This year because of the covid pandemic do we have any real baseline to understand what is going on with the electorate going into this election . I think this election will be unlike anything we have seen in the past. Its hard to know if there is a good corollary. At this point we are seeing far more early and absentee voting then we saw in 2016. Its really off the charts. That looks atart early and in person voting and how it has trended over the past couple of years. People can see from watching it that the trend has been for more voting by absentee or mailin ballots then by in person on election day. What is happening in the thinking about conduct of elections that has led to this and celebrating this trend this year . Its been a trend about 20 years in the making. Ever since colorado and Washington State made it easy for their voters to vote by mail we have seen that once voters have that option they like that option. In a pandemic voting by mail is a good and safe option. In addition to the states that noe already going to have excuse and proactive voting by mail in 2020, that makes 10 states this year plus d. C. Other states are also making it easier. Of americans are going to have a chance to vote by mail this year. How about providing some baseline that will help people understand, how large is the eligible u. S. Electorate in 2020 . Of 180where in the range million. We are expecting 150 million ballots to be cast in 2020. 130 7 million cast in 2016. Host that was going to be my question, how it compared with last election. Anticipated is how many this year . 150 million to 160 million. We are taping this on the monday morning a week from election day. Who studies house races for the Cook Political Report had tweeted last night breathtaking, statewide excess surpassed 80 of its total 2016 votes cast, leading the nation. Is that what other states are seeing . Guest it really is breathtaking. In 2016 we saw 33 million absentee ballots cast. A week before the election we already have 40 million returned and there are another 46 million outstanding. I do think we are likely to see almost half of americans voting by mail this time around. Guest i dont think its an uptick in trend. We are seeing more states moving towards early voting. This year we are seeing new york state and new york city having early voting options in the president ial election. It has been a trend that has slowed down. More states are trying to expand in person voting options. In the washington dc area, virginia started its early voting in person today and marilyn tomorrow about a week out of actual election day 2020. There have also been some covid related experiments. One i wanted to call to your attention. The Supreme Court got involved in an effort in alabama to start curbside voting because of the pandemic. Many timesing how this year with experiments of covid courts have had to get involved with things states are wanting to do . Guest curbside voting is an option in many states. Its not something states highlight a lot, they dont advertise it that much. In some states its limited to voters of a certain age. It tends to be very resource intensive. That is what was happening in alabama when they expanded it. Then the court pulled her back a pulled it back a little bit. I think these are good options and we should certainly be looking at them in the future. Because the voters are expecting new and more convenient options. And i think Election Officials want to be where voters are. Host as you have been monitoring the weeks leading up to election day have there been significant reports around the country of intimidation with in person early voting . Matt we are seeing scattered reports. But voters have to be discerning when they see those reports. One report in one place does not mean we are seeing widespread concerns across the country and does not mean we are saying widespread concerns in any one state or locality. Again, those are scattered reports. I think what we are seeing more of is reports of very long lines or what seem to be long lines and part of that is because of covid social distancing requirements. And part of it is real problems Election Officials i think are trying to quickly address so that it does not persist to the last week of voting on a and on last week of voting and on election day. Host you mentioned the social distancing. You have been participating in seminars where they have been warning and having states plan for covid related staffing issues with enough people to work at the polls. And enough people to sign and people as they come in. How is that turning out as you have been monitoring it . Matt that was certainly the concern i had early in the pandemic, that there were not going to be enough warm bodies to provide significant, robust voting in person during early voting or on election day. I was not the only person calling for that. And really, many people have stepped up. There are many groups out there that have certainly recruited a new class of whole workers and it is impressive. For the most part we are not seeing the kind of shortages that we were most concerned about. Again, even just using data from 2016 and 2018, about half of all poll workers are over the age of 60 in the country. That is a risk category for covid, the concerns were real. I think that was born out. The fact that they were able to recruit so many new workers was great. The risk does not appear on election day. We are now in a period of rising covid infections and any one location there could be situations where poll workers are not able to show up on election day because they have to quarantine. That could result in polling places, oneoff polling places having to shut down or not open fully. So i do think there is a risk, but i think Election Officials have tried to recruit backup and are going to minimize that risk. Host turning to mailin balloting, and you referenced this earlier in our conversation. I have a chart to put on screen. This is from a report National Public radio did. 2020 mailin ballots, nine states and washington d. C. Automatically send ballots to voters. 