The directions for the problems with voting by mail. The mail seems to have been a National Story now is with you can can trust the meal or not and that is what covid19 has brought to the fore. We need to we should have put some his health at risk to exercise a constitutional right to vote so thats what people have turned to the mail including West Virginia. What weve done is within the bounds of law, thats one of the key points you enjoy set to stay within your state state bar, te elections are run by the states and within states and then by the counties. Why people may hear something happening and in the state that may be working the vote by mail system arena, they have to take that into context that in those states perhaps they been working on that for ten or 15 years, if you talk to him wideman in washington and an organ and somebodys other states doing vote by mail. Theyve been working on the voter list maintenance and getting the proper machinery in place to be able to count the votes and drop boxes and all those things. Just because something sounds good in another state may not apply either legally within your state and thats what weve got here to West Virginia where you cant jump to a vote by mail system or it are just drop boxes and that thing. You have to operate within the confines of the law and yet still provide flexibility to allow voters to get to the ballot box. In our situation we did the people the opportunity to vote using an absentee ballot but when one of 16 states that require a voter to request an absentee ballot. We are not a vote by mail where you simply send ballots after everybody. Id like to talk about why dont advocate that and the cause of opportunities for fraud. Vast opportunities for fraud should that happen. When somebody requests an absentee ballot then you know theres a live person on the other income given i accurate address to send the ballot to and it worked wonderfully for us but us. We had perhaps the best primary across the united states. In fact, those asked to testify in front of the u. S. Senate because of the high success West Virginia had during our primary, best practices we implemented to then prepare for a general election. With the mail in particular let me give you a quick example of how the mail can be a problem. I dont want to take this as an attack on the Postal Service because we have hard workers there, a great system in place. 96 of the time by their own statistics the mail is delivered on time as scheduled to the right address. But what that means in an election year, has 4 of the times there could been issued. If you have a paper application for an absentee ballot, 4 of those may not arrive at the Clerks Office on time as scheduled. Then when the clerk mails the ballot out to the individual, 4 may not arrive on time. When the individual voter since the ballot back to the clerk and 4 of those may not arrive on time. You can see how this complicates or multiplies the effect of inaccuracies, opportunities for human error, perhaps opportunities for rod to occur, purposefully throwing away ballots and that sort of thing. What we found in West Virginia, when specific situation in our capital city, 500 absentee applications were set aside by a training whos undergoing the training process and then he left for various reasons and they would not identify for another two weeks after people complain we did an investigation and so forth. It was in the fairies come nothing wrong going on but it was a complication that when you use voting by mail these things do in her into the process and it causes problems. Thats enough of an introductory to whats happening in West Virginia and i would be glad to answer any followup questions. Thank you. And i just want to say that the 4 figure you were talking about is the Inspector General of the Postal Service released a report last november on the 2010 election that in it they said their standard for ontime delivery of election mail which of course includes absentee ballots was 96 , not 100 but 96 which is but 96 which is usually made at least 4 of election mail bombs may not be delivered in time. I think that same ig report said their worst delivery times in seven states the only achieved that 84 of the time, which means Something Like dickstein of ballots might not be delivered in time. If i can bring Christian Adams in. Christian, you and mark if you will turn your cameras on. Christian, secretary warner talked about the potential problems in some states with inaccurate Voter Registration lists. I know the Public Interest Legal Foundation has been working that he should think you all just recently released a report on that. Can you talk about that issue and some of the problems you are seeing in states when it comes to mail in balloting . Right, thank you for doing this important event every year. Its critically important to defend the constitution. In contrast, secretary warner was talking about in West Virginia the system they have working there. I think a great example of the contrary is nevada. One of the things we looked at very carefully was the rush to automatic mail ballots in the primary where the data show things did not go very well. Take clark county, 1. 3 million ballots were automatically mailed. 230,000 roughly bounced back as undeliverable which means there are bad voter rolls, bad addresses, people are dead. 310,000 came back. 310,000 out of 1. 