And possibilities of things that could happen if theres uncertainty about the outcome. They are bob bauer a distinguished scholar at nyu school of law now on leave as a Senior Adviser to the biden president ial campaign and Benjamin Ginsberg an election attorney in the cnn commentator. I like to recognize some of our special guest today the ambassadors of singapore sweden new zealand and the european union. Id also like to recognize our sponsors our Title Sponsor bank of america of the Greater Washington d. C. Area larry, thank you very and are sponsors terry women senior partner and also its like to recognize siemens usa ceo. Thank you for your leader sponsorship. Sponsors onrporate the screen and the like to thank them as well for their support we have a few Upcoming Events as some of you know about already but let me just remind you on november the 18th at 10 00 a. M. We will have that bandwidth alex of course he who is the chairman and ceo of Johnson Johnson. As you probably know Johnson Johnson is one of the Companies Working with the virus vaccine and they think hell have interesting things to say about that. The very impressive person and i believe people will enjoy that conversation. I also level conversation with another impressive person on december the ninth at 12 00 p. M. Julie sweep the chief executive officer of accenture and member of the Economic Club for some time and we are very much looking forward to talking with her about her role as the ceo of accenture. W will have additional scheduled items as well. We have had 16 member forms recently and we have another 18 days schedule so if you are just enough of us know. To remind everybody after this is over well have the hour web site Economic Club. Org with the full presentation. Today id like to remind everybody that we all are working on a number of other events but if you have ideas that youd like us b to presento you please let uspl know and we will meet with those individuals if at all possible. Let me introduce first two special guest today. Bob bauer has been a lawyer in the critical aptheker said area advocacy area for quite some time. He and ben are the two deans of the area. Bob is practicing law for many years and now is teaching at nyu law school. He has been an adviser to president obama and serveded as counsel to the president during president obama second term in office. He is also a graduate of Harvard University and the university of Virginia School of law and he and Benjamin Ginsberg and chaired a commission to look at ways in which we can improve the electoral process and that was called the president ial commission for election administration. Benjamin ginsberg has been a lawyer for many years in washington and one of them is the firm is retired from and the other is patton boggs partner there for a long time as well. And he is somebody that is a graduate of the university of pennsylvania as an undergrad and he was a journalist for a number of years and decided to get into law at Georgetown Law School and has written frequently on this area ofen political advocacy and he was one of the lawyers involved in the bush v. Gore litigation years ago one of the lawyers to travel to florida and we will talk about that as we go forward. Lets dig in right away and lets say to both of you if either of you are both of you think this election will be resolved in everybodys mind by midnight on Election Night next week, bob im looking at you first. Will the election be over at 12 00 so i can go to sleep at 12 00 knowing who our next president is . Are you on mutes . I apologize. Talk we have had about the potential for delay i think you can be assured that some time later on Election Night we will know who is winning this election and by the next day that certainty will grow. I dont think what happened in 2021 will be the case. I dont think you are going to get your midnight wish because of the volume of ballots and the fact that we will need a few states in the mountain pacific timezones come in with their results but i do think there will be a clear idea of the winner by say friday morning. Okay so in the year 2000 in the famous bush v. Gore case it usually been the case that state courts were the ones that resolve collection issues and in that situation the federal courts got involved. Would expect if there were any disputes the bush v. Gore president would be such that bush v. Gore and the federal courts would rule her with the state courts go back to being the leading decisionmaker in these elections . A think first of all its rear where you can get to a situation like bush versus gore were in outcome determinative state has such a margin. Most of the activity you will see postelection will be conducted under state law and after all the way the system works is that the gens in precincts that build up in counties in go to the state level. Each state has its own set of laws and National Election laws governing the time and place of elections. Bop do agree with that . I do and i would add the decision was clearly it controversial one and personal issues for the court. I think the court will be reluctant particularly in the case were suspect the candidates will have a substantial popular vote margin and invite this controversy that was encountered the last time. At yes jim baker had been a lawyer for al gore would al gore have become president in the year 2000 . Can i Say Something that is probably not popular. I did have the greatest respect and continued to for jim baker in his career. The Gore Campaign has litigated to the Supreme Court the county rules and when the Supreme Court decision is the rule occurred commissioned a recount that likely would have been successful. This case bush versus gore ultimately went against gore by one vote on the Supreme Court. I dont do that entirely as baker and the [inaudible] ben you are in florida and you had a low a lot of lawyers that were helping you. Ted cruz was oneyo of them and a guy named john roberts did think was there and just as cavanagh was there in Amy Coney Barrett was there. Every time i will answer that with jim baker. And they would all agree. Let me ask you lets suppose both of you are wrong and we dont know by Election Night in infected doesnt get resolved but it gets resulting congress. Can you go through how this gets resolved in congress and congress has to comee up with te decision about whos going to be next president. What is the law say ben . This will arise if there is not a clear winner in the Electoral College. Then you go to to the law called the electoral act of 1887. I believe there will be a substandard side on every point that comes out of that. It is undecipherable and open to many interpretations. I think we will see novel litigation should be go to that and it has never been litigated and never beenen threatened. I think we have the caveat that the uncertainty that is, about theab basically the house and te senate would be called upon to place various rules with competing slates of electors would emerge from the state. That gets into a a very arcane process on how to disperse the initial matter. Would have to choose which of the competing place they agree with. Part of the question is how complicated is whether there is control. Reen the house and thee senate. It would be a lot quicker ulsolution should one party controlled both chambers but ultimately there has to be a winner of the Electoral College for new president to. Take office. Explain this to me and make sure into standard. When the electors meet in each state that is sometime in december and the state legislature has to approve the electors . Is that how it works. The possibility that a legislature were the electors slate is determined by the popular vote and suddenly the electoral vote is contaminated fraud. Its determined who the electorate should be so candid a wins the popular vote the legislature says thats not the right place. Is contaminated by fraud or reduced by fraud or electorate irregularity and thats what the legislature is prepared to do if they ever had to do it. Alternative electoral slates may beyo presented to the congress d thenat that congress congressiol battle begins. I dont think this could happen by the time january 20 comes around if the president has been determined to the Electoral College the Vice President could wind up becoming the president of the United States or neither of them are president but its a speaker of the house. I dont thinknk thats going to happen but its very very complicated. One scenario worth mentioning is that the states count is so closer so clouded that there is no winning slate to come out of that state. In other words the state is unable to certify Election Results so there is no official certified slate that goes up and thats where dogs scenario of state legislators are governors put it in. In what state did the state legislatures have to send to the senate the names of the electors and who won in their state . What date is that . Is that december . December 14 i believe. The Safe Harbor Division is december 8. If the Vice President of the United States presides and if nobody gets to 70 it would go to the house then . Is that correct . Thats correct. Does it go to the new house or the old house . The new house is sworn in on january 3 and elect world is opened up on june were six. So it goes to the h new house and then the house votes by state delegation. If youre a republican and california as the democratic delegation they have one vote in if montanas republican they would have one vote as well. An is that right . Currently there are 26 republican state delegations and 20 for democratic ones but that necould change if they brought n a republican candidate and he would win, right . That isou correct. It was very interesting to see nancy pelosi and the Democratic NationalCampaign Committee target certain states where the margins where the delegations are narrow. The speaker started talking about trying in the election to win over the slate but the house of representatives cannot agree on somebody by january the 20th automatically the speaker of the house becomes president. Is that correct . Ben can correct me if im mistaken but i believe the senate determines who is elected by the president and the newlyelected Vice President assumes office until the president ial election is resolved. So the speaker doesnt automatically and the senate has to find someone to be Vice President but that they can agree that it goes to the speaker, correct . Correct. The senate might be equally muddled. Ive got to thing for all of that or its complicated but lets go through a couple of other things. Both of you had a president ial commission to look at the election. Is it your view both of your views there is a lot of voter fraud out there or there really isnt . Let me take that one first. I have spent four decades actively involved in republican electionca day operations which means ive been part of countywide deeds that go to look at albums that arise in polling places. Ive been part of nationwide boiler rooms to get all the reports from individual jurisdictions. Both parties have the right to have whole watchers in every polling place if they wish to staff. To find fraud and look for irregularities and resolve problems is an integral part of verse system and the simple fact is that in all the times that people have been at polling places looking for fraud there simply is not evidence to charge systemic voter fraud. Not systemic but occasional. There is occasional voter fraud. It is occasional. Bob do you agree with that . Its either the inperson variety or the absentee voter. But suppose you