Secretaries of state of colorado and pennsylvania about Voting Rights and Voter Suppression at a conference in pittsburgh. Ok were going to get started here. Good morning everyone. I will be moderating todays panel. I am the ceo of civitech. I am very honored to be here at leading this panel with you here today. Republican lawmakers coordinated to undermine the results of the president ial election. Since then, republicans have passed even greater restrictions on the ability to vote and have your vote counted and what appears an apparent attempt to grasp power. Eliminating dropbox location. These target bracket black and brown communities. Voter suppression is not new but it feels that it should not be so brazen, it is. They have made it illegal to give food to voters waiting in line. It is been nearly 30 years since the last meeting feel meaningful Voting Rights legislation. Where do we go from here . We organize. We want to beat these Voter Suppression laws. We want to expand the electorate. I am very honored to be here. With that, i would like to introduce stephanie gomez. She works to organize, mobilize and empower youth advocacy. She has dedicated her career to get people to vote. She would chase her peers down to make sure they were registered to vote. From leading a state wide legislative coalition as the associated cause of vote texas. Thank you for joining us here today. At the end we have charlie oleda. He identifies policy and advocacy themes. He works to bring together election reforms that strengthens the integrity of our elections. Prior to joining the team of secure democracy, he works in colorado and his work has been in politico, the Washington Post and instate outlets. Thank you for being here today. Last but not least, we have jenna griswold, colorado secretary of state. 94 of voters used a pallet drop box. We are deeply honored to have her with us today. I would like to jump right into some questions. We will move to a q a there are no cards on your chairs if you would prefer to write a question but we also have a microphone if you would like to ask. If you would like to write questions now someone will come around to pick them up. To kick things off, with a little bit of a discussion. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Election Officials and local offices found themselves amongst the onslaught, following showdowns, republican state legislatures sought to enact laws. Stacey abrams put it, they had grand plans tried to overturn the will of the voters . Charley this year alone we have seen 21 states that have enacted laws to manipulate the administration of our elections for partisan gains. A lot of these policies amount to Something Like death of a thousand cuts and they include policies to directly a change authority over certification. New and increased penalties for election administration, poll workers in the even for innocent mistakes. And the increasing restrictions on funding and resourcing as well as the ability of Election Administrators to coordinate or speak to her work with nonprofits and organizers in the communities. And even beyond those, we are also seeing in 18 states, legislation to restrict access to voting. Attacks on drop boxes, vote by mail, early voting, automatic voting registration. New burdensome voter id requirements, as well think we can underestimate the suppressive power of disinformation. This is hope in the dark. It is not all bad news. I want to share the good news here. Even in some of our most difficult states like arizona where they introduced 134 bills alone touching elections. Our coalition was able to defeat 120 and passed some good policy there. We have seen 24 states pass improvements to election administration. This includes improved access to vote by mail and early voting. As well as policies that balance enforced security to our elections with improved access. Comprehensive pallet tracking. Preprocessing imbalance. Risk limiting audits and automatic enrollment. In kentucky, where they have a super republican majority in their legislature, we were able to establish early voting for the first time ever. Established drop boxes, care process and absentee online request form. Almost unanimously through their legislature. It is possible to fight back and it is happening. Jeremy there are some great successes and a great point to showcase. Even though we are facing these threats, there are people doing great work. To this point and distinction, these actions by state legislatures, the top threat to free and Fair Elections, are you seeing measures making an impact . Jena griswold last year 34 Voter Suppression bills were passed. When we think about the attack on democracy we can think about it in three charges. It makes it harder for people to vote. Voter suppression is very pointed like in georgia, making lines that were already 11 hours long even longer. Criminalizing a woman standing in line a bottle of water illegal. Some of it is really broad, like what we have seen in texas. It is so broad that it disenfranchising everybody. And number three, destabilizing election. Election workers have been threatened, people are quitting. Pennsylvania has lost 30 of election workers since 2020. Then you have maga extremists like steve bannon recruiting people. And then the big lie is being adopted by Election Officials and compromise their own voting systems. And then they lie so much that americans no longer have high confidence in elections. It is very clearly setting the table for the next election. You saw President Trump try to steal the election, now they are focused on future elections. It is code red for american democracy. The passion to keep on fighting because i do believe we are going to win this fight for democracy longterm. Thank you germany for giving me the sad question. Jeremy all these different types of categories with efforts with intentional purpose. In texas, the state has been an incubator for these types of ideas. These ideas in texas, they have a trial run of the certain things. It is something that plagues my daytoday existence. It is very hard for me as a texas who