And stolen. As of last night, questions about what happens if one candidate is incapacitated. Its important to remember only three days ago, though many of us, it seems like to go, the president alleged to a National Audience and with no evidence that mailin voting to fraud and he refused to say he will accept the results of the election. We say we are bracing ourselves for what happens when the polls close november 3. It is important to say that that does not indicate the results are illegitimate. May be used to learning results hours after the polls closed but in likelihood, that will not happen this year end that is okay so how does this work . What is the law . Does the constitution say . That is what today is about. We are lucky to have four experts who will shine a light on what to expect and what to repair for polls closed november 3. We will have four briefings and then we will take questions from you. Those of you watching us live can submit your questions anytime starting even now by clicking on the q a button at the bottom of your screen. If youre comfortable doing so, please include your name, affiliation and if you desire, where you are watching us from. We will get to that later, at least some of them. Anytime, youre welcome to do so. To kick it off, we must start with the competition, how does this work in determining who is the next president a professor of law at law school, scholarship and Legal Practice focuses on American Election draw, addressing issues like Voting Rights, political parties, campaign finance, redistricting and election administration. Codirector of the Stanford Cyber policy center, democracy on the internet and social science. Thanks for being with us. Thank you for having me and i should add to that long introduction, what other product, which is the elections project which we have started with my team and you can get material as the election stop work including what we talked about today. Im going to do a quick powerpoint, as i make that transition, let me start by reflecting on the news the last couple of hours and how it has an impact on contested elections and everything we will be talking about in this session, in addition to the other questions we are now going to deal with, we have to talk about what happens if the candidate needs to be replaced, whether it President Trump or Vice President biden and their procedures in place for this in the event that there is a reason a candidate, even after the ballots have been printed needs to be replaced. The rnc and dnc have procedures in place to do that such that when the election happens, the boat will go to the replacement candidate. In addition, if the replacement happens after the vote, the constitutional machinery goes into operation and we have to deal with the question of how the state legislatures might direct the president ial electors for each state. Thats what people have been thinking about already in respect to selection. Different states are more or less wellpositioned to do that because some of the states have laws that require electors to vote for a particular candidate that was on the ballot. Lets start with the calendar and how we should think about each phase of the dispute resolution process. So we will have an election day on november 3 at as you know the ballots, voting has already begun. Millions have artie been cast and so we should expect roughly half of the votes to be cast before election day. But between Election Night and two weeks later there are various deadlines for the receipt of outlets and the expiration of a cure. Mac for disputed, for example, in different states have very different rules on this pick some states will not allow voters to cure defects in the ballot for example, in the signature doesnt match with whats on file, or if there are other technical problems with it. Other states did you several days to cure those defects but all of that will happen in the first two weeks after the election followed by a time where we have canvassing of the ballots and certification. They canvassing begins even earlier than november 17 but deadlines to complete the actual count of the ballots go into the beginning of december. The reason where to get it done by approximately that date, i do want to put an asterisk on december 3 because theres some possible wiggle in the joints here is that under the electoral count act which is the statue that governs president ial elections passed by congress theres a safe harbor deadline which was quite important in bush v. Gore. It does it mean if the votes are not completely counted by that date that the state will not have its electors count, but the law says if they do have them, counted by that date, that is the presumptive slate of electors that will go to the Electoral College which meets on december 14. In the time between december 14 and january 6, we have a presumptive list of electors from every state. Maybe one less come maybe more than one depend on the controversies, and then that the certificates are opened on the house of representatives on january 6. At each stage of this process there is the potential for litigation. Let me just emphasize though and i will make these lights publicly available on my twitter feed, that the nature of litigation in this election, postelection litigation will be determined by several factors. As was true in a 2000 election, the margin of victory at any given stage is the most important question. Although it is possible we will be going into overtime in this election and we have to prepare for that possibility, its not guaranteed and it is possible we will know very soon after the election who won and who lost. We again should prepare ourselves and prepare the public for a long counting period when it is possible we will know who want and who lost soon after Election Night. Depending on the nature