3 million, and 7000 of those were rejected as defective, having some sort of problem. Those people lost their vote. Probably dont even know about it that their vote wasnt counted and, therefore, they were disenfranchised. If it gone in person those 7000 votes would have counted. Hans, you mentioned Research Study we did. A number of years ago pew did a Research Study where they looked at the voter rolls around the country and found roughly, millions and millions and millions were bad. I think they said there were 2 million dead people on the voter rolls. We replicated that study at public legal interest and date will be got all the voter roles, im not committed them, normalized them, up against commercial data, other private data that is out there that you can see whos alive and who is dead, who is duplicate and so forth. And then in nevada, for example, and a focus on the bed because thats the state that rush to vote by mail, they have thousands of people improperly registered at commercial addresses which are not supposed to be in nevada. If you go to our website you will see a video we did last week going to many of these addresses configured to come knocking on the door asking for the voter who invariably is not there because they dont live in an abandoned mine for the dont live in a vacant lot or they dont live in an Auto Repair Shop or the dont live in a casino was a dont live in a liquor store. If you go to this video you will see what the state of the voter rolls are in nevada. When you have dirty voter rolls on one hand and you vote by mail automatically on the other it equals the disaster. You cant do it that way. Thats what nevada is doing it thats what new jersey is doing by the way, and lo and behold bunch of other places as well. What a close on one last thing on your question, hans, i it involves language. I think its important to reiterate something that said i said you know the audience recently. We people care about these issues come when people to work in this space there often called vote suppressors, nasty names and so forth. My message event am a message now is do not be afraid of these labels because they are smears to try to get you arent interested in this issue. I would suggest the vast majority of people participating in this webinar online care about this issue. Want to see something done to protect the integrity of the elections. That doesnt make him a racist or a vote suppression. People have to ignore this smears and not be afraid of them because we have a lot of work to do in this country as relates to election integrity. Thanks, christian. And now mark, mark hemingway, i want to bring you in. You all as a city earlier, real clear investigations that he terrific report, an investigation into vote harvesting. The way that is been carried on in places like texas and florida to the extent where you at individuals going in and basically coercing, i think coercing and pressuring voter to vote a particular way, or actually filling out their ballots for them. Talk a livid about some of the investigations you all have done and particularly how it relates to this push for mail in balloting that we see now in this election. Well, there are obviously been a lot of complications because of the mailin balloting. Theres been a lot of stuff particularly on outdated voter rolls and problems that states have had in keeping those notables uptodate. A lot of this is building on the work that j Christian Adams has done and a lot of that has been building on work thats done by other get work done by conservative nonprofits because this information is out there. And, frankly, its kind of shocking. California as of last year or so had a Voter Registration rate exceeding 100 , meaning that more Voter Registration codes then filed the people live in the state. Thats a bad, thats a bad voter files have been. Obviously the transition toward mail in ballots for all the reasons that j Christian Adams just illustrate in clark county. Imagine in one county across nevada but spread that across the country and you start to see this is a really, really, really big problem. Its interesting because this is a necessary like even a nefarious thing in some ways. In the case of california i think it is, they have resisted legal attempts to cause them to comply with federal law, that require they keep their voter rolls clean. But by and large a lot of this is something the fact we dont spend a lot of money investing in election infrastructure. Its an afterthought in a lot of states. May be mac warner can speak to that but in a lot of places i think thats the case because we saw lot of the same problems with Voter Registration in red states and red counties. A lot of it i think its helped making people aware of the problems. Unfortunately, as again j Christian Adams has already hinted at a little bit this has become so politicized and so toxic to like even raise these issues. This is like fundamental Good Government issues we should all agree on, and yet anytime you raise this vector of these problems you would me to get smeared. I think thats a huge problem. I do think that we kind of turned a quarter this year with covid in the sense that there been such a strong push for mailin balloting sort of gradual happening overtime. The fact is happen all at once forced people to convert a lot of their particular issues. One is that theres an incredibly high rate of ballot rejections when it comes to mailin ballots. New jersey did Something Like 30 municipal elections in may all by mail or Something Like i think just under a 10 ballot rejection rate across the state. Thats astounding. One particular case in new jersey, i cant claim to have broken the story. I can say real clear politics and real investigations were instrumental in