Gabriel good afternoon. My name is gabriel starling. Im the statewide Voting System implementation and interpret the state of georgia, here to give you an election update as we get closer to finding who will win georgias 16 electoral votes for president of the united states. As of right now, we have 108 counties that have certified the results. As we get closer to these certifications and the counties and reconciliations, the total different yesterday was 14,111. The total different yesterday was 14,111. Now the difference is 14,072. The we doing a risk limiting audit, and as ive said since tuesday night and wednesday, this is all about process and following the law as written. This is something that maybe 12 people on the planet can explain in a way that everybody can understand it. This is one of those scientific things where you can use math to get to a confidence level that the outcome of the election is correct. In this particular case, the decision was made to do the president ial election. The press that many times has said this is caving to trump in the campaign. This could not be further from the truth. We knew there was a specific purpose for an audit and the law. It was to instill confidence in the outcome of this election. If we were going to do it easier risk limiting audit, it would have probably undermined confidence in the outcome of the president ial election. Let me be perfectly clear on this. If it was 14,000 votes the other way, we would be doing the exact same thing. This is very important to understand. Right now, there are voters in this state and across the country that said those machines cheated or miscounted or somebody hacked them or something happens because there is no way that that guy won or lost. When you are emotionally tied to the outcome anything you see , that feeds your believe you believe. That is why we have chosen to do this audit in this way. This will be the largest hand retallying in the united states. It is a heavy lift. There is an audit and there is a recount. Two separate sets of rules. We have chosen to do this audit to instill confidence. We have told you for over a year that you can trust accounts of these electronic machines. We stand by that statement, because it is the truth. We anticipate this audit will bear this out. Is there risk involved . Of course there is. As ive said very plainly and very clearly, human beings are the most flawed part of this process. I guarantee you the numbers will be slightly different. Let me give you some historical data. There is a recount in the state of michigan in 2016. They were doing a manual recount all hand marked paper ballots. Picked up about 750, Hillary Clinton picked up about the marginal difference 850. Was about 100 in 2. 5 million. Marked paperl hand ballots. In this particular situation, we are in a better situation because usually we see changes on hand marked paper ballots. That is where human beings tend to make mistakes. In this case its only about 25 of votes, about 1. 3 million. We have hired some outside groups to help with the logistics. Another outside group that has designed the procedures and processes and given out the instructions. Either they are going out right this minute or we had our first atl earlier this morning 11 00 a. M. I believe it was about an hour and a half. We got a very good understanding of this. They are to begin tomorrow at 9 00 a. M. And end on wednesday the 18th at midnight. Midnight going from wednesday to thursday. We figured out the amount of auditing teams they need. These will be auditors. You have to contact the county if you want to be an observer. You can contact your state party to be an observer. This will be open to the public. There will be observers from both parties. One other key distinction as the , audit teams are going through the ballots and making their stacks, they will compare the ballot. If they cannot discern the voters intent, it will be handed to an adjudication team. We do not anticipate a high number of those. There were not a lot statewide. The vast majority were in the senate contest. In the president ial contest, there were very few. Either people knew who they were voting for or they didnt. This goes back to the misinformation and disinformation situation we are seeing in georgia and across the country. There are about 24,000 people who chose to skip the president ial race. That is not surprising. People are talking about a differential. If you go county by county, you see different differentials. Fulton county as one example, there were 9000 more voters for senator purdue than there were for the president. These things will even out. There is nothing very odd or ambiguous about that. Another thing weve heard about before, 132,000 voters on the roles had a change of address. Federal law prohibits in massive list maintenance during an election year. So guess what . We know they are there. There is nothing we can do. If senators can go look at this and help states clean their lists, it will help. We have joined the Electronic Registration Information Center that will allow us to do some more consistent cleaning. That is the beginning of the bedrock of the foundation of trust. I know there are many other parts of misinformation out there. Talking about flipping votes and changing votes. I will say this again the hammer , and scorecard that i was quoting when i talked about this before was the director of the cyber and Infrastructure Agency under Homeland Security. This is him talking. It is nonsense and a hoax. If anything is being claimed if anyone is being claimed that something is being flipped by a secret computer, that is nonsense. The procedures around the audit, we have to get through by those days. There will be multiple audit teams. We will have observers from both parties. The outcome of this will be the certified result. With that i will take any , questions. Does your audit distinguish between those votes . They already do that. The absentee ballots are kept separately in smaller batches. We will already know those. The batches should be able to do that. We can separate those out. Are you inviting a second recount from the Trump Campaign . [indiscernible] under the law, anyone who comes in second by less than half a percent