36 states, ballots sent by request. This time around no excuse needed or fear of covid19 is accepted as a request. Five states ballots sent by request and a fear of covid19 is not among the accepted excuse needed. This again is an enormous uptick in mailin ballot inc. Mailin balloting this year. I want to go through some aspects of it. First, the states ability to handle the volume as these mailin ballots come in. What kind of technology do states employ to process mailin ballots . To process mailin ballots . Matt many states did not have a lot of technology to process these ballots. As recently as two and four years ago most states were not seeing huge proportions of electorate voting by mail. 30 states had fewer than 15 of ballots cast by mail. It was a human driven, oneoff process. The request came in and somebody in the Elections Office had to process it and sent out the ballot. There are technological solutions. I think we are seeing states deploy more of those. Many states have upgraded capacity to process these more automatically as opposed to having to handle it by humans. Host are they getting support from the federal government in upgrades . Or is it state driven . Matt the federal government did appropriate 400 million in the cares act in may. Most Election Officials, most policymakers, thought that was step one in the process and that there would be additional federal support and that did not materialize. We have been seeing and i think it was unexpected, we are seeing civil society, philanthropists, stepping up where congress may have, and certainly the Chan Zuckerberg initiative has given 400 million to states and localities to upgrade voting equipment and absentee voting processes. The Schwarzenegger Foundation is doing the same. I think philanthropy is stepping in where congress was unable to find an agreement. That is certainly helping states run elections this year. Host a second aspect is the capabilities of the Postal Service to get ballots to people and return them to state officials in time. Folks watching this are familiar with the hearings Congress Held where the Postal Service commissioner was called to testify. Lots of criticism from congress about changes made to the postal system. How do things stand as we head into election day . Matt at this point, one week out from election day, we are kind of at the moment that if you are going to use the Postal Service now is the time to get the ballot in the mail. Especially in those states where the ballot has to be received back by the election official by the close of polls on election day. Certainly the Service Standards have been slower. We do not want voters to unintentionally disenfranchise themselves by not getting ballots back in time because even though we know only 1 of ballots are returned and submitted for counting get rejected, a huge proportion of those ballots that get rejected are rejected because they missed the deadline and that is the last reason we want ballots rejected. Host voters concerned about using the Postal Service have access to drop boxes and this has been a point of conflict in some states, accessibility of drop boxes and confusion about which boxes are official and which are being done either for malicious reasons or in an attempt to help voters drop. Give us an overview of the dropbox situation across the country. Matt drop boxes have a lot of promise. They have been used out west where we have seen more voting by mail and they have been used for many election cycles. These are safe options. I think they are among the best options for voters to vote by mail. A dropbox is a onetoone connection between the boater and election official. There is no middleman, no Postal Service. The only people who have access lockboxes, drop boxes, are Election Officials. I think they are a great option, but they are not an option everywhere. Some states have done a great job of rolling them out quickly. In maryland, we have not had them before. I was able to go to my local Elections Office and drop it in the dropbox. There were 200 locations in the state. I think we are going to see more of these in future years, because this is a simple solution. From my perspective one of the Better Options for voting by mail. Host the accessibility of drop boxes has been a point of contention. In texas, the governor limited them to one per county including the states most populous county. People criticized and suggested that makes it less accessible for lower income people or folks who do not have access to personal transportation. Can you comment on that, and of course courts got involved and upheld the governors decision. How do we understand and how should we process decisions like that to limit availability . Matt the texas decision is more because the state does not have drop boxes per se. They really have drop site where they are staffed by election people. That is what is required by the law. You have to have a physical presence at all of these sites from the Elections Office, and that is going to be limiting. I do think texas is one state is one of the states that is most difficult to vote by mail. They have chosen to go more toward the early in person voting route. During a pandemic that is not the best option for a lot of voters. I do think states really should do more to make voting by mail options work better and in my view making that work better includes having accessible drop boxes everywhere. Host another aspect of voting by mail is following the rules as states set them up. In pennsylvania, for the past few weeks there has been something called a naked ballot dispute. Which means people have failed to include the privacy envelope as they have sent in their ballot. How complicated have you found the rules around mail and mail and mail in balloting and where have issues