From ann arbor, michigan, where he teaches Computer Science at the university of michigan. One of your Research Specialties is computer and Election Security. I wonder what you thought about this headline from salon hac kers can easily break into Voting Machines across the u. S. Hackers at a recent las vegas conference penetrated machines within minutes, turning them into gaming consoles. [laughter] unfortunately it is all too true that election for structure crossed across the United States remains vulnerable across sophisticated born hackers. We have a lot of work to do as a country before 2020 and elections. That headline is talking about the defcon conference in las vegas, and the students who turned those Voting Machines into gaming consoles imported some of our resort students from here at Michigan Research students from here at michigan. Voting machines are unfortunately a target ripe for the picking. Host you are someone who has personally hacked a voting machine yourself. Why did you do that and what did you learn . Guest oh, yes. In security research, i and other colleagues have brought many different kinds of Voting Machines and other election equipment into the laboratory to test them. We played the role of an thecker and see how easily real bad guys could make them misbehave. What we have found, with every single kind of voting machine that has been rigorously tested, unfortunately, his vulnerabilities where someone could hack in, but Malicious Software on the voting machine, cause it to be sabotaged or even silently steal votes. With electionork officials at the state or federal level to show them what you have learned about how easy it is to have these machine hack these machines . Guest yes. I am currently cochairing, for the michigan secretary of state, a commission to advise the state on how to become a National Leader in Election Security. I also spent frequent trips to washington trying to educate lawmakers. What we need is more research for the states in terms of funding, in terms of standards, so that all states can get up to the forefront of Election Security. To have that, we will need a stronger National Leadership on the Election Security question. That is at the root of the problem, why we have such a poor posture for securing elections in this country today. Host take us to the wolverine estate and the resources you get the wolverine state and the resources you get for this issue. Guest michigan is a good example. It already has a pretty strong posture when it comes to securing elections. That is because, in michigan, like in about half of states, every single vote is cast by voters on a piece of paper. Paper might seem retrograde, but it is actually a pretty good defense against election hacking, because it is something that cannot possibly be changed in a cyberattack. So what michigan still needs to do, as what many other states need to do, is make sure they are using that paper as a form of cyber defense. In order to do that, we have to check enough of the pieces of paper, the paper ballots, by having a person inspect them and make sure they agree with the Computer Systems that give us our Election Night totals. As long as the paper records and computer records agree about who won, we can have high confidence that the election result was not somehow tampered with. Host in the 2018 election, how Many Americans cast votes on machines that did not have that paper backup . Guest unfortunately, about 25 of americans in 2018. And there are still 14 states that, for at least some voters, do not have any kind of paper backup at all. That is a problem because it means those states, for those voters, are relying entirely on the output of these compex Voting Machines that have been shown, numerous times, to have complex Voting Machines that have been shown, numerous times, to have weaknesses. They are much more centralized than they may seem. All of this leads to a situation where we have the potential for sophisticated foreign attackers to get in and sabotage the system. Att what is the argument, this point, for not having a paper backup for your voting machine as a state official . Last week, there was a caller who called in specifically about this issue and was concerned about boxes of ballots being found for machines that use paper backups and whether those could be just as easily messed with as a hacker getting into a computer system. Guest we have had a long history in this country of people tampering with paper ballots in order to interfere with elections. That is why a modern approach is not just to go back to paper and count it by hand. What i and other security experts, recommend is having that paper ballot box but also, right in front of the voter, scanning the ballot into a computer. That is one of the most common ating machines, where you get paper and electronic record that thatn check in and audit there is the same winner. That is or electronic records by themselves. You need both lots of people on the ground tampering with individual ballots, and sophisticated hackers getting into the computer system. Inse who have to coordinate a way because the same tampering in each kind of record, that would just be a remarkable kind of attack, well beyond anything that weve seen. Today, i dont think that there are many serious people who would still argue that we dont need a paper trail with elections. That is pretty much done. Its just a question of resources. Host our guest from the university of michigan, he teaches and consults on the issue of Election Security. Hes with us for the next 15 minutes to answer your questions about Election Security. Less than 15 months until election day 2020. Republicans can call in at 202 7488001. Forgive me, 202 7488000. Eastern or central time zones, we have split up originally. 