can ask for a recount. I would hope that common sense would prevail. If it is very close to the first time, there is a possibility of a computer recounting. [indiscernible] the concern is everybody wants this count to be done accurately and on time. How confident are you that they will be get it done in a timely manner . We are confident. We have been running the numbers. We have done those before. They have the expertise in this. We are working with the counties to make sure they have the manpower in place. We can very confident get it in. We are aiming for the 18th. We will not be releasing new result counts as they come in. We will be releasing the senate ballots that got through. Percentage of ballots that got through. When you are looking at batches, it will be similar to what we saw before. We will start with absentees. They are the most problematic. On day one, we will look at each other and say, i dont know if we can make those. But as time goes, the speed will pick up. The second round of this, we are moving to the ballot marking devices. They are a lot easier. Its a name, you stack it and go. There are procedures in place. We will have to have sanity checks to make sure nothing is going off the rails. We have timelines set for everybody. The big counties have resources. We brought in a Logistics Firm to help some of these mediumsize counties. To make sure they have the ability to do that. The costs will be borne by the counties right now. Were looking at a way to do some cost sharing to help take some of that burden off of the counties. That formula has not been worked out yet. Is the process of challenging ballots in the audit the same . There is no process of challenging ballots in the audit. There is only the adjudication done by the republican and democratic adjudicators. There is no ballot challenge. Is that the same . These rules are different. I do not know the recount rules that well. Ive been paying attention to the audit rules. Can you describe the measures in place to leave a paper trail . [indiscernible] everyone one of these has to be sealed. Even when they are doing the ballot checks themselves, they bring in every person who will be moving ballots. There will be people with specific jobs for these things. When the auditors get there, they will have a ballot tally sheet. They will reseal the boxes on the way back out. The only difference is that they go to adjudication. Those will go to the adjudication teams. They will be kept in separate envelopes and tied back to that original box of ballots. All of this is documented. All of this is put down on those tally sheets and tracked back to a master log on the ballot manifest. We brought up double voting. [indiscernible] well the audit be able to identify and weed out any of those . No, this is an audit of the ballots that came out legally. It will be a postelection situation to look for individuals that may have violated the law and double voted. Georgia, the state constitution requires privacy of ballots. If anyone has cast their ballot who is dead, that is a violation of the law. There is no way to tie this back to individual human beings. I will get you a better mask next year so you dont have to go through all of this. You are considering specific ballots. [indiscernible] we start again with a new count. In some counties, the ballots match. In some counties they dont. ,that is a good thing and verification because theyre not aiming at a target. There will be a cleaner way to get to a final result. Trying tohing were do is show that the equipment scanned the ballots properly and the accounts we got were the right counts. The ballots are the backup trail to that. Will it change some . I have said in every conference, yes. The outcome will change slightly. At least the final numbers. See Something Like 15,000, we have bigger issues to worry about. Is toint of the audit show the machines counted the ballots fairly. What weve said from the beginning, every single day we , want to get it right. It is not happening. This is a rationale for the audit to begin with. [indiscernible] is the secretary of state quarantined . I will not speak to the Health Concerns of family members of anyone elected or on our staff. I think they can speak for themselves. I will probably get tested. It is not my place to confirm. We are talking about voting. [indiscernible] if that is the case, we have a wide staff. We have outside consultants here. The work of this recount is being done at the county level. That is where the boots on the ground are. As the secretary pointed out yesterday the men and women who , stood behind him at that conference are the ones who are doing the real work. They have to make sure they have the tables ready to go. They have to make sure they get the notices out. We are asking them to stream this thing live so people can see the process as it happens. We are working every day to be as transparent as we can. [indiscernible] my hope and prayer is that we cannot move deadlines. We have a federal dropdead certification deadline. And we have potential backup plans in place. [indiscernible] there is no need to rescan qr codes. You are looking at the name. That is what they are stacking. They are not looking at bubbles or anything on the ballot marking device created ballots. The whole point is if you can count it out it comes out the , same, it speaks for itself. That is the whole point of the audit. [indiscernible] there are two ways to do this. If you go back and listen to individual whats a good word to say academics who discovered this, you have to go to a full hand retally. They have said that on the record. We could have set it at zero. But lets get some perspective. If you set it at 10 , you have to pull 1. 5 million ballots. 5 , you would have to pull 2. 