loves democracy and have to have a conversation with them we are so excited to get you to vote but these are very real changes to election law that you have to take into account now. Antivoter legislators are all over taxes unfortunately. The best example of that that people know when it comes to antivoter legislation is sc one. It was an absolutely insane, terrible year for me. This bill is unique is because it out lawed pro voter initiatives. They saw the need for things like drivethru, early voter in houston. They saw the need for extended early voting. What it did was give houstonians, particularly black and brown houstonians, the opportunity to safely cast their ballot early. They see our democracy operating in the way that it should and then what they recognized is that this is something that attacks their ability to hold onto power, because texas right now only serves a part of texas. But texas is a diverse, really young state. It was disheartening to see that legislation become law. You know what else is on the way . A lot more organizing. Jeremy i think that is another great point. We have seen vote by mail reach particularly salient levels in the last few years with the Global Pandemic that restricts people to access to public spaces. Vote by mail search and usage during the 2020 election. Interestingly, it has long been seen as a republican advantage. I am curious charley, is it anything more than partisan politics at play when limiting drop boxes . Charley if we look at arizona for example, there was a bill this year designed this bill was designed to ban drop boxes. The places that the drop boxes were most popular were in indigenous communities. Of course, this is where they wanted to target restrictions. We were able to defeat this bill three separate times in the legislature this year. I will get into why. The motivation is obvious. In georgia as well, another state that went to restrict drop boxes aggressively this year. Drop boxes are most popular in the four metro counties that are over 50 counties of color. Those four counties had 107 drop boxes and now they only have 25. The motivation is clear in highly partisan. It is something to consider, these states can be examples for states, colorado is done a great job with dropbox availability. It allows flexibility to take advantage exhibiting infrastructure. For example, putting a dropbox and Grocery Store where they have security cameras and often a Security Guard there. It is a totally public space where anyone can come in and access. If these restrictions are coming in your states receive these conversations happening and they are going to do something about security here. Think about the ways to creatively comply and protect access at the same time. Us elevating back conversation created enough doubt with just a couple of republicans, thats all we needed to defeat this bill three times over. They realized there was another path forward to recognize the bill language would not be helpful. Keep that in mind to creative compliance in ways to protect access while addressing security if it is going to happen anyway. Jeremy i want to go ahead put in the title for creative compliance for a future documentary. With vote by mail, for example in texas where i live, the state has long been famous for who is eligible to vote by mail, there has been a new bill passed were a voter put their drivers license number or their state id number on their application they want to put on their ballot in order to vote by mail but it has to match whatever number you first signed up to vote. We have this mechanical and logistical challenge that resulted in 12 of vote by mail ballots. Thats tens of thousands of people. So stephanie, how organizers on the ground creatively complying to help people cast their ballot in a world in which this is the law . Stephanie it is hard to explain to people who are just trying to do what they have been doing for years. This is affecting a lot of older people in texas specifically they just dont understand because this process doesnt make sense. You are asking all the right questions. We pointed this out in the legislative session. This is going to confuse people. This will disproportionately affect older voters are Younger Voters living on college campuses. It was actually hard for Willie Nelson, he had to try twice to get his ballot approved. If you are coming after Willie Nelson . We need education and support. It is not just students, we are already engaged. What we need right now are organizations like move, texas and explain to people this is what you need to know, this is how you need to implemented and continue to support young people and all taxes as they try to cast their ballot. At move, taxes, we come in three weeks before elections and have conversations with people and put together curriculum to support young people who were Building Communities and get that information out to their campuses. And so, we are excited to continue mobilizing the changes to the election law and whatever threats are coming. I am really excited to say we relaunched our campus chapter. They are doing it today in san antonio. We are putting young organizers through training. What does it actually look like to work for democracy in an antidemocracy state . We do a lot of community work. Jeremy inconveniencing celebrity is really powerful for us. I was working for the president ial election and they had the address on one side in the same address on the other and on which way it got voted on, you could mail your ballot back and it would be redelivered to you. In a new york or reporter got her ballot mailed back. But if Willie Nelson cant vote, then we might have a chance. Deliberate attempts to inconvenience your vote, to make it harder. There are a lot of people who are improving this process. We have one of the most free and Fair Elections in 2020 because of the people sitting here like [no audio] jena griswold. Jena griswold this inconveniencing is elected officials trying to steal their seats. This inconvenience is a strategy that is so unamerican that these people should have full shame and