making a National News story did expose abject voter fraud in paterson new jersey with the states democratic ag indicted a sitting member of paterson new Jersey City Council for major voter fraud efforts involving absentee ballots, mailin ballots of course. Theres some issues out there. I am both appalled and surprised unfortunately that most of my colleagues dont seem to see these issues for what they are, which is a genuine threat to free and Fair Elections and not necessarily issues that need to be politicized in any way, shape, or form. There are basic matters of following the law, proper civic governance and restoring peoples confidence in the process. Say what you want about whatever competitive advantage you might gain by some partisan catfight over to a suppressing votes, the overall confidence in our electoral system has been seriously undermined this year and i think there are very specific reason for that that the media are not covering and not addressing. Go ahead i think to verify what her from both christian and mark, beginning with christians remarks. Its interesting the figures he cited from the bad i dont want people think nevada is an aberration. Imagine 1. 3230000 million inaccuracies coming back 1. 3 million, and 300,000. We have similar numbers and when we sin of his application for the ballots, 230,000 came back exact same thing he just died from nevada. I would say that may be indication if you do that proportional across the united states, thats about 16 to onefifth of all registered voters may be, those registration list may be inaccurate. This is after ive taken 195,000 off the rolls. Now thats about 200,000 im expected to take off after this election by state law. Think about what wouldve happened here in westridge and if we had a book by gnosis recently send ballots after everybody in 1. 2 million ballots would of got out, 450,000 people who participated. That means it wouldve been more ballots sitting peoples mailboxes unused and were people who participated. Think of those opportunities for fraud and irregularities to occur. It is simply just not a good idea. Thats what i will never advocate for voting in or for moving away from voting in person to old pineville system. Voting in person is the Gold Standard, the most secure. You are at a polling precinct where questions could be answered, issues can be addressed if theres any malfunctions. When youre sitting at home you can vote however you want an absentee paper ballot and one county in West Virginia we had 1017 over votes. House of delegates race where they could vote for two two and somebody votes for three. That happened 1017 1017 times t one county. Those votes are not invalidated. Those votes that they thought were being cast for individuals were not counted. Thats why will people voting in person if at all possible and thats why were going to these Great Lengths to get ppe and train the poll workers to make sure that the health and safety of the voters are secured in West Virginia and that but it will be required to wear a mask when the good person. Thats what im encouraging people to do is vote in person and only if you have a legitimate covid19 concern then were making it as easy as possible for people to vote by absentee. The thing that mark mention was the more than come more people than voters, or people register than the were actual voters. We still have that in two meck county in West Virginia and thats been after id been working towards again to clean up the road Voter Registration list. When i came at office the reform act counties, we got two of those counties. I said that the 70 process to get somebody removed, im only in one true. Let me get to the second election and will get to the other counties. Think of the message that sends to the people to make us election system where you have more registered voters than you do people. Thats why and its the threat of lawsuits that really concerned the clerks and thats why they came to me to run for office and to run on the platform of cleaning up the Voter Registration list so sometimes you do have to threaten those lawsuits or actually follow through lawsuits when you have those terrible situations where its clearly people are not following federal law that requires voter list maintenance and thats what my predecessor did not do for ages and thats whats important of these organizations that other watchdogs to make sure the integrity of the elections are upheld. You mention lawsuits, secretary warner, edit what to go to that topic with all three of you because one of the other things you said in answer to the first question was you talk about operating within the law. And within the law states, including West Virginia, have put in certain safety and security protocols for absentee ballots. In order to try to cut down on the opportunity for fraud and other problems. Many states have witness signature requirements. States require you to fill out an absentee ballot form that you didnt sign so you can begin at some kind of authentication. My understanding of whats been going on across the country is there to get all these lawsuits filed, mostly by progressive organizations on the left side of the political aisle, trying to not enforced by going to vote by mail but at the same time getting rid of and voiding out state laws like that, like saying you shouldnt have to apply with the signature requirement. A lawsuit in alabama say the state should not be able to apply voter id requirement. Im wondering have you seen that in West Virginia . I am sure other sectors have seen that in many other states, too. We