As commissioner masterson mentioned, the panel we have here is called election efficiency and integrity, improving the Voter Experience but most of this panel i think will be focussed on data and the importance of data and how we use it in the Elections Community. We have a great panel here for you. You have biographies in front of you. My staff has provided some abbreviated biographies which ill read and then well start hearing from the panel. Ive asked each of them to speak for about five minutes or so from their perspective on this panel and then i have some questions for them. And then we will go to questions from you. So before i get started, i want to thank you all for being here. Really excited to kick off the 2018 elections. Its hard to believe its already 2018. Were kicking off the elections but officials have already started working on this. The day after their last election. So i know those of you who are Election Officials, this is not a kick off for you. As others have said, it is just the kickoff in january. And you all have been working on this election since the last election, and i appreciate all the hard work you put in to making our elections so good in this country. I will do some brief panel introductions, and then we will get going. To my right is secretary barbara sadasky. She has been secretary of state since 2015. She has more than three decades of combined Public Service and prior to becoming secretary of state she represented clark County District eight in Nevada State Senate and before that she was elected to three consecutive terms representing clark County District five and the nevada assembly. To my left is dr. Christian, she is a Senior Researcher at the marsh group where she served as a lead researcher for the Voting Survey or eves and they did a fantastic job for us this year. Lets make that a Public Statement and thats not an easy task and hes worked a number of and our friends at the federal voting agency. So thank you for being here. To my far right is michael. Hes the register of voters for San Bernardino, california which is the largest geographic in the country. Hes worked for elections in three states and his expertise is in improving operations, reporting results quickly and accurately and while michael has made his mark at each post in San Bernardino county, he has made the Election Office into a more Efficient Organization and i know its quite an impressive operation. Including the launch of new applications and redesign of the countys ballot. Consolidation of underused polling places and much more. So were excited to hear about what youre doing in your office in San Bernardino. And to my far left, maybe politically, i dont know. Probably of me. Dr. Stewart iii who am cstel i stewart iii who am i stewart iii who am i saying at the right . Distinguished professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of technology, mit, where he has taught since 1985. And his Biggest Research includes close looks inside congressional politics, elections and important american political developments. Those of us in this room have come to rely on charles undeniable ability to help us understand voters and how Election Administrators can best serve them. So thank you for taking timeout to be with us today. They will all take about five minutes. I will start to my right with michael sscarvellcarvello. Take it away. Ive got to warn you. Im an elections geek. So im going to refer to my notes to keep you on track. The goal is to conduct elections in fair, accurate, accessible, and transparent manner, so meeting that goal is difficult. Because our budgets are tight, our staff is small. We rely on temp workers and poll workers and the expectation is perfection from the media and the public. So thats very difficult. So were constantly thinking of new ways to improve our processes and one of the ways we can do that is to use data. And so we typically collect raw data, analyze that data and use it to convert it to information to improve our processes. Traditionally the analysis to prepare that data has been simple. We look at the number of registered voters. We look at the historic turnout. We analyze how many ballots and we have put those computations into law. The issue though is that many times those computations are based on averages and averages across the county and thats helpful but it can be problematic because sometimes we underestimate how much supplies we need. And sometimes we overestimate and we waste money. In reality, many Elections Officials like myself have spent time to be more efficient. In my 18 years in this business ive challenged my staff to crunch their numbers. And i always tell them they should have paid attention in math class. I remind them everything we do has to be based on numbers. We have an elections Analytics Department that does nothing but crunch numbers and develop processes all day for our different departments. So we currently analyze data in every area of our organization. In the process kind of goes like this. We collect data, and im going to give you an example about how we look at polling places, for instance. So we collect data about the polling places. We find and inspect accessible polling places in quality locations. I think were going to talk about that this afternoon in one of the panels. We inventory the number of parking spaces. We measure the square footage, then we collect data about voter behavior. We know historically we look at voter turnout and we look at where people live and we look at when they vote. And we measure when people vote by the hour. And this is something thats kind of unique and i dont think too many counties do that. Around the country. We also look at how people vote. Did they vote a regular ballot . Did they vote a provisional ballot . Or did they just drop off a vote by mail ballot at that location and then we also predict how the voter will behave on that election day. We do simulations. So we look at how long it takes a voter to drive to their location. We look at how long it takes to park their car how long it takes to process that voter and we e. Is it a long ballot or short ballot . And then return to their car. So we gather that data. How long does it take for a p visional supervisor to do that . Then we take all the information and crunch it. Take the data and we calculate the capacity of each of our polling places. We input that, then we take that information, and put it into gis software and assign people to polling places. Because the goal is to keep every polling place busy and be efficient but not have any polling place be overwhelmed and have too many voters and then have lines. We also project the newspaperum pollers by the hour in each polling place and use this to determine how many supplies and booths we need and small ballots of each time. Keep in mind, people think of how many ballots. Well, most Election Officials its not a ballot. In our country over 400 different ballot types that we have to distribute. So we have to calculate the number of each of those types. So its very complicated. We also assign the number of poll workers based on projections and do that for the peak hour so that we dont have any problems. So the number of poll workers varies, knonot just three to fi anywhere from 18 to those. We also do it around break times. So we found this Data Analysis is helpful and helped keep things smooth at the polling places. But we also know its not always dependable. So we also, in addition to prior to election day, on election day we actually survey each and every one of our polling places to find out what the turnout is like and the ballot usage. Then we make corrections as necessary. The result of our Data Collection and analysis has been that we have created a lot more convenience for our voters. We have very few lines. And if there are lines, the wait times are short. Weve saved hundreds of thousands of dollars and used that money to not just give taxpayers back the money, but expand our services, like increasing Early Morning sites and drop off locations. This was one example. We did early voting analysis and use this in the future and tapping into amber to