like this popped up across the country . Matt the naked ballot issue i think got a lot of press, it is not a problem everywhere. Most states are not requiring privacy sleeves within the outer envelope. Many times they want you to use the right color pen. You have to make sure the signature is there. A some cases you need to have witness or two witness signatures. Making sure you are following those requirements is essential so you can be sure your voting is going to be accounted. I do think we are seeing states do better when it comes to designing instructions and making them clear. But considering we are going to have a lot of new voters casting vote by mail ballots this year, i do have concerns that we may see higher rejection rates than we would otherwise have seen. Host in tossup states is this one aspect going to be a source of likely lawsuits . Matt yes. Certainly ballots cast in person do not generally make their way into lawsuits after election day because once they havent cast , in person and deposit into a voting machine. [indiscernible] we do know after election disputes centered on on mailin ballots and provisional ballots because that is what is left to , fight over. I do think the range of options for the candidates or campaigns to fight over would be the increased numbers of absentee ballots and provisional ballots, would be a target of litigation after the fact in some states. Host the public has been hearing President Trump raise concerns about mailin balloting throughout the fall. Here is one example. [video clip] as far as ballots are concerned, it is a disaster. A solicited ballot, you request and they send it back and that is ok. I did that. Theyre sending millions of ballots all of the country. There is fraud and they found them in creeks and some with the name trump in a wastepaper basket. They are being sent all over the place. They sent out 1000 ballots. This is going to be a fraud. Host how large a concern is fraud in mailin balloting . Matt fraud is a very, very small percentage of mailin ballots. Over the decades we have seen it, we have seen only a couple hundred cases confirmed out of millions and millions of ballots cast. I do not think fraud is a problem and there are many security features. Host what has happened it seems as a result of this, the university of florida which tracks the voting steps before the election, reporting 60 Million People having participated eight days out. There was a partisan split in the number of people opting to vote by mail. In states where they count them and people who are not. Is it surprising to you, that how you vote has become a partisan issue this year . Matt i wish it was, i think at this point nothing surprises me about what could become partisan. I do think it is making it more difficult for us to model out some of the aspects we would normally try to be doing at this point. Certainly in the past, the breakdowns of voting by mail versus in person voting tents tend to reflect the electorate of the state. If it is a more republican state you have more republicans voting early. With democrats voting early and republicans voting in person we really do not know what the final turnout is going to be. Host another issue with this years balloting, that has been raised is both foreign and domestic interference in the process. About 10 days out from the election, the press Conference Held by the dni John Ratcliffe and fbi director christopher wray, here is the clip where they talk about their concerns about russia and iran intending to disrupt the election in the united states. [video clip] we would like to alert the public we have identified that two foreign actors, iran and russia, have taken specific actions to influence Public Opinion relating to our elections. First, we have confirmed that some Voter Registration information has been obtained by iran, and separately, by russia. This data can be used by foreign actors to attempt to communicate false information to registered voters, that they hope will cause confusion, chaos, and undermine confidence in american democracy. Host right after this press conference you published your response. What was it . Matt i think most voters have to remember Voter Registration rolls in this country are public record. I did not hear the dni or fbi director state they penetrated any secure Voter Registration rolls. It seems what russia and iran may have accessed were our rolls that are publicly available to parties, to campaigns, so they can reach out to voters. That makes it incumbent on all American Voters to be careful, and be wary of what you are seeing. Do not forward that email, do not repost that post or retweet that tweet, if you have not verified the information inside it. Because i do think because we have done such a good job at, certainly hardening the election systems in this country since 2016, our foreign adversaries have fewer options to disrupt the process. One of the easiest is to turn americans against each other and undermine confidence in the legitimacy of elections. It is incumbent on all americans to make sure that is not happen. Host one method of doing that is fellow americans using social media to spread misinformation, either intentionally or unintentionally. What are your views of what the social media giants have done to try to curb that in this election season . Matt i think they are trying to go on the right direction. I do feel they sometimes have no good way of working. If they do one thing, one party does not like it. And if they do another thing, another party does not like it. Theyre trying to slow down the retweets. I know twitter is putting a screen over retweet so you can think about it before you do it. I think facebook is doing a little more when it comes to Fact Checking and providing factbased answers to common questions. This is all good. But again at the end of the day these are social media platforms. Onetoone from other americans or foreign adversaries. Who