have and it was mentioned earlier about being labeled voting suppression and that sort of thing. You have to just bear with them because youre going to be attacked. Ive been attacked in various newspapers and so forth by letters to the editors and operates and so forth by implementing voter identification law. We have a very weak voter identification law, at least we have it. Any number like 17 or 18 different everything from a hunting license to electric build all kinds of two things you can use. Its not a photo id so its a very weak voter identification law or requirement. I think its very easy, but the people in West Virginia we are a conservative state by nature, they expected. The what the integrity of the process. Not one person really has complained legitimately about having to produce most have the idea, you know, car registration, drivers license, whatever to show, they want to show they are who they are. You have two i doubt to the culture of the state. Someone may want to have because of history you have to have a notarization for absentee ballot and that sort of thing. I dont question any of those states because of their history. I know we in West Virginia have had a checkered past with regards to Election Fraud going back to the buying of the election of john kennedy in the democratic primary in 1960 that occurred right in West Virginia. After that she would humphrey was out of the race. People are proud of that for decades, and that was the legacy i grew up under, knowing that it happened in West Virginia and people were proud of it and thats a a culture im trying o change or overcome here in West Virginia by introducing and keeping the voter lists strong or maintenance to take it or that to ensure the voter identification is in place. Those sorts of tactics or techniques that are needed to ensure the integrity of the election. Christian, talk about these lawsuits because i know that i think you all are participating in some of them come filing briefs and other things in this attempt to basically avoid the security protocols that states have in place when it comes to absentee or mailin ballot. Lets reset this for a second. So groups who were filing these lawsuits like the heart of our democracy, right, the Brennan Center or league of women voters, lets think about it for a minute. I democratically elected legislature lets say in virginia, i democratically elected legislature, every one of the seas in the house and Senate Passed a law that said chuck have an absentee ballot signature if youre going to do that, and they did that to protect the voter, to protect the system. That law then went to the democratically elected governor of virginia who signed the law making it represent the will of the people. In comes the league of women voters and they decide to democratically enacted provisions of a state election law, they just dont like it. What do they do . They file a lawsuit in the Western District of West Virginia in front of judgment, u. S. District court judge, the commonwealth of virginia, that championed a definitive statute markarian, and im kidding, capitulates, come raises the white flag. I was in on one of his Conference Calls because the Public Interest Legal Foundation file a brief in the case and i heard something i never heard before. And judgment asked the commonwealth of virginia, do you intend to file a response of pleading . Anybody is going to law school knows that you always file a response of pleading. It is got so bad that the federal judge has asked good questions was a notch or even intend to file a response of pleading. This is going on all around the country, this capitulation. Its happening in North Carolina, its happening in michigan, pennsylvania, anywhere you have radicals who occupy the attorneys general offices like the attorney general of pennsylvania, North Carolina, virginia, michigan. You have these radicals in these offices who are not doing what they learned in law school which is defense states statutes. Real quick, i am also on the u. S. Commission on civil rights come resident trump appointed in august, and we had report come out those going to be drafted by speaking of radical, some of the folks at the Commission Regarding how important is to move to vote by mail. I voted against it. I was actually the deciding vote that never got released because vote by mail disenfranchises people. Thats a fact. We know it disenfranchised 7000 people in nevada primary pick it disenfranchised people who can e rejected with over votes in West Virginia. We know that vote by mail has aa 5 failure rate because the post office. The best system we can have a centralized vote in person, the Gold Standard like secretary warner said, and you can fix mistakes in the polling place. You cant fix them in the kitchen after you lick the envelope. Mark go head. I was going to build on what the two previous speakers that said, in terms of vision in particular because i think of the covid thing at the beginning of that everyone thought this was finally their chance to move everything to vote by mail and so they tried to not let a crisis go to waste. The result has been just a torrent of litigation, and love this is been directly coordinated by the Democratic Party, theres no question about it. And in particular this is been touched on a little bit but the collusion between democrats in certain state legislatures and the Democratic Party nationally, who are filing these lawsuits, is really something to behold and really alarming. J Christian Adams mentioned nor to learn just in passing. What happened it was