The university of florida as of this morning where than 79 million valid seven casts and that includes 27 million early ballots and 52 absentee ballots and 39 million absentee ballots outstanding. In some counties and states we are nearing the point where the more ballots are cast for election day 2020 than during the entire 2016 voting time. It also mean this will be the First National election were more than half of the ballots are cast prior to election day and the shift occurred in a once in a century pandemic working with electric show officials to adapt. Election administrators deserve all our respect and admiration in voting is happening right now and processing is happening right now weve decided to symbol a group of voting experts with men Election Officials who been studying it for their entire careers to discuss what to affect in its unprecedented elections years and hopefully. Before i introduce them i ask the questions throughout this event either through facebook or youtube in the Comment Section or on twitter using the bb p life. I invite you to register for event we will hold virtually on december 13, 22 devonian experience and goals for reform cosponsored by the Democracy Fund and the Carnegie Corporation of new york. Find more information on a website and will briefly introduce todays panelist. Doctor Laura Ackerson is professor of Political Science and director of the center for study of voting in election and democracy and the institute of new mexico. Nationally recognized expert in the area of election sciences, methodology, voting rights, Public Opinion and political behavior. Jimmy patrick a Senior Advisor of elections at the Democracy Fund. In 2013 she was selected by president obama to serve as commissioner on the president ial commission which is led to position as a Bipartisan Center to further the work of the commission and prior to that she was a federal Compliance Officer for arizona elections for 11 years. Ricardo cortes is a former commissioner of elections and current Election Security advisor at the Berman Center for justice. Hes also served as general registrar for fairfax, virginia. Finally, chris thomas is the bbc fellow and Current Special advisor to the detroit city clerk. Chris also served as commissioner of the president ial commission on Electoral Commission and longtime director for the state of michigan. Thank you for the panelist for joining us. With that we jump into the first question and ill ask ricardo who is title include Election Security advisor and want to start with talking about the press Conference Last Week held by the director of National Intelligence and the fbi director about election interference. When the greatest risks remaining in the last few days before election day or on election day and in the days that follow. Think 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 was that federal government identified an issue and made the public aware of it and made Election Officials aware 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 is certainly there are some risks to the system still and a lot of the issues that we anticipate heading into next week revolve around the technology in the abuse in polling places, not necessarily that there is foreign actor threats, which there are, but keeping it though systems running and there is unprecedented use of slowdowns during early voting and so i think having the appropriate backups in place for Election Officials, i think the one area concerned that we been looking at is both elections in the Election Results and the need for everyone to be patient as election work official work through counting all of those ballots that has come in already and not being taken aback that the vote totals change as the night progresses and as the days progress and balance continue to be counted for the selection. Same question. In 2016 we had concerns about interference which is mostly our Voter Registration database so what are your concerns for the cycle . I am not immensely concerned about that versus just general things going on in precincts and 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 mucking up the system i think one thing we can say about our system is the fact that it is so federal and fragmented is a wonderful thing for security and our system of elections 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 that is a great question and im not had anyone frame it in quite that way before, matt. I think the question that has 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 is an ill place and illfounded. We talked about the security of the system for me is the question it doesnt mean the voters have selected that way of voting and do they have the opportunity to effectively get their voices heard through that channel and so we do know the vote by mail has some opportunities to misstep and they can fail to find the signature block or 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 their 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 secretary of states and others to make sure the 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. Imagine there is still outstanding tens of millions of voters having their ballots on their kitchen tables or counters or on their desks 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 is making sure that voters who have mentioned or shown they want to participate, either by registering to vote or by effect requesting a ballot that they have every opportunity in a Global Pandemic in the midst of a third wave, third spike that we are seeing here getting their votes back and making sure they are effective and counting. The last part of that is we also know there are challenges when voters go to vote in person and are given provisional ballots so we do know there will be a confluence there and we seen it already in early voting that voters have ballots at home and have in fact decided to go vote in person and are having a provisional ballot so those will be some of the ballots we will look at after election day and as we do every election and have for a very long time. We had those procedures and policies in place. Of course, to meet in two minutes we could sum up all my concerns and we promise you will get to them and eat but we now work at the federal level in the state level and at the local level and election so what are your biggest concerns about security at least for the next seven14 days . Really, going into the Election Security make sure everybody vote is counting. Thats what voters are concerned about now. Weve got drop boxes across the city of detroit and on cameras and monitors so security from that viewpoint is to ensure the voters that the balance that they drop in the drop boxes and collected in process and any camper will have an ongoing basis. We have this voter county board here that probably has over 700 workers in it that is where everything will be processed beginning election day. We have that lockdown and we have the precincts lock down and we are working with the state and insured of security in terms of Voter Registration but its really the issue security in a broad sense and the kinds of intimidation has us concerned really. We had a ban on guns that have been overturned by the courts and on appeal right now and there is a concern in michigan that the votes are lockdown earlier in the spring and we hope not to say that. Chris, im on the phone with you once again but imagine earlier historic levels of turnout before election day and it may be that up to two thirds of the ballots but that still means that upwards of 50, 60 me people are likely to turn out on election day and so certainly throughout the early voting process especially in the first day we see in long lines. Is that will be expect or should inspect to see on tuesday . Should be expect to see long lines due to the social distancing and limitation that come with those in person . Are not expecting long lines like we see on tv from other states. The question is with the increase and mail ballots how far do states allow their local Election Officials to