want you to push their storyline. It is something we as voters have to be discerning about. If something does not sound right or sounds sensational, it may be that. There are ways to check the truth. That is usually your local election official. They have the best information. If you have a question, that is where you should go, not to social media to find your answer. Host lets talk about Election Night 2020. What do you anticipate it will look like . Matt i do think we are going to have some states that are going to be reporting data surprisingly fast. I do think the narrative has been because of all the vote by mail we would have endless delays or waits for results. That may be true in some states. It depends on how states process the vote by mail ballots that come in. Some states are already processing those ballots. Other states cannot open those until election day or before election day where they can start going to the millions of valid backlogs they have. The state of florida, they will report the vast majority of their vote by mail and early ballots early in the evening by around 8 00 p. M. Eastern time. Then we will have to wait a couple of hours to get in person voting. Florida may be a state that can be called by 11 00 on Election Night because they will count so much of the early voting quickly. We have other states like pennsylvania or michigan that limit how fast they can count absentee ballots. If we are waiting on states like those to be called before we have an outcome that could be where we end up having long delays until thursday or friday before we have enough ballots counted to be pretty certain about the outcome. Host should voters that have confidence that even if their state is not one of those tossup states, that if they have submitted a ballot, it will be counted . Is every vote counted . Matt there has been a persistent myth for many years, decades, about absentee ballots, that they are not counted unless they have to be, and that is ridiculous for many reasons. No ballot is a single race ballot. There are many contests. Absentee ballots always counted. The process lays out when that can happen. Again, for many states, that is a longer process. What we are seeing for this cycle, certainly, states extended the deadline after election day to have ballots returned in some states. It may have to be postmarked by election day and they will accept it three days or seven days after the election date so election day. The counting continues after election day, and they will count all of them in the cycle. Any voter who counts a provisional ballot at the polls, after the state counts there their absentee ballots he will be when they count provisional ballots. So the official count could take one or week or more after election day to complete. Host susan page of usa today who moderated the Vice President ial debate tweeted this andiction, massive mailin early voting is here to stay post pandemic, with repercussions on who votes and how many vote in future elections. Do you believe that this is going to change things forever . If so, how do you see it changing the way president ial Candidates Campaign . Matt i do agree with susan page that once voters have access to these convenience options, voting by mail and early voting, they are not going to accept policymakers who do not extend that in the future. So i do think even though we have seen a slow trend toward more voting by mail in the past two decades, this is going to be a spike this year and i do think we will see the higher level remain forward. What we have seen this cycle is it requires the campaigns to act earlier. The socalled october surprise cannot happen before election day like in 2016 many, many ballots have been cast already. As you said, as of one week out we are talking about 50 million ballots already submitted for counting, a huge number. I do anticipate that the number of ballots going to be submitted prior to election day will be more than 15 of the entire electorate. It moves everything back earlier into the cycle and that does have real applications for how candidates run campaigns. Host a closing comment from you for someone who spends their professional life studying the u. S. Electorate. How are you thinking about the fact that so many people are interested in this years election . Its always exciting for me when we come to election season. Voters really do care about the process. This year more than ever though, i see voters and celebrities and many people talking about the actual voting process. About how we need to make it voter centric and easier for voters to actually participate. It is not all about vote, it is vote early because you do not want to wait until election day when there could be a problem. Or make sure you are casting your absentee ballots accurately and following the instructions. That is very exciting to me because while we have a great system we want to make sure voters are doing it right. This year more than ever before voters are paying attention to the process and they are telling us what they want the process to be. So i do hope moving forward policymakers are going to listen to voters and make sure theyre improving the voting experience. That voters really turn out and the process is as easy as it can be. Host so you expect there will be rules and regulations changes in the years ahead in preparation for the 2024 elections . Matt i really think so. And i think again policymakers will be responsive to voters and what voters want. When they see how easy absentee voting is and early voting is i , just do not see states that do not have so much of that going back to the old ways. Host i think anybody watching or listening to this interview would agree with you there has never been so many exhortations to vote in so many aspects of our lives as this year. Thank you for spending time to spending time with us today to talk about how 2020 election polling is changing and how many people are