of the dispute the litigation will take different forms. Whether it is a dispute over absentee ballots or provisional ballots or recounts like we saw in florida election, depending on the nature of the dispute, different sort of triggers will be pulled. Then there are the nontraditional things we have to refer to, things like what happens if theres violence in polling places, is there some unprecedented use of federal authority, if there are real Serious Problems with the post office that make it come make them unable to deliver the mail, deliver the ballots. Depending on the nature of the forum, the different deadlines may be shifted. By forum i meet are we talking about a dispute the result in state court or federal court . To the administrative process you may remember in the florida recount there was a lot of administrative work, remember secretary of state harris was in charge of that. But obviously theres a lot of work thats happening at the local canvassing boards and as it proceeds to the state system, and Different Actors become more or less important at different stages in this. Let me just run through quickly, and you know theres a lot of text, unlike us that i will make these available to people who request them. We need to understand theres a lot of it litigation already. There are over over 300 cases have been of an file in this election already, and they are going to set the tone for what comes afterwards. I had paid particularly attention to this pennsylvania case that is the potential on its way to the Supreme Court and how that might lay the groundwork for later litigation. If youre interested we have a a litigation tractor helptheelections. Org which shows all the cases and how theyre progressing through the courts. On election day will have lawsuits for that matter even all the voting is occurring in the few days before. In the weeks before. We should not be surprised if it litigation over polling places dysfunction or potentially violent seems to with respect to poll watchers and the like. But then in the aftermath as this that it depends on who is head and by how much of what the nature of the dispute is. I want to emphasize that although well have a flood of absentee ballots in this election, states have rules to adjudicate and evaluate these ballots and we just need to let the state processes work themselves out. Most of the action will start in the state and local canvassing boards and then potentially end up in state court and the like. It is possible though of course because the penny on the nature of dispute you can a federal court action to protect the rights of vote, allegations the election has been marred by fraud and the like. In that week or two after the election we will see the processing of the set of the mail in ballots. Some of these issues regarding the curing of absent ballots could be litigated. And as a saw and bush v. Gore itself litigation over the rules that would apply in perhaps the counting period. But then if it remains closed and that is of course a big if, and as we approach the safe harbor deadline becomes extremely important that the recount of the actual count be completed so that then the electors can be in the Electoral College. We assume because we went through bush v. Gore not that long ago although for my students many of them were not even born yet, that it would fall on a bush v. Gore, that the u. S. Supreme court would get involved, that it would be very judicial lysed process. That is possible that we will have litigation the end up in the Supreme Court be actively involved of course with the death of Justice Ginsburg it becomes more complicated depending on if you have split. There are also other paths which then take advantage of other aspects of the constitution machinery such as the state legislators stepping into a point electors. There is a considerable dispute i would say over whether state legislatures cant ignore the will of the voters if the voters express their preferences on election day and it is clear who they voted for but under a scenario in which as the kennedy to argue about fraud and they tried to say theres a cloud over the results, it is possible you could see different slate of electors coming from the state legislature and the governor that would have to be resolved before the house of representatives. I want to emphasize though if the state legislature set out subverted the wheel of the voters, that would raise all kinds of other constitutional problems with respect to violating the right to vote, but weve never really been in that situation, and with the possibility of kennedy replaced that you could easily see some of state legislatures exercising that right. I will end with what then happens in the succeeding period. By january 6 theres counting on the floor of the house of representatives, and then january 20 is when the new president is sworn in, and if no president has been chosen by that point, then the succession act kicks into place as the 20th amendment and the speaker the house of representatives becomes president. I will end it there and turn over to my other colleagues. Nate, thank you so much. First of all to everybody we have received question saying can you share the presentation. We realize it mightve been hard to read. We will show the slides at aspen and also email it to you suggest, the answer is yes. Sure theres a lot of questions for nate. We will get to those but we felt it was important to start with what does the constitution say, what is known and unknown, so thank you for that, nate. We are now going to turn it over to talking about how how the news media works in these instances as a reminder the news media does not call the election. They project election even though sometimes the wording in some News Organizations they play a little fast and loose. It is really just the