202 7488001 in the mountain or pacific time zones. If i have not confused you enough, we will let you look at the numbers on the screen. Frank in new york, good morning. Caller good morning. I was wondering how, they dont withce more paper trail the very fine and to be verified and people can really check the real results. In the Dominican Republic and several countries where a lot of , and there is no way to go back and check those sources for the corruption that played out on voting day. Well, i think you are getting at a very excellent point. What we need to secure elections and to give everyone confidence is to make sure that every voter has a piece of paper that they can see and verify is recording their votes that they intend. And that the process of counting and auditing those votes needs to be as transparent as possible. Long, elections in america have been based on eight, on people having faith that the operators of the system, the Election Officials are doing their jobs and taking every necessary precaution. It does not have to be that way. We need to engineer elections so that they are based on evidence. Evidence that any skeptical voter can see and check to know that the election is free from any kind of interference. Host pennsylvania is next. Angel, good morning. Caller good morning. Usingd like to know about technology for security. Guest block chain. Block chain is good for some things. You might know about bitcoin and other crypto currency, it is based on Block Chain Technology that essentially gives you a way for everyone to agree about what transactions run through the system without having any centralbank or Central Authority that is making those calls. , Something Like block chain could be part of a more secure solution, having a way to or thecords of votes records of Voter Registration that anyone can check. The problem is, it is not nearly a complete solution. To continue the example of bitcoin, with bitcoin, we still have problems of theft because people lose their passwords, installattackers Malicious Software on their computers, or because attackers break into bitcoin exchanges. Just like there is still theft despite watching technology and bitcoin Block Chain Technology and bitcoin, we still can have problems with Election Integrity even if we applied watching technology. It might be a step lower, but it is away from the whole solution. Host dominic out of new york, youre next. , your i live in new york given them your name, they give uniform. What about showing id to make sure the person who is getting that paper is really who they say they are . From what ive heard, a lot of dead people have been voting. I would like your opinion on that. So, voter identification is a complicated question. There is a kind of tradeoff between two things we really, really want. We want to make sure everyone who is entitled to vote is able to, and we want to make sure that nobody who is not entitled to vote falsely does. When you have that kind of tension between two properties, its always hard to balance them. States have taken different approaches to where they want to air on that, and it remains a matter of policy. I would say theres not a lot of evidence of people falsely voting by impersonating other people. Bet of that fraud tends to by a fraudulent Voter Registration and so forth. The reason for that is that there are severe penalties for casting a vote when you are impersonating someone else. You can go to jail for it. Thats a lot of risk to take as a criminal for just one or a very small number of fraudulent votes. The caller asked for your opinion on voter id, the president offered his opinion when he was leaving new jersey yesterday and headed back to d. C. Here is the president talking to reporters. Trump i think voter id laws are, if you look, voter identification. When people show up to vote, if you look, Judicial Watch made a settlement with california, i guess, or los angeles, where they found over one million names that was very problematic, a problem. And you just take a look at that settlement. Thats a lot of names. People well over 100 years old that were voting, what we know they are not around any longer. You have a lot of voter fraud. The easiest way is voter identification. We have to go and think about that. I hope republicans and democrats can vote, sit down and work something out with voter id. They didnt find any actual fraud. Trump the commission was having a tremendous problem, legally getting papers from various states like california. They were absolutely hard lighting. They did not want to give this commission. It was just a quick commission headed up by Vice President pence to look at voter fraud. The problem the commission had, we had to have a vast amount of lawyers which i did not want to bother with his california and other states were giving us no information whatsoever. And the reason they were giving us information is because they were guilty. They were guilty of it, and they know they are guilty of it. Many, many people voted who should not have been voting. Some people voted many times. What im saying is we need voter identification, we need voter id. Host your thoughts on the president s comments from yesterday . Guest well, i think the president has maybe some of this fax wrong about the number of voters who could possibly be voting fraudulently. Whos not one Million People are voting falsely in california. That may be the number of Voter Registration records that have needed to be checked, or there is something out of date about them. One of the interesting things about Voter Registration is that, in many states, the Voter Registration list are a problem. Anyone can go in