shocking. We are just two years out from a republican congressional race that fed invalidate the results and hold a special election because an aide to work it on the for the republican was caught about harvesting in North Carolina have lots of laws against that and, of course, lots of democrats pretended to be outraged by this. Well, the result of this lawsuit that was filed in North Carolina where the democratic attorney general in the state and 81, the governor turned around and like rolled over essentially, and he raised recently passed bipartisan election laws at the behest of capitulating the democratic lawsuit. The result is now two years later about harvesting is legal in North Carolina effectively. Its really kind of shocking how quickly this is moving and how this is moving in sort of a bracing and undemocratic fashion, which i dont think the effects we known yet. So really radical things are happening that it dont think the American People are frankly aware of what they might be in a few weeks and it will be interesting to see what happens. Pennsylvania is one of the most contested battleground states. The state Supreme Court just ruled that the, completely overbuild wellestablished law that says all mail in ballots so we count have to be in by 8 p. M. On Election Night to say that they would count mail ballots and an extra i think three days after the election. What particularly outrageous about this is not just a completely overwrote an explicit statute in the law, but they acknowledged exist and did so using the flimsiest grandest statement in the state constitution that dont speak directly to it. They also rule, not only just to accept these absentee ballots three days after the election, that you can accept an absentee mailin ballot three days after the elections without postmarks. So no one can prove they were sitting before the election. So if trump wins the state can wince pennsylvania, wins by 40,000 votes in 2016, by, by 8000 votes and all of a sudden im postmarked mail ballots in philadelphia start showing up the day after the election, those are going have to be counted. Never mind that which is the two fairly significant indictments for voter fraud in philadelphia earlier this year, includes one involving a former congressman. This is a very, very serious concern and i dont think the people are aware of the radicalism that is taking place this year, and two, this could explode in our faces and a couple of weeks here on Election Night if what is the intend to liberalize all of these laws suddenly looks like they are being used to manipulate the vote and that may very well be the case. Hans, let me unpack that just little bit, reality here in West Virginia. Before this primary in a typical election, president to come we would have less than 7000 absentee ballots. I mentioned earlier during our primary with 224,000 absentee ballots. You can see the huge increase. That caused us to go from last come in a typical election come less than 1000 provisional ballots throughout the state to 10,000 provisional ballots throughout the state. What that means, her vision abt could occur for many number of reasons. Somebody didnt cite envelope, was a postmark correctly, that sort of thing. S ls gets to decide whether your vote counts. Depending on the county, the politics, the makeup of the county commission, they get to decide whether to count those votes. So again youre back to that situation that mark just discussed. If its a close election than those county commissioners may decide yes, we will count those provisional ballots in this country because it is predominantly one Political Party over the other, and the rest of the state may abide by state by which has no, we will not count them if its not postmark and didnt arrive on time and so forth. None of us want the integrity of our elections depended upon a politically elected county commission and they deciding whether your vote counts are not so thats another concern with the vote by mail process. I should mention that, in fact, that is a real risk of counties in different states appoint different standards on what they would consider to be an acceptable valid, particularly when it comes to absentee ballots, which would bring up potential violations of what the Supreme Court said in the bush v gore decision in 2000 which is you cant have different rules integral part of the state and what counts as a ballots. But secretary warner, let me ask you, this feeds into another question i had, which is you went from 7000 absentee ballots over 200,000 absentee ballots. I i know that the state of new york when they had their primary on june 23, that also, officials there encouraged everyone to vote by mail and they had an almost exponential increase in absentee ballot and Election Officials of their obviously were not prepared to handle it because it didnt took them six weeks to count the ballots. The turnout in primaries is generally lower than we have in the general election. So i guess my question is, is there a real possibility if the election is close that it could be weeks before we know what the outcomes are if the new york example is repeated in other states that Election Officials are overwhelmed by this huge increase in absentee ballots and it takes them weeks to process and try to count them . And the answer is absolutely, yes it is going to be a problem especially in those battleground states, and the states ratifid tissue to vote by mail system when they were not prepared for it, is a personal, equipment, all that. In West Virginia were not when have that issue allowed