see what they are doing in colorado to crunch their numbers. A couple of other examples of how we use data. We use it to speed oup our ballot counting, of our paper ballots. Project the drive times to get ballots back and monitor the progress. We analyze the time it takes to process ballots at each step of the way to process them, to count them, to duplicate ballots and store them. And then we adjust as necessary on election day. We also use numbers to train and assign our poll workers. We have over 3500 poll workers in our county. But to get those 3500 poll workers we have to contact over 10,000 people. We have to schedule over 7,000 to come to training. We have to train over 5,000. And we have to assign over 4,000 to get the 3500 to work on election day. We must recruit and train people in six different launguages and place people at different precincts. Because we are a large area, we train by region. What we found is it in each region people behave differently in different regions. So use the an information from our analysis to look at that behavior to have different projections in each different type of region so we arent short of workers. So thats a quick look at how we use data. Its helped us and increased our efficiency and made the Voter Experience better. We also then pass that information to state and federal officials to compile that data. Then we compare our performance against other jurisdictions. Great. Thank you so much. And i know there is unending number of data points you can collect and do Different Things with, so its very interesting some of the things that you are doing. Just incredible. Thank you from the local level. We go now to the state level with secretary cegavske from nevada. And interested in hearing what you have to say. Well, thank you for having me today. I want to thank you for putting on this summit. Christi, for all of your assistance. In the state of nevada we have 17 counties and of those we have 15 elected clerks and two voter registrars. And we have a very large county in clark, so we understand sometimes the pain that you are going with. But one of the things that i wanted to explain to everybody, because one of the things thats always unusual for me is to hear acronyms. And many of you will hear acronyms and they can mean Something Different. So i want to make sure you are all aware of some of the acronyms ill be using just to talk about what we are required to do. One of them is the Election Administration and Voting Survey that we do get from the aic. Its a biannual survey administered by the aic after every federal election which is every two years, and that vote a Data Collected is absentee voting, military and overseas voting, polling places, poll workers, and provisional voting. We also have what is the vra, which is the Voter Registration agency. And its a Government Agency designated by the federal or a state law that is required to offer its customers or clients in most circumstances the opportunity to register to vote. Vras include the dmv, public assistance agencies like welfare or employment agencies, service to people are disabilities like aging and military recruitment offices. The next one that youll hear a little bit about is the covered transactions and every time a customer or a client with the vra is requesting a service filling out a form or application, the vra is required by law to give the person the opportunity to register to vote. These interactions are called covered transactions. And two examples for us in nevada that is when you are going into do anything with your drivers license at the dmv or a person submitting an application for welfare assistance. And then the national Voter Registration act, the nrva, that is a 1993 federal law also known as the motor voter law that requires the dmv to offer the opportunity to register to vote. So with those, i wanted to make sure everyone knows our acronyms. In nevada, we use data to improve the administration of elections and Voter Experience in several ways. And among other things, the office of the secretary of state is currently focusing on transactional data to monitor the effectiveness of Voter Registration agencies. So regular basis looking at what they give us to find out if its accurate and if there is any issues that we might see. We coordinate routine reporting with Voter Registration agencies and nevada local Election Officials as well. And Voter Registration agencies record and report the number of covered transactions, whether the client chooses to register during the covered transaction or if they are going to send it in later or give it to somebody else, those numbers are tracked. We know that they have them. And thats where they got that application. And then the number of Voter Registration applications each local vra office transmits to the county Election Office. We also, the local officials track and report the number of valid applications received from each Voter Registration agency, as i said, and then send that information to the secretary of States Office. And the secretary of state receives monthly reports from the department of Motor Vehicles. We get also from the health and Human Services. And these reports are made Available Online for the secretary of state nevada at www. Nv str www. Nvsos. Gov. And also have a program that monitors data to look at any complaint or compliance as well as best practices. And ill give you an example. If a significant decrease from previous reporting periods is identified in the number of completed Voter Registration applications being transmitted from a Voter Registration agency to a local Election Office, the secretary of state Program Staff and the Voter Registration agency will investigate to determine the cause and whether any corrective action is necessary. And we do that on a regular basis between the two agencies. Then we are evaluating the disposition of completed Voter Registration applications among offices is another metric Program Staff uses to identify where review and corrective action might be necessary. And an example of that local Voter Registration agencys office that exhibits lower than average voter applications or rejected can see the issues and need for the staff to review training materials. The secretary of States Office puts this Data Collection into charts and graphs, which allows for the review of large amounts of data at a glance as well as identification of significant statistical variations. Visuals also allow for quick comparison of data over a period of time and other data sets. And the example for this is the department of health and Human Services reports multiple figures on a monthly basis. In the raw data format, interpreting this data can be daunting, but by placing this in a scatter plot or line program, staff can easily determine if there are any deviations. And then collecting this data on covered transactions from Voter Registration agencies allows the secretary of state to be proactive during conversations with any of the advocacy groups. And nevada uses Voter Registration and turnout also to identify best practices at the local levels. So we feel very, very confident in the information that we are getting and being able to work with any of the agencies in nevada to see if we have any issues or where we might need to go in a different direction or look at how we might need to change what we are doing. So look forward to the next part. Yeah, i think, you know, both of these little presentations have pointed out, really the goal here is to make the process better. Absolutely. For the voter and serve our taxpayers better as well. You know, public servants, at least this side of the aisle, and collecting that data makes a big difference on how we can make the Voter Experience better and more efficient. So from the west side of the country im now turning to the other side of the country. And the two panelists to my left here are both researchers academics. And interested in hearing what you all have to say on what youve seen with the data and how to make things more efficient and bring more integrity to the voting process. So dr. Gregg. Thank you so much for having me today. My n