wanted to break and then show the system wasnt perfect because you would wantaw to break the laws and officer the court did say you were asked at inet how you could vote twice. How would you vote twice . Spent i havent given it a great deal of thought but to give you af rough answer i suppose one we have do it is vote under one name and one is think and vote under a different p name knowing someone is not going to show. Another precinct. The problem of courses and this is always true particularly of the longstanding claims about voting fraud that is giving way to claims about mail voting fraud you cant commit enough in person voting fraud to knock out the election. Despite the fact that they would haveve to recognize themselves s a criminal now. If you look at the cases that have come w w out for people hae been caught probably the most prevalent and this is more often by the states that people vote in two states. They used to live in one state make continued to get an absentee ballot from that state and move to another state and vote in their jurisdiction asth well. It tends to occur more in primaries and primaries are not on the same day. Thereot are now programs took basically compare who voted in different states to be able to find it. In either or both of the explain this. It was said by many people the last election the russians tried to interfere and did interfere accordingth to most people on te election. What do they do that interferes with the election . Is it by putting things on facebook or affecting the way people vote . How do they interfere as far as you know . Ben any views on that . There a couple of different ways might happen. Certainly disinformation through social media sites is one possibility. Messages tend to stir up dissent and strife in the country is one. Another that the government is well aware of trying to hack into Voter Registration databases and manipulate them somehow so you cant. Chaos in the system and the Voter Registration was somehow messed with. They are always be receptive Voting Machines in the tabulation machines themselves are hacked. Thats more difficult maybe not for great reason because there are 10,000 jurisdictions in the country that deal with casting ballots and a lot of those machines are very old. Its really hard to hack into the result. How many states still use the same type of voting mechanisms that they did in the year 2000 . If i was voting in the year 2000 ive voted this year would i be usingg the same paper ballots or electronic ballots . Not everybody there was a lot of attention to the voting machinery so congress made an effort to condemn the electoral process and gave the states huge amounts of money to require socalled punch card machines with a hanging chad problems. That certainly changed after 2000 but there is aus remarkable amount of pace because jurisdictions dont have the money and in many respects we have too many jurisdictions operating with shortages that make it difficult for them to turn over the machinery and make other changes that would make the electoral process more efficient trades back let me ask you about the way that people count these ballots. If you vote absentee ballots lets see mailin ballots absentee or the states allowed to count them before election day generally are not . Ly they have to wait . Generally they dont count them. What they do is process them. Which means they do the verification on an outer envelope and place the ballot itself in a secrecy envelope and prepared to be put into the machines on election day or in some cases remove them from the secrecy envelope and queue them up in the machines but i dont know of any instance of the state that pat counted spell it before the election . There is some room in preparing for the count. It does vary by state law. The point of concerned this your particular t because of the heay source of mail voting was to have the state begin to process the boats for the quickest possible count on election day. Some states are not supposed to count are not required to count absentee or mailinma ballots until as late as november 17 i thanks so is that true . And onon some states you have another week or two after election to count the absentee ballots. Is that a problem . Well they have that timem . To receiveey valid better postmarkn election day andnd that can. A lag in getting the results which we get in the way of your goal of being able to go to bed at midnight on election day knowing the results. Is just the day before. Of those three states are outcome determinative, then there will be a period of time know the winner. David if i said i wanted to best state as the that has the best process for counting, the best process for that , what state would be . Which state do you think has what state has done the best job modernizing the process and i assume you dont want to tell us which state is the worst, but which is the best . I feel like i shouldnt pick out a favorite. That would be highly diplomatic. I would say one thing generically there are some with the class category. We have discovered and i do want to emphasize people would be surprised how hard given again the positive resources and i think you are going to see a performance. Im not sitting aside about the allegations abroad but in putting the vote count these officials for the better part of the year and clearly accelerating when the pandemic it with a major amount of effort on how to make this work. The number reported has been very few. There is a democrat and republican sitting there counting ballots to gather or is that somebody that is supposedly in partial or who does the counting . It is both democrat and republican and more often than not the Human Element is going to be taking the absentee ballots and b putting them throh the verification process. Democratic and republica