participating in the process this year. Thank you for your time. Matt thank you for having me. Host for the second part of our conversation we are going to turn to the Voting Technology and changes in that. We are talking to laura hautala, who covers technology with Cyber Threats for cnet. Cyber technology and Cyber Threats for cnet. Laura hautala, does it strike you as ironic that as you have been reporting on Voting Technology the biggest advances are paper stories, mailin ballots and digital voting paper records . Laura that does not surprise me at all. Election security advocates have been pushing for paper records for years. This is sort of the culmination or the furthest we have gotten on this process of making sure you have paper records to audit elections and let voters be sure their selections have gone through as they wanted it. Host before we dig more into paper records, i want to start with paper mail in ballots. The numbers are surprising everyone. More than 60 Million People have cast early ballots. The majority of those paper mailin ballots. How are they being processed at the other end when they are received . Laura paper ballots are typically processed with the same technology you would use on a scantron test. They can tell whether you filled in the right bubble. They are counting it with the technology to read paper and tabulate it on a computer. Host how long have these scanners been in use in the voting process . Laura scanners like this have been in use starting in the 60s and then picking up steam towards the end of the last century, where they became one of the top ways for precincts to count votes. Host what are the advantages and challenges of using the scanners . Laura the advantages are that you have a paper record. You are not recording a vote directly onto software or a machine that becomes difficult to audit. That is probably the number one failsafe that Cyber Security experts have pushed for over the past couple of decades. This Technology Makes that possible. Its the best of both worlds. We need to be able to count those physically. It is part of what makes the election feel accountable and legitimate to voters. When you can find out who won right away. But this also leaves a paper record so when there is an issue you can go back and check the documents. Host i was going to repeat the question about the challenges. Are they vulnerable to hacking . Laura all vote Tabulation Software could be vulnerable to hacking. Any machine that is connected to the internet could be vulnerable to hacking. So, voting agencies have to be careful with this technology when they update the software, when they do anything that connects it to the internet. That is a point of failure where, even if there is a voting machine not connected to the internet, where you are writing on paper, which is free from hackers, once Software Comes in the picture you have to make sure hackers have no or very limited access to that software. Host staying with optical scanners, there was a great increase in volume that states are experiencing. Did you find out they were prepared, from a hardware standpoint, or have states bought enough to be able to process the amounts they need . Laura thats a good question. I think some of the issues that people are most concerned about, with paper ballots being returned by mail, is less to do with whether or not machines can handle the volume, its whether voters can fill them out correctly. Paper ballots have a high rejection rate, which means they have more errors than ballots turned in at the polls. Because of that, if you have not filled in your bubble correctly or used the wrong color pen, there is no check on that to let you know you have made an error to fix it. I know a lot of Election Security officials are concerned and they are hoping voters can take extra time when filling out those ballots. Making sure you are using the signature you used to vote. That you used when you registered to vote and putting your ballot in the right envelope. Not putting two ballots from your household together, those types of things. It will be a question of how much time those voting agencies have. Some states are limited in when they can start processing ballots and others arent. It could be a crunch in the places where those optical scanners are running overtime. The people in the election agencies are trying to get those done as quickly as possible. We also see slower election return. So i think that is going to have an effect on Election Night when we have states i cannot count their ballot until a certain time. It will take a little longer to finish counting the ballot. Host let me turn to the big change since 2016, paper records versus Voting Machines. People will account for when encounter when they vote in person. This was necessitated by the 2016 election. What happened that necessitated the big change . Laura in 2016 there was a culmination of years of concerns about security and Voting Machines. Been 2000 states have purchasing a lot of electronic Voting Machines. Many of those dont have any paper records that a voter can verify it to make sure their votes were counted correctly. That raised a lot of concern and computer scientists put it out that anything with software can be vulnerable to hackers. And they said, even though these Voting Machines are supposed to never be connected to the internet and each state has different machines at a county by county level, that makes it a difficult thing for hackers, but not impossible. The real problem is not being able to say one way or another if hackers have had access and could there be a change in the votes. Paper records are a vital part of being able to answer that question and reassure voters it was counted correctly. Over the past 10 years or so states have been moving away from those paperless Voting Machines and have been investing in technology that has, even if its a touch screen, has a paper record the voter can verify. Not