validate and if they consolidate too far [inaudible] as our studies have shown over the last several election cycles the lines are generally have gotten shorter. In michigan there is no allowance so we have every single precinct open and we have an abundance so i do not anticipate, at least in michigan but obviously with sanitation of the polling booth and social distancing things will be slowed down a bit but as long as jurisdictions did not overly validate the precincts they should be okay. I could ask the same question. You studied lines before so what are you expecting to see both in new mexico and around the country . Im expecting 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 but theres always lines in some places on election day and i think obviously the social distancing is going to impact that as well. Weve seen lines happening in early voting and people hanging in those lines and get processed and vote. I think for the most part for the vast majority over 90 of voters or more they 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 who vote early in new mexico either in person or by mail but there is also a large number of people as tammy mentioned who have not voted yet. We have not gone their absentee ballot in but did request it so i dont know if they will be turning it in light or walking it in late or not late but by election day. There is still a lot of outstanding people to vote, either through the mail and there will be substantial number, much less the majority people and perhaps as much as 60 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 absentee ballots clearly will be the story of this election and not only because of the huge amount of usage but also going to be, i think, phone to be litigation and has been a lot of litigation around them so could you speak with some of the issues we been seen with voters assume more than one ballot or the naked ballot issue or i had to bring it up to analyze this but one of the things that are likely to be issues and then potentially litigate in the week actor after election day. I thank you are spot on. There will be quite a litigation around both absentee vote by mail ballots as well as provisional ballots and anything that is not determinative or already counted will come into question potentially in some places if the race is close and the races are close and we have a lot of others of course to get contests on the ballot and so part of the challenge we have here is thinking about in this moment around the increase use of vote by mail many jurisdictions were caught off guard because you have states where traditionally they have had singledigit 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 space the culture was to go vote in person anyway and what we saw in the primary season is that many voters were taking the primary, im sorry, the pandemic seriously and decided to request the ballots via mail. Local Election Officials were inundated with applications and having a hard time getting the ballot to even out in time when people were using their preexisting policies and materials to satisfy a much larger volume of voters and that is where best practices werent adopted but they have been sent so over the course of the summer weve seen more space in jurisdiction revising the design of their envelopes so its more intuitive as to where a voter needs to sign it, adopting policies and best practices from center for civic design and some of these other things that we think about it it sounds like its really in the lead of a lot of minutia in 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, they are provided with options in that return we have fewer voters having ballots that are called into question as being potentially rejected. I think that we will see a lot of that is the days following election day depending, again, upon how many of these ballots get back early and to alanas point jurisdiction that i was and we had hundreds of thousands of voters dropped their ballots off at the polls in arizona on election day and they are seen voters bringing 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 its important for voters that are still have that ballot in hand to know that if you get it in early you will be part of the first ballot counted. I turned to chris. Michigan has been marching towards more absentee voting over the past couple of years but certainly everything they are seen this year due to the pandemic has been much greater because what are localities doing to prepare for this onslaught . So, the localities learned a lot in the primary election and that was the big learning curve for everybody to handle that much more than we typically had been handling 25 of the vote by mail so we had some experience we dont have experience with 50, 65 . In detroit they had the largest number of ballots, 81000 in a primary election where almost no serious contest so it was a great time to learn and get all the kinks out, if you will. One thing we have learned in the state and a lot of states ahead of us is the use of highspeed tablets. We have a very long ballot for the president and for like the School Boards we never been able to use them in the past and weve had them around but they would not work consistently with the long ballots but the Voting System vendors have fixed that so in detroit we had 18 high speeds in the primary and we had some Going Forward and his many cities in our state that have larger populations. That will move things along and regarding the application process we were in our secular state issued absentee ballot applications everybody in the state in june ahead of and those applications for dual applications which means you fill that out and get the ballot for the primary and the general election so we were basically frontloaded the member so when ballots became available in late september we were pushing out statewide over 2 million ballots that we didnt have to wait for another request to come in so that has really saved the steps towards drop boxes never before in michigan so that is a first. Satellite offices most of been a first. [audio difficulties] also with valid tracks Michigan Voter Information Center to keep track of whether their ballots had been back and that is what we see is an issue for november and when there voters have not been returned and they show up at the polling and so we put our procedures in place to handle that and to allow them to vote for callbacks to the Clerks Office toiling the absentee ballots and to go ahead and vote in person. I would ask one more question and i will move into election day in a moment and i want to put on your hat and there have been a lot of changes to the processes and some have been done by legislators and some have been done by courts and some are being undone by other higher courts so my question for you is there now been several big cases and in the circuit courts around ballots and when those can be received after election day so what is your recommendation to voters who may be concerned that the rules are changing and work five days before election day and what would you tell to someone holding onto one of their absentee ballots . Thats a great question. At this point for voters return that ballot in person and return it prior to the polls on election day after your message allows states have provided drop boxes for voters and most states, at minimum, allow you to drop off your ballot at the local look Election Office in person and so some states are now allowing you to drop off your voted absentee balance of the polling place in election so take a look at what your options are and drop it off in person so that way there is no question about whether it gets counted or wrapped into these agents around ballots that are postmarked by election day whether or not they are counted. Thank you for that. Forgiving the panelists a few more seconds because we want to remind our viewers if you have a question and are watching on her facebook or youtube feed you can ask your question in the commons will try to get to many as possible. If youre watching on