5 million ballots. It is functionally and easier it is easier to do it this way. The the discoverers of science past it have said if you get past 15 , you may as well do the whole thing. Beginning ofthe the conference we would have , chosen to do this if biden was the one behind by 14,000 votes. Let me guarantee all of the , people yelling right now about these machines in these margins enclose, that are supporting donald trump if the situation , was reversed, the same thing would be happening on the other side. We have seen that over the years as social media puts us into our on bubbles, where fact sometimes theyvettle diluted, been told the most important election of your lives. Ive heard that every year since ive been alive. It always seems to be ratcheting up that way. There are people in your position in other states that have received death threats. [indiscernible] in an abundance of caution, we will make sure that our office and employees are secure. I know there was a situation yesterday with a reporter and a cameraman that were put in potentially harms way. That is a terrible thing, and that should not happen. No one should put out the idea that it is ok to intimidate people or change peoples minds. This office has one responsibility only gives voters , the right and accurate results. Regardless of outcome. [indiscernible] it will be difficult. If anybody doesnt follow anything. We have a lot of safeguards in place. A lot of processes in place. All cybersecurity begins with physical security. To get into the Voter Registration system, we have to have a unique user id, password. Its multifactor. We get that data to check people in. The scanners never touch the internet. Have four Voter Registration systems. We have partnerships with the department of Homeland Security. We look at Penetration Testing to make sure nothing bad is happening. It is always changing every day. This office spends a lot of time making sure that the equipment involved is secure. We spend a heck of a lot of time with the counties, training people. The decentralized nature of voting in georgia is safe itself. Going forward in the january 5 election we have gone from 50 , state targets to one. We fully anticipate that the potential threat level in the state will increase. While i am at it, there is another thing we need to talk about, going back to the nature of our law when it comes to registration. There has been discussion about people coming in from out of state to come and help georgia do the right thing. I want to remind everybody in , order to vote in georgia, you have to be a georgia resident. You cant be a canvasser for bloomberg or the koch brothers. If you do that, and you leave, the Attorney Generals Office reminded at this yesterday and put it online. It is a felony. A 100,000ars and fine. If you want to move to georgia to be part of the number one state in america, we are happy to have you. But if you are here solely for politics, if you voted for senate in one state and another state, that could potentially go before the courts. Dont game our system. The secretary of States Office will stand with the Attorney Generals Office if you are gaming our system. Come here, campaign, go door to door. Its your First Amendment right, but dont try to game our system. [indiscernible] no. [laughter] the final instructions just went out. It would be difficult. We have given them a lot of things they have to print. This is a very open process. We know there will be observers. They need to make sure they are there. They need to follow the rules on this stuff. I feel confident that our counties have executed everything so well since frankly, 95 of them did a great june. In june. 70 of the issues in june were in one county. We saw some issues with them, like i said, i had to go myself because they uploaded the results without doing the reconciliation. It is silly things like this that undermine confidence. Thats why you have to follow the processes and procedures laid out. It is boring and tedious but it is vitally important. [indiscernible] they will be the weak link. All you can do is try to mitigate it. By doing the batches and keeping the sanity checks in. If there is something out of place, we will try to address that as it comes. Like i said they will make , mistakes. There are people out there who will not believe the outcome. They dont trust the computers so they need a human being to look at it to see if it is right. [indiscernible] what happens if the counties missed their deadline . That is a hypothetical that does not pertain to us yet. [indiscernible] [indiscernible] the audit shall begin tomorrow at 9 00 a. M. We dont want people waiting until monday. We went to get the show on the road. We are burning daylight every hour. This is an audit that has moved to the point of a hand retallying. It is not a recount, because that is a separate statute. Thank you. [captions copy lapse your mobile devices, top, or phone, and go to election for result, our latest deal on the transition of power. Go to cspan. Org election. Cspans washington journal. Every day, were taking your calls live on the news of the day and well discuss all of the issues that impact you. Coming up friday morning, well talk about the pentagon and president ial transitions with center for Strategic International study defense policy analyst, todd harrison. Then a discussion about Trump Campaign election challenges with rebecca greene, law professor and codirector of the election law program. Watch cspans washington journal live at 7 00 eastern friday morning. And be sure to join the discussion with your phone calls, facebook comments, text messages, and tweets. Coming up live on friday, a nasa administrator holds a News Conference ahead of saturdays spacexs resilience crew launch. Thats 10 00 a. M. On cspan. At 10 45, House Speaker nancy pelosi had her Weekly Briefing with reporters. At noon, former Homeland Security secretaries talk about president ial transitions. And the importance of the peaceful transfer of power for national security. Then at cspan2 at noon, the role of telehealth during the pandemic. Continues. Host with us is jason snead, executive director of the honest elections project. Hes here to talk about the election, and the name of your organization kind of sets the tone of the discussion this morning, jason snead. The honest elections project, tell us about that and how your group is funded. Guest well, we are a nonpartisan election watch dog group. We were set up and we started this project earlier this year, because we were anticipating that this was going to be not only one of the most contentious election cycles, but wulls all of the most litigious, and we wanted to make sure that what got lost