only that, Election Officials can use those paper records to do audits. Those are called risk limiting audits. They are the Gold Standard as far as Election Security folks are concerned. They let elections agencies have a small but significant number of ballots and look at them for any inconsistencies. That can flag it larger problem that is a statistical thing that can flag a larger problem that could trigger Something Like an audit or a recount. Hackers but also could find misconfigured software which is reporting the wrong thing. Its really just for the integrity of the vote. Host what percentage of the machines that americans will be using this election day and week for early voting will have paper records this year . Laura quite a few more. I dont know the exact percentage, but there are still some counties in texas using them, a lot in louisiana. It is a small handful of populist states that have these machines. And that is definitely a concern. It will be good news if its a smaller target if hackers didnt want to target those areas they would have to focus on those areas. Also, it isnt the only concern that Election Security officials had in 2016. The other major thing that happened was that allegedly russian affiliated hackers targeted Voter Registration databases. They probed the systems in all 50 states and it looks like in about four different counties they were able to access those databases. Votess not affecting necessarily, but it could affect who can vote. That is another major concern that has been addressed the last two or four years. Basically having worked with election agencies in the federal government to secure those systems. It will make a harder for them it will make it a lot harder for someone to access them with just a username and password. That wasnt very robust security for those databases. So that has been improved a lot. One of the things the federal government has been concerned about is a Ransomware Attack. A Ransomware Attack on Voter Registration bases. Will basically block off files with an encryption. Specifically they will demand money in return for those files. They dont always demand money and they dont always get the files back. Something the federal government specifically said could be used to sow chaos and deny access to voter record and lead up to the in the lead up to the election. That was another thing that they worked on locking down and making sure it would not be vulnerable in this election. Host those kind of Ransomware Attacks would not necessarily be the work of foreign interference, it could be domestic people who are interested in sowing discord. Laura its not something that necessarily takes a wellfunded operation to carry out, depending on the particular database. Anyone who wanted to create chaos could do it. The federal government says they are motivated host is there a story to tell our viewers our tradition in this country is that all handle states handle their own election individually, so you have lots of different systems, rules, and regulations. Is there a story over the last decade or so of public, state, federal, and the private Tech Industry coming together to help address election related issues . Laura that is definitely the case. Elections are run by states. Its also handed down by the county level. This creates quite a Patchwork Quilt of different policies, technologies, and wherewithals. That is something that adds to as huge complexity to our election system. To improve things you have to work with these agencies. The federal government is not in charge. They can offer assistance. This has been a story of the federal government offering assistance to a variety of agencies and many states taking them up on that. States can also choose to get similar help from private vendors. Industry ofarge vendors out there working to help these election agencies do a better job of securing vital systems. There is a lot of participation from the cybersecurity community. There is sometimes tension between people who are there to poke holes in the systems and cleanup of laws and the people who are trying to use the systems to help people vote. Its not always a warm relationship, but there have been interesting partnerships of trying to suggest ways you can have more secure technology and maybe even build it together. There was a collaboration in texas along those lines where they actually invented their own machine that attached a printer and allowed for the machines to create a paper record. That machine did not end up getting built and used in the mainstream, but its a part of a larger conversation of this is this needs to be better and this is what it needs to look like. Host the machines in widespread use today started to come online in the early 2000s after the 2000 contested election. You have written some interesting history in 2000, the pieces about voting. In 2000, the bush v gore, and people will remember the story of the hanging chads and butterfly ballots in florida. People states were using a different kind of technology. What was the prevalent type of technology 20 years ago . Laura the florida ballots were punchcard ballots. The reason we ever had punchcard ballots is interesting to me. These were paper punch cards where voters made their selection by punching a hole through the card and the appropriate place. The reason we had these is because in the 1960s we had Mainframe Computers that took in data through punchcard. You could program them or you could put in data with a punchcard. This is literally Computer Programming tools we were punching holes into. It was a huge improvement in a lot of ways because the previous machines were huge and difficult to maintain. When youre in a popular county with a lot of things on the ballot, those machines were covered in dials and knobs you had to turn. It was just cumbersome. This shrunk the ballot down onto these punchcards. Improvement and also allowed for really speedy counting of the