and check the names on those with to see whether there are people who are dead were moved out of state, or just dont exist. So, that transparency does tovide a kind of protection help members of the public confirm for themselves whether the voter rolls seem to have integrity. Northa little bit further , vancouver, canada. Billy, go ahead. Caller good morning. No matter how much he repeats them, trumps lies about voter fraud are patently untrue. Its just an ever to restrict franchising to nonwhites. Mitchndering why mcconnell wont pass any Election Security bills in the senate. An argument against passing Election Security bills. So having russian interference somehow benefits democrats . Its ridiculous. That, canou answer you also give us the state of Election Security bills in Congress Might not in congress right now . Ofthere have been a number very strong efforts on a bipartisan basis to a bipartisan basis to advance Election Security bills in congress. Particularly in the senate. The last Congress Bill to secure elections gained significant bipartisan support. There are several good bills that have been introduced this term so far. But the caller is right. Mitch mcconnell is the major roadblock to Election Security legislation in this country. He just has not been allowing anything to make it out of committee or reached the senate floor. I dont want to speculate about his motivations for that. But i will say that many republicans and democrats already recognize that Election Security is a Significant National security issue. , which isderal action never going to be able to move forward in a coordinated manner as a country, or give the states the resources they need in order to protect the public. Host corpus christi, texas. Daniel, good morning. Caller i have an idea. Why not use a dollar bill, since they have serial numbers, to memorialize the votes on. Go do your place, they give you a special pen to mark your dollar bill, and some kind of camera takes a picture of your dollar bill. And you walk home and youve got your paper receipt and youve got your dollar bill and then you can spend it later and it becomes one of those bitcoin things. Incentive to go voting as well . That ishe problem with that your vote needs to remain as secret as possible. We want to have a secret ballot. That means we cant just give voters a receipt that memorializes how they voted. If we didnt do that, if you did get a receipt, someone could coerce you into voting a certain way, or make it much easier for people to buy or sell votes. For that reason, the secret ballot is one of the most important security protections we have an elections. We need to maintain ballot findingwhile also mechanisms that increase the integrity of the count. Thats what makes this a difficult security problem. We want both of those things at the same time. Host you mentioned Mitch Mcconnell, his home state. Crescent springs, good morning. Caller yes, Mitch Mcconnell is running for reelection in 2020. We need to push this issue in kentucky because he is my senator. I think he would address this issue a little bit earlier. We have like 120 counties in kentucky and out of those 120, 38 of our counties had more voters registered than we did in the population. It could be various reasons to why this was happening. Currently, now, we have what i would call the optical scan. We have a paper where i fill up my black box and then we scan it through. I hope that is more viable than any of the others. Also, what i would really like to see, i would like to see more control of our voting by the county clerk in our counties, rather than giving it to the secretary of state, and she was sued by Judicial Watch for not cleaning up the voter rolls and at this voter rolls and theyre still not clean. They do have a new president , michael add rams running or secretary of state and everyone of these candidates that is a primary supported cleaning up voter rolls and another issue were running out of time there. And i would say you americas ptical scan paper ballots. That is the best technology we is currently and once the make sure theyre regularly audited to make sure they matched statewide results and that is not expensive and not time consuming but if you need an audit to get a strong performance. There are 8,000 different injures dicts responsible for running elections on the local and they dont have good that is their federal resource to play a huge role in making things better. Autonomy for low as it is, itsut widely varied patch work for restrictions. Last call. Albuquerque, new mexico, if morning. Good morning and thank you for taking the call. We have a really good, strong, relationship and im concerned about what happens if there is an election that is questioned so that lts coming out being questioned cal jurisdictions fanned you just have to drive to the courts and cross your fingers . Estion. Is a great qu what happens if we find out something is wrong . The answer is going to depend on things les and whether like recounts available and whether this is a paper trail. A papering when you have trail you can go back and and then,y recount it ts more evidence about what happened. They can investigate any time there is evidence for that. And this is about making sure elections are more resilient. We need layers of protection, likeding physical back ups paper trails. Makes it difficult to alter the election including the the most chases in the paper trails to make sure results are right. Today. Ppreciate your time democraticp tonight, president ial candidate elizabeth a discussion about about debate hosted by the cleveland club. Them. Senator Elizabeth Warren spoke in a town hall in los angeles. Senator warren is joined by heir at this hourlong