his flexibility to begin the process, not the county but the processing apps absentee ballots during the early voting. Our early voting goes from october 31 so in it is ballots and right now we have about 60,000 people send absentee ballots back in so starting next wednesday october 21 the county clerks and start checking the registration to make sure those people are registered, checking the signatures. They can open up the outer envelopes and get a ballots prepared, not counted but prepared and stacked ready to go by precinct 20 Election Night 7 30 p. M. November 3 they can run to the highspeed counters or tabulators and actually, we had Election Results actually sundar during the primary that we typically did because so many people voted absentee and thosee ballots were already at the courthouse would be counted. We didnt have to wait for those be counted in the precincts and had carried back to the courthouse and so forth. We are in great shape here but not in the states that are singing out ballots or allowing the promise to come in after the election and be counted that sort of thing yes will have problems and that goes to the integrity of the process and whether people trust the outcomes and i think thats what President Trump has been raving about is we need to all be watching for the situations. I have taken every precaution ii cant ahead of time to notify the people in West Virginia that the plan right now is if youre going to vote absentee, vote absentee right now and assume you get it vote it and get back in the middle. We have the message out. No problems during the primary and im not anticipating problems but then again we are small state and would require people to request absentee ballot, were out in front of this with a lot of flexibility at a new york type situation perhaps they were not allowed to start the processing ahead of time and when you wait until even canvassing before you start the counting of those votes, a lot of time and opportunities for the first opportunities occur which was mentioned only about philadelphia. We are going have problems on Election Night and for the coming weeks and all we can do is count on people to other eyes and ears open and report here in West Virginia. We set up an Antifraud Task force with the u. S. Attorney, West Virginia attorney general, state police and fbi, coordinating every week on that to make sure everybody is in place, notify, a key part of homework or drinks of people know who to call should a situation arise. Thats what were doing in West Virginia to prepare for this election. Christian, going back to litigation, do you foresee this problem after the november election, again, going back to new york, and this is something both you and mark have mentioned. And that is the very high rejection rate of absentee ballots. In new york after they had taken six weeks to count the ballots they then had litigation filed contesting the rejection of those absentee ballots. I am wondering whether you foresee that also as a potential problem in multiple states where we have litigation over those rejections and then big fights over whether ballots that didnt comply with state law should be counted or not . Right. Lets reset this. What you are referring to our state laws as to what it requires this in the mail or absentee ballot. Saying once again the legislatures and governors agreed on in advance of the election. What you are referring to is this hostility on the left to those laws. They want, and it will come to answer your question, be ready to File Lawsuits to say hey, you shouldnt worry about those rules. Those rules dont matter. Count the ballots, and youll probably have mobs with signs come because thats their favorite way to get the policy advanced the sides of the courtroom, as is a count all the ballots. Forget about those defective errors the violate state law that we all agreed on was the law until a few months ago that are still on the books. Forget about all those rules, just count the ballots. Thats the kind of litigation that i think you are going to see in an effort in close races to muscle through the effective ballots that do not comply with the law. And to places like philadelphia and some of the judges in detroit, it would not surprise me in the slightest that these judges say count all the ballots. Heres the most dangerous moment. When you start running these ballots through the tabulators, you cant take those votes out anymore, okay . Once they are blended in, they are in. Thats the sort of lawlessness you and i, fonts, have been warning about 15 years in the space, that the leftist perfectly content with lawlessness if it gives them power. Martin, have you got any additional insight into that particular issue . Yeah. Well, going back to what mac was just saying there, about the infrastructure and getting ready. This is a huge, huge issue and over and over again when i started reporting on this and you talk to people who were trying to quoteunquote expand Voting Rights and all of these things, they kept citing examples of i from oregon action and oregon has been doing all vote by mail election for over 20 years. Theres still problems with anytime you have an election that is vote by mail but just because oregon has been successfully doing but by mail election for 20 years doesnt mean you can overnight transform your state into a vote by mail state. In the case of oregon they generally do a much better job of cleaning up the voter rolls and most other states which is dutch is that they still dont have problems in that regard because they do. But they generally