vote. It was learned was that a really close election. If voters dont mark their ballots clearly, if they dont punch all the way through and leave a hanging chad voter intentions are difficult to figure out during a recount. That became quite a problem in 2000. That marks the death of punchcard ballots. They were still used for a little while later. In the 2003 governor recall election in california, there were 135 candidates vying to replace then governor gray davis. L. A. County still had punchcard ballots. They had ballots with all of those candidates on them. They did go away after that point because that caused so much chaos. The federal government said, we need better technology. These are punch cards from the 1960s. What can we do . Since the 1980s, electronic Voting Machines had been in development and had been used. They were originally just as big as the dial and lever machines. They had the whole ballot on one giant screen. He pressed it and you pressed it and it was electromechanical. It would record it with the pressure of your hand. That was then developed into the touchscreen and dial computer ballots that we are used to in many places in the country. That time, even though Computer Science has said this is a problem, these could be hacked, that is what was on offer for a lot of states. Some states went for more optical scanners, they invested federal money in optical scanners. Other states went to these paperless machines that later became problematic in their own regard. Progression ofa moving from one Older Technology to another. It is kind of a story of, boating technology the technology of voting is typically not in line with where we are with this technology of computers in our daily life. To leave the want history of computer processing of votes without getting the name of the 1960 four machine because it is so 1960s. It was called the votomatic. How large a breakthrough in technology was that when it was introduced . It was right up there with these were the computers we were using to make calculations for the space program. It was a major advancement. The lever machines were tabulated by looking at little dials that were like odometers, writing down that number and adding them altogether. Being able to just insert the votes into a computer was a huge advancement. It does sound like something out of the jetsons, it was very 1960s. Host some of our older viewers may not know about it. Im sure many of them will remember the gears and lever machines. They were in wide use for a long time around the country. Lets move to 2002. The federal government did get very involved after the election and passed a law called the help america vote act. Lets listen to president george w. Bush talk about that legislation as it was signed. [video clip] pres. Bush today im proud to sign into law an important reform for our nation. Americans are selfgoverning people and a central commitment to selfgovernment is free and fair elections. The help america vote act of 2002 is a bipartisan measure to help states and localities update their systems of voting, and ensure the integrity of elections in america. [end of video clip] host how much money did that pump into the system from the federal government . Laura millions. The states went on shopping sprees and their counties as well. It was quite a bit. Its created a rush on voting it created a rush on Voting Technology. Its interesting because it was basically a onetime deal. The effect that what states got the effect was that states got what they got. A lot of it is still in place. Though there has been a lot of effort to replace the paperless machines. That influx of cash really shaped the landscape today of Voting Technology. Host we are talking about some of the challenges along the way to Voting Technology, but particularly this year. In one of your stories you talked about the federal governments involvement in hardening systems against the risk. Quoted the director of the csia c cids the agencys biggest concerns are ransomware. It exposed Voter Registration database as electronic voter and electronic voter rolls. As a result, they launched a program to help state Election Officials make sure they are securing the systems. Americans may not be familiar with the Cyber Security and infrastructure security agency. What is this mandate and what has it been doing to help elections . As the name may imply because it has security in it twice. Cisa is an agency that is tasked with securing our infrastructure. In that regard, the election system has been made part of the Critical Infrastructure system of the united states. That includes the electrical grid and the financial system. This agencys mandate is to help secure it and be aware of vulnerabilities. N states of the risk, centralizing the information, and understanding of the risk to the systems. And communicate with states because it is such a patchwork of agencies that are securing our elections. The authority resides within the state, but it makes it so that if there is a known threat, getting the word about that out really falls to somebody outside of that system and that is where cisa has stepped in with their cybersecurity system expertise. Host in one of your most recent pieces, you reported that because of all of these considerable threats to in person machines and the hardware, and also because of the pandemic, that there is a renewed interest in online voting. Are we close to a workable online Voting System for this country or individual states . Laura the short answer is no, with a caveat. Cybersecurity experts told me we are not even close to having this technology needed to secure online voting for the general public. That being said, we do have it for a small subset of voters. Those are military and overseas voters as well as some disabled voters. It doesnt look like the way you think. You are not filling out a ballot online and hitting send. It is essentially receiving your ballot in a pdf file