norm and something we are used to knowing because the results have been so clear. Its possible that will not be the case this year which is why it was so important to start with nate but lets turn it over to the news media because thats gender how we find it was happening in the world, which is a good thing. Here to tell us how it works is sally buzbee, senior vp and executive editor of the Associated Press. She oversees global news operations, news content from journalists based 250 locations around the world. She led aps coverage of the 2016 president or campaign and election including polling and coverage of the white house, congress and the pentagon. Sally, over to you. Thank you for joining us. Thanks so much and welcome everyone. What am going to do is talk about how News Organizations it into that structure, the constitutional structure that nate just laid out. Including our key role in protecting elections and counting the vote on Election Night. Its important to remember that u. S. Election system is very decentralized. There is no federal agency that oversees voting. The state speech control how their elections are run and in practice have led to a wide variety of practices in Different Levels of skill on the election. On night states report to the public their Election Results as those coming. But my organization, the ap and other organizations, i believe those results come gather them from each of the 50 states and put them together cleanly so that the public can see the whole picture on Election Night. The Electoral College does not meet for a long time, and been based on that as the vote comes in, we say who is going to win the election. We realize were not the official word, as vivian said come in the country. But what we do is we do a very strong mathematical calculation based on the account and went a trailing candidate as no path to catch up or to win mathematically, we tell the public that that person has one that race or that state or Something Like that. The networks also all do this to each of us does it independently. For the record our methodology for doing that is laid out in full transparency on our website at ap. Org. Back to how the system works. As nate laid out, the Electoral College, the race to 270 Electoral College vote is have is how the president is decided. This in fact, is when News Organizations focus on battleground state. Some states under this system that the Founding Fathers set up are, in fact, more critical and others are less critical. Some peoples votes to have more impact in the margin than others. Thats just witticism set up whether we like it or not. If a candidate beat another candidate can of when it votes in florida, they get all of floridas electoral votes. That is one of the most critical things to keep in mind when you were looking at News Coverage on Election Night. Thirdly and the portly, absentee, early and mailin voting has been growing strongly in the transfer years, a full 42 of americans vote in 2016 and the president ial race did so by either voting early voting by mail. They did not show up at the polls on election day and that was before the pandemic. The vast majority of that as we know happened without any fraud. This year because of the pandemic more people want to vote by mail, or early. States are having to wrap up quickly to prepare for that some are ready, others are still trying to get ready. I will say that as a News Organization we found states get better at handling mailin ballots as a primary went on the spring, summer and fall. Theres evidence theyre getting on top of it. As nate said theres already a lot of court fights, legislative make a lastminute changes over the rules come things like how long after election election da mailin ballot be counted. Much of that is a subject of intense political battles. One thing thats important to keep in mind is that in general most states not all but most into account mailin ballots last. Sometimes that can be days after election day. This has happened routinely over the last few years. Is that something new. Why am i i going through this . The reason to point that out is the lack of speed on Election Night in News Organizations calling races does that mean something bad is happening. It is not evoke corruption or problems necessarily. It might just mean estate is been careful to count all its mailin ballots and maybe its struggling with more than they had in the past but that doesnt mean they wont eventually accurately count all of those and report them. We and a lot of other News Organizations have done fact checked about what the president has set a mailin balloting because it does not track with the reality and the accuracy of what we see that its happen. From a race called perspective as i said but with a News Organizations doing Election Night, we cannot project winners, call races into an overture salmon has actually mathematically one or they know they have no path to victory. Some states have automatic recount so even if some is ahead if an automatic recount is triggered at a certain level we are not recall that race because we know theres automatic recount is going to happen. States are going slower than normal at counting ballots because theyre trying to grapple with this new world. That will, in fact, likely impact how fast race called by the networks and by the Associated Press goes on Election Night. We intend to be transparent on Election Night. Thats one of the things that is most important. If we said estate, weve not called arrays are projected to a state, we will go on air, go to the people who we get all reporting to to our customers come to the public and explain why that is so. We will tell the public what is going on in real time. If there is in this vacuum where a race when it is not clear. Thats one big chunk of the situation this year that is in some w