This year because of the covid pandemic do we have any real baseline to understand what is going on with the electorate going into this election . I think this election will be unlike anything we have seen in the past. Its hard to know if there is a good corollary. At this point we are seeing far more early and absentee voting then we saw in 2016. Its really off the charts. That looks atart early and in person voting and how it has trended over the past couple of years. People can see from watching it that the trend has been for more voting by absentee or mailin ballots then by in person on election day. What is happening in the thinking about conduct of elections that has led to this and celebrating this trend this year . Its been a trend about 20 years in the making. Ever since colorado and Washington State made it easy for their voters to vote by mail we have seen that once voters have that option they like that option. In a pandemic voting by mail is a good and safe option. In addition to the states that noe already going to have excuse and proactive voting by mail in 2020, that makes 10 states this year plus d. C. Other states are also making it easier. Of americans are going to have a chance to vote by mail this year. How about providing some baseline that will help people understand, how large is the eligible u. S. Electorate in 2020 . Of 180where in the range million. We are expecting 150 million ballots to be cast in 2020. 130 7 million cast in 2016. Host that was going to be my question, how it compared with last election. Anticipated is how many this year . 150 million to 160 million. We are taping this on the monday morning a week from election day. Who studies house races for the Cook Political Report had tweeted last night breathtaking, statewide excess surpassed 80 of its total 2016 votes cast, leading the nation. Is that what other states are seeing . Guest it really is breathtaking. In 2016 we saw 33 million absentee ballots cast. A week before the election we already have 40 million returned and there are another 46 million outstanding. I do think we are likely to see almost half of americans voting by mail this time around. Guest i dont think its an uptick in trend. We are seeing more states moving towards early voting. This year we are seeing new york state and new york city having early voting options in the president ial election. It has been a trend that has slowed down. More states are trying to expand in person voting options. In the washington dc area, virginia started its early voting in person today and marilyn tomorrow about a week out of actual election day 2020. There have also been some covid related experiments. One i wanted to call to your attention. The Supreme Court got involved in an effort in alabama to start curbside voting because of the pandemic. Many timesing how this year with experiments of covid courts have had to get involved with things states are wanting to do . Guest curbside voting is an option in many states. Its not something states highlight a lot, they dont advertise it that much. In some states its limited to voters of a certain age. It tends to be very resource intensive. That is what was happening in alabama when they expanded it. Then the court pulled her back a pulled it 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 significant reports around the country of intimidation with in person early voting . Matt we are seeing scattered reports. But voters have to be discerning when they see those reports. One report in one place does not mean we are seeing widespread 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 is reports of very long lines or what seem to be long lines and part of that is because of covid social distancing requirements. And part of it is real 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 last week of voting 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 covid related staffing issues 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 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 seeing the kind of shortages 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. The risk does not appear on election day. We are now in a period 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 balloting, and you referenced 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. This again is an enormous uptick in mailin ballot inc. Mailin 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 employ to process mailin ballots . To process mailin ballots . Matt many states did not have a lot of technology to process these ballots. As recently as two and four years ago most states were not seeing huge proportions of electorate voting by mail. 30 states had fewer than 15 of ballots cast by mail. 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 it state driven . Matt the federal government did appropriate 400 million in the cares act in 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 unexpected, we are seeing civil society, philanthropists, stepping up where congress may have, and certainly the Chan 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 now is the time to get the ballot in the mail. Especially 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. We do not want voters to unintentionally disenfranchise themselves by not getting ballots back in time because even though we know only 1 of ballots are returned and submitted for counting get rejected, a huge proportion of those ballots that get rejected are 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 been used out west where we have seen more voting by mail and they have been used for many election cycles. These are safe options. I think they are among the best options for voters to vote by mail. A dropbox is a onetoone connection between the boater and election official. There is no middleman, no Postal Service. The only people who have access lockboxes, drop boxes, are Election Officials. I think they are a great option, but they are not an option everywhere. Some states have done a great job of rolling them out quickly. 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. From my perspective one of the Better Options for voting by mail. Host 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 comment on that, and of course courts got involved and upheld the governors decision. How do we understand and how should we process 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, and that is going to be limiting. I do think texas is one state is one of the states that is most difficult to vote by mail. They have chosen to go more toward the early in person voting route. 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 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 mail and mail in 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 are not requiring privacy sleeves within the outer envelope. Many times they want you to use the right color pen. You have to make sure the signature is there. A some cases you need to have witness or two 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 a lot of new voters casting vote by mail ballots this year, i do have concerns that we may see higher rejection rates than we would otherwise have seen. Host in tossup 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 day because once they havent cast , in person and deposit into a voting machine. [indiscernible] we do know after election disputes centered on on mailin ballots and provisional ballots because that is what is left to , fight over. I 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 mailin balloting throughout the fall. Here is one example. [video clip] as far as ballots are concerned, it is a disaster. A solicited ballot, you request and they send it back and that is ok. I did that. Theyre sending millions of ballots all of the country. There is fraud and they found them in creeks and some with the name trump in a wastepaper basket. They are being sent all over the place. They sent out 1000 ballots. This is going to be a fraud. Host how large a concern is fraud in mailin balloting . Matt fraud is a very, very small percentage of mailin ballots. Over the decades we have seen it, we have seen only a couple hundred cases confirmed out of millions and millions of ballots cast. I do not think fraud is a problem and there are many security features. Host what has happened it seems as a result of this, the university of florida which tracks the voting steps before the election, reporting 60 Million People having participated eight days out. There was a partisan split in 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 . Matt i wish it was, i think at 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 tend to reflect the electorate of the state. If it is a more republican state you have more republicans voting early. With democrats voting early and republicans voting in person we really do not know what the final turnout is going to be. Host another issue with this years balloting, that has been raised is both foreign and domestic interference in the process. About 10 days out from the election, the press Conference Held by the dni John Ratcliffe and 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 were our rolls 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. Do not forward that email, do not repost that post or retweet that tweet, if you have not verified 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 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, either 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 they are trying to go on the right direction. I do feel 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 the retweets. I know twitter is putting a screen over retweet so you can think about it before you do it. I think facebook is doing a little more when it comes to Fact Checking and providing factbased answers to common questions. This is all good. But again at the end of the day these are social media platforms. Onetoone from other americans or foreign adversaries. Who want you to push their storyline. It is something we as voters have to be discerning about. I