do a much better job of keeping voter rolls up to date than most states because when youre doing vote by mail you basically have no choice. Otherwise its a complete mess all the tigers them very hard and fast rules about when you have to be registered by in oregon. Like i think if youre not registered to vote by napping oregon as of the day or two ago you dont vote in november right now. A lot of people would find that appalling if that were spread across other states. Just in general they for 20 years the building up the infrastructure to support vote by mail. The idea a place like new york or new jersey which is going to turn on a dime a conduct all vote by mail election, what did he think was going to happen . What happened with the Congressional Election dragging on for six weeks or whatever this summer was most predictable thing in the world. Same with the corruption in paterson, new jersey. Who knew . These are very much avoidable problems, and i think if people were not so focused again on simply trying to produce a desired outcome instead of being properly focus on fairness of process, we wouldnt be dealing with a lot of these problems. And that what is both fascinating and terrifying to me what is to reporting on this the last 18 months or so, pretty ostensibly is just how much the wind on this debate has shifted. You read New York Times story some ten years ago and there are entire New York Times stories that everyone acknowledges that mail ballots are much more susceptible to fraud and the irregularities and things like that. Nowadays if the New York Times would write an article saying the same thing, the port reporter would probably be shoved out a window in the tent by his own colleagues. We need to when it comes to vote fraud, there was a great article in the wall street journal i think 15, 20 years ago, amazingly enough it was altered by Glenn Simpson of cheap gps of russian gate fame, and investigative report of the wall street journal am talking about vote brokering a certain ethnic enclaves in texas and other places around the country which is a real thing that happened. There are vote brokers particularly in immigrant communities in this country. These are things that were used to be able to talk about that were used to be able to address, and now if we try and address them, you are a horrible, horrible person who doesnt want anyone with a different skin tone to be able to vote. I again i think we need to really like guileless back and get focus on civics and process and general fairness instead of being sucked into these debates that are so politicized and so bitter. Unfortunately i dont know a way out of that at this point in time. Its profoundly frustrating with a moan to point out obvious facts about election insecurity. You are, in fact, smeared as racist or whatever else or not wanting people to vote. I dont think that needs to be the case at all. Secretary warner go ahead. I would like to put an exclamation point on necessity of following the rule of law. In West Virginia been the primary win a statewide race, attorney jones office on the democratic side was cited by 167 votes. Very narrow. I met you before 10,000 provisional ballots across the state in one county alone there were 800 of those provisional ballots. The populist thing to do come to think makes a great soundbite county commissioner or board of canvassers is to say lets count all those votes. We know people intended to side then, they put income of the post of us didnt postmarked that sort of thing. Contrary to state law, state w was a those votes in the cases should not accounted. Yet the county commission decide to go ahead and count those votes. The loser did not challenge of this election and you wouldve had to do the legal fees, pay for the recounts come all that sort of thing. But in the general election, so he didnt challenge it. But in a general election, but said that wouldve been a republican that had just won by 167 poster you Better Believe that wouldve been challenges to the county commission, counting those votes when the should not against state law. We shouldnt have to get into that situation. We need to have the watchdog groups that apply the pressure on the commissions and have all the Election Officials to abide by state law and only count those votes that are properly cast in a timely fashion in the proper way. I just want to emphasize christians point of following the rule of law, a voice these elections you just dont have faith in them and thats what causes the rioting in the streets. I agree with all that although i have to mention, mark, since you talk about oregon, just two quick things and folks have heard me talk, have heard about this before. Look on it wasnt that many years ago that an assistant professor at one of the state universities had her students do a survey just one county in oregon, and i present the people they surveyed admitted that somebody else had filled out their ballot for them. And 2. 