what they do. It is not just the right to vote, that they are stealing from the American People. It is tied into reasonable gun reform. Making sure there are background checks. The attack on women, the fact that there are attacks on marriage equality. This is egregious what these folks are doing and we should call it out for exactly what it is. With that said, there is hope. One of the things that we have to do is elect people who are willing to protect the foundation of this country. Who believe that it is the American People who get to decide the elections in this country. I became colorados first woman, democratic secretary of state since eisenhower. Charlie lives in colorado and she helped get that vote through. She is a superstar. We ended up in 2019, i am not trying to make you blush. I am just trying to say the truth. In 2019, we did a series of things. We increase job boxes by 60 we increase drop boxes on tribal lands. We added more voting centers. Flip of a switch, 11,000 people were reenfranchised. We passed automatic Voter Registration, which registered a hundred thousand people. I subsequently passed statewide ballot tracking. We did a whole host of things and unfortunately this legislation i made it a crime to docs election workers. We prohibited open carry within 100 feet of where they process ballots or within a voting center. There is a lot of help. Democratic secretaries of state, even within arizona have passed major reforms. We need to focus on the policy. We have to focus on electing people who want americans to vote. That is the distinction we will see in three months. Jeremy i appreciate that, i think that is a great point. Every single method by which voters they are trying to suppress voters is also a way we can increase access. We will go through one more round of questions, if you would hold those notecards up we will have someone go around and grab them. We have talked here about some of the things we are seeing. To this point about where are there opportunities to address these pernicious laws . Correspondingly, how can we change them . Jena griswold the colorado model is the best model in the country. You can register online, you dont have to jump through a million hoops. You are automatically sent a ballot, we have weeks of early voting. You can put accessibility handinhand with security. We are the most accessible state and the most secure. We have 400 drop boxes with video cameras. This nation, if they want high voter turnout, if that is what folks actually want. That is and makes it an of vote by mail. I instructed my office, we would help any state that wanted our help. We were really talking with every state across the country to make sure that the americans could have access to the ballot before the vaccine. I will tell you, as a nation, we were able to extend access to ballots. 84 of american voters, that led to record turnout. Record turnout to democrats, republicans. Early voting, early access to absentee ballots. Extreme republicans do not want people to vote. They are having election deniers oversee election. S. In arizona, the secretary of state nominee says a republican will never lose again if he is elected. What we are seeing is an assault on our fundamental freedoms. That is why this upcoming election is so important. Democracy is on the ballot. The only way we save it is americans getting out and voting. Jeremy i appreciate that point about national policy. There is coordination between these elements and it seems very clear that we will not get voting legislation in the near term. Kyrsten sinema says she will not overturn the filibuster in order to get the National Voting bill passed. Stephanie, what role do you see organizers playing on the ground to be most effective in either creatively complying or overcoming efforts to restrict access to the ballot in texas . Stephanie the important thing about that is it takes time. It takes time to bring people into this work and it takes time with young people who are dealing with a lot of things. A lot of people think that young people really dont understand what is going on. They do, they are dealing with multiple climate crises. Understanding that they feel a sense of dread and frustration. We dont have empowerment for young people. They are not often asked for their opinion. They are not often asked what it is that they would do. For them to come across, move taxes is a you centered organization that will build those relationships and explain to young people that yes, it is hard. This white supremacist state is operating in a way that is violent. How can we get you registered to vote which is the first step in political empowerment but what does that look like to hold it down in the state capital right there with all the layers and policy wonks . In this latest session all the people who were there with me waiting until 4 00 a. M. . It was young people of texas waiting with me just so they could be a part of this movement. That is how we will organize these young people making sure that they have these tools. We vote so that we can get elected officials who are not hyperpartisan notes. People who want to pass common sense legislation. In my lifetime if i see online voting, i will be so happy. This is a 1015 year fight. We are working against so many systems. Jeremy it takes a sustained effort. Online Voter Registration which exists in 14 other states and no one accuses alabama or tennessee of being a radical state because of online registration, it helps everyone to be able to use the internet to communicate with their officials. Setting up a clear expectation helps because elections, this exploitative cycle of hay we need you right now and this feeling of not quite getting results out of it. Charley, you are coordinating with teams across 20 states. Do you want to highlight some of those . Charley states are 10,000,000 the frontline of these fights. This is where its happening. Particularly this year, it seems like arizona, texas, this is where the election manipulators and people that dont want democracy in america. This is where they are testing out their playb