Office ed is going to be limiting. I do think texas is one state most difficult to vote by mail. They have chosen to go more toward the early in person buddy route. I agree during a pandemic that is not the best option for a lot of voters. I do think states really should do more to make voting by mail options work better and in my view making that work better includes having successful accessible drop boxes everywhere. Host another aspect of voting by mail is following the rules as states set them up. In pennsylvania for the past few weeks there has been something called a naked ballot dispute. Which means people have failed to include the privacy envelope as they have sent in their ballot. How complicated have you found the rules around mail and balloting and where have issues like this popped up across the country . Matt the naked ballot issue i think got a lot of press it is not a problem everywhere. Most states require privacy slaves within the outer envelope. Privacy slaves in the outer privacy sleeves in the outer envelope. Many times they want you to use the right color pen. Many times you need to have a witness or to witness signatures. Making sure you are following those requirements is essential so you can be sure your voting is going to be accounted. I do think we are seeing states do better when it comes to designing instructions and making them clear. But considering we are going to have new voters cast vote by mail ballots i do have concerns we may see higher rejection rates and we would have otherwise seen. States is this one aspect going to be a source of likely lawsuits . Matt yes. Certainly ballots cast in person do not generally make their way into lawsuits after election a because once they havent cast in person and deposit into a voting machine. [indiscernible] we do know after election disputes 10 to be based on mailin ballots and provisional bows because that is what is left to fight over. Right do think the range of options for the candidates or campaigns to fight over would be the increased numbers of absentee ballots and provisional ballots, would be a target of litigation after the fact in some states. Host the public has been hearing President Trump raise concerns about mel and balloting throughout the fall. Here is one example. [video clip] ballots are concerned, it is a disaster. A solicited ballot, you request and they send it back and that is ok. Sending millions of ballots all of the country. There is fraud and they found one with that name trump and a wastepaper basket. They are being sent all of the place. To, this isding going to be a fraud. Host how larger concern is fraud in mail and balloting . Matt front is a very, very small percentage of mailin ballots. Over the decades we have seen it, we have seen only a couple of hundred cases confirmed out of millions and millions of ballots cast. So i do not think fraud is big problem and there are many security features when it comes to absentee ballots. Host what has happened it seems as a result of this, the university of florida which tracks the voting steps before 60 election, reporting Million People having participated eight days out. There was a partisan split. The number of people opting to vote by mail. In states where they count them. And people who are not. Is it surprising to you, that how you vote has become a partisan issue this year . I think ath it was, this point nothing surprises me about what could become partisan. I do think it is making it more difficult for us to model out some of the aspects we would normally try to be doing at this point. Certainly in the past, the breakdowns of voting by mail versus in person voting tents reflect the electorate of the state. If it is a more republican state you have more republicans voting early. With this, democrats voting more early. We really do not know what the final turn out is going to be. Host another issue with this years balloting, that has been raised is a foreign and mastic interference in the process. Both foreign and domestic interference in the process. And the fbi director christopher wray, here is the clip where they talk about their concerns about russia and iran intending to disrupt the election in the united states. [video clip] we would like to alert the public we have identified that two foreign actors, iran and russia, have taken specific actions to influence Public Opinion relating to our elections. First, we have confirmed that some Voter Registration information has been obtained by iran, and separately, by russia. This data can be used by foreign actors to attempt to communicate false information to registered voters, that they hope will cause confusion, chaos, and undermine confidence in american democracy. Host right after this press conference you published your response. What was it . Matt i think most voters have to remember Voter Registration rolls in this country are public record. I did not hear the dni or fbi director state they penetrated any secure Voter Registration rolls. It seems what russia and iran may have accessed our roles that are publicly available to parties, to campaigns, so they can reach out to voters. That makes it incumbent on all American Voters to be careful, and be wary of what you are seeing. Notot for that email, do repost that post or retweet that tweet, if you have not verify the information inside it. Because i do think because we have done such a good job at, certainly hardening the election systems in this country since 2016, our foreign adversaries have fewer options to disrupt the process. One remaining in one of the easiest is to turn americans against each other and undermine confidence in the legitimacy of elections. It is incumbent on all americans to make sure that is not happen. Host one method of doing that is fellow americans using social media to spread misinformation, intentionally or unintentionally. What are your views of what the social media giants have done to try to curb that in this election season . Matt i think are trying to go on the right direction. They sometimes have no good way of working. If they do one thing, one party does not like it. And if they do another thing, another party does not like it. Theyre trying to slow down retwe