or downloading it from a web portal. A small section of those voters can print it out and mail it in. Mark the ballot on their computer, printed out and mail , it in. And a smaller subset of those voters can save an image of that filled out and signed ballot and return it by email, fax, or on that web portal. It is a small group of voters and it enfranchises people to with anave to deal onerous International Mail system or who could not vote independently if they did not have an online ballot marking process. That includes people with mobility disabilities or lowvision who may not be able to see a paper ballot. They spoke with a blind voter who would have been an absentee voter, but she could not fill out her paper ballot without help from a friend and she did not feel comfortable with that, so she did not vote. Now the voter lives in pennsylvania and she is looking forward to be able to mark her ballot on a computer screen with the assistance of her screen reading technology. Now she can mark her ballot privately, print it out, and mail it back in. Some voters in other states like delaware could return it by email or other states can send it back on the web portal. You write about the challenge of turning something in by email or by fax is the loss of privacy. Why is that so important . The reason that is important is because you have the right to a secret ballot. That is a really big deal. We embrace the private ballot, the secret ballot in the united states. It became a major cause after the civil war to end the political corruption to keep code version coercion out of the vote. Your main is attached to the top of your ballot. Its hard to separate your identity from it right away. Its also so exposed to hackers. Emails are not secure. They are not a secure way to send information. Its supposed to be anonymous and extremely secret. That is a big deal to waive that right people who want to use it is if they are eligible. One of the experts told you is the timeline from my voting for the majority of americans, given the ease of being able to do it on your own timetable from i have been told anywhere from at least 10 years to decades before we can all vote online. And the reason for that is, voting is not like banking. Banking is not anonymous. Your name is attached to every aspect of your banking transactions. So we dont have the technology that can secure the vote and keep it anonymous. We would need a lot of advances. This is a runofthemill thing that affects everyone. We would be voting on our personal devices. Our personal devices are completely secure. We have software on our computers to keep them safe from hackers. Its not a guarantee. If hackers could install mauer and direct you to a malicious website, you could get access to your computer and change your vote after casting them. Then there is a whole internet infrastructure of sending your ballot across when youre returning it to your election agency. There are servers and other countries, well control that infrastructure, so we would need really solid Encryption Technology to lock up those ballot files. Were just not their area. The last thing is fraud detection. It is somewhat of an acceptable risk. Its hard to reduce, but its something they know will happen. They know exactly how much it will cause. With voting there is not an acceptable fraud risk. Its not something you can build into the system. I guess there is a certain percentage of corrupted ballot hackers can get their hands on. And we need fraud detection that can tell before they are counted. We dont have that technology at. If we are going to ramp this up to the general public, there is going to need to be a lot of advances. I will close with election day 2020, really just hours away. What can you tell our viewers about your level of confidence, after all of your reporting about the security of this years election and its ultimate validity . I think Cyber Security experts are less concerned right now about the threats to both counting the may have been in years past, and thats a really good thing. Thats because of the increase of paper records and increased coordination among the states and federal government. There are a lot of reasons to feel good that would say this election will be better. Major areas of concern have to do with how the election is perceived. The fact that there could be delays and vote counting for a variety of reasons. Whether all of those millions and millions of mail in ballots get process and get returned on time, are marked clearly, and all the other reasons we may not know exactly who won right away. That could lead to disinformation that can amplify. If there is a feeling like something is going wrong with the way the votes are counted, that could lead to a lack of trust in the election. I think that is where a lot of cybersecurity experts are focused election day, year, to see whether that will turn into a major problem where people are losing trust. Thank you so much. You have been writing about this for many months. We appreciate your information for cspans q a. Thank you for the invitation. All q a programs are available on our website or as a podcast at cspan. Org. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] here,ction day is november 3. Stay with cspan as voters select the next president and congress. Ies control the conversation, share your experiences, and hear from the candidates. Watch live on cspan and cspan. Org or listen on the free cspan radio app. Your place for an unfiltered view of politics. Also during the course of the morning, we will focus on specific states with reporters that have been carefully following these events. Thank you for joining us this morning. Thank you for having me. What do you think of the aggressive nature of candidates going to the state . Think thempaigns state is in play. I dont think either feels like it has pennsylvania locked down. They are particularly concerned about the bluecollar voters. Biden