5 admitted somebody else had side or ballot for them. While that sounds like a small number, if that helps you for the rest of the state, that was tens of thousands of ballots. The professor said she actually thought it was quite a bit more because she was amazed that so we people admitted that something that illegal had happened with the absentee ballot. That illustrates one of the problems with people voting at home where there is no election official supervising whats going on. I dont want to throw any of my friends and family under the bus, but as an oregonian, what you just said, lots of anecdotal stories to that effect from people i know over the course of 20 years. I mean, you know, you move, youre going to get extra baluster you are going to be tempted. Frankly in some respects people just shouldnt be put in that position, you know . You should get three extra ballots at your house or place of residence, and be put in the position where you attempted to do this. You can do that when you vote in person. This is an obvious thing that people just understand. It is, again, we should just be able to acknowledge that there might be a place for voting by mail is necessary in certain circumstances, maybe theres going to be a crazy pandemic or you might want to even allow for mailin balloting in very limited circumstances, but we need to be able to say quite clearly that voting by mail introduces a million more problems into the process then voting in person, full stop, this is a controversial. It is the truth. We actually got a question, let me go to some questions if we dont have much what type of questions for so many watching this, the question, given what to start with you, secretary warner, is why are there not more prosecutions for Election Fraud . The Heritage Foundation maintains a database that is only a sampling of cases. Its not a comprehensive list. We have almost 1300 proven cases, but i know personally of many, many, many other potential cases that Law Enforcement officials just were not interested investigating prosecuting. And im wondering as secretary of state of West Virginia have you had a problem with the . Eifert complaints from other secretaries of state telling me that even when they have uncovered clear evidence of Election Fraud, when they sinned to either local prosecutors or in some cases state ags, they havent been willing to do anything about it. Have you run into that problem . We have and its a myriad of issues, everything from time and resources and manpower to go do the investigation and went to do the investigation come when you get right and that overture prosecutor sometimes in these counties thats run by families and tightknit Party Control and so forth and the prosecutor might actually be part of that tightknit group. Even if the prosecutor is in, the judge might be. Even if you get into court and prove the case, then the remedy, the senses extremely light. Thatll has to have a couple of times and then people just lose interest in pursuing come spinning of resources, time and effort to pursue it to get a slap on the wrist. Weve had that in several cases here in West Virginia. We take every vote seriously. Every voter seriously and debbie fraudulent vote disenfranchises or negates a legitimate vote. We are getting after it and thats one who put the Fraud Task Force in place but it is extremely difficult to move to a successful prosecution. Thats what i was so pleased, you may be aware, in fact, the president mentioned it in one of his, in the debate, and West Virginia situation where a mail carrier change the applications on, for absentee ballots. The task force which were immediately within three days or handful of days, they had a confession from him. We did get it to the u. S. Attorney. The u. S. Attorney to prosecute it and got the conviction. We were pleased with that. Since a nice deterrent message that its more the exception than the rule. Some of the times weve had situation with double voting both across calculi and across state lines and its very difficult for prosecutor to justify in their eyes the time and expense to do the investigation to pursue the prosecution to you are exactly right but thats what it thats one of the frustrations that we need to increase the sentencing when you do move to a successful prosecution. We added that into our database not too long ago. Christian, you i know have uncovered many, many potential cases of fraud and a difficult have you found it to get prosecutors interested in doing anything about . Its very difficult and there are three reasons. One, a r and experience in this area. County prosecutor who doesnt dui and petty larceny does want to take on an election case. Thats the first thing. By the way the Justice Department needs to focus on training the people in the next four years how to do this. Secondly, fear. Mark, im very impressed by your desire we all get along in this area. Unfortunately, theres hundreds of millions of dollars, and hans, you know this. We had a full New York Times ad run with your and my picture on it which hangs him off because im so proud of it. Asked why say dont be afraid of this stuff. Theres fear among prosecutors they will be sneered at vote suppresses the third reason, and thus the bureaucrats. The bureaucrats inside the Justice Department come in the Election Crimes Branch of the Public Integrity section, i said the name of the person on fox news so many times i wont say it here. And the fbi, there are fbi agents who are from the Previous Administration who are still in the mindset that we dont prosecute voter fraud because dont forget, there were no prosecutions of voter fraud during the entire Obama Administration out of the Justice Department. And now theres only been a couple come only the Western District of texas, u. S. Attorney higdon in North Carolina come the case in West Virginia, Eastern District of pennsylvania and thats it. And thats it. In milwaukee we know there is voter fraud. The fbis dragging their feet there. In the Southern District of florida we know there is voter fraud. The fbis dragging their feet. I could go on and on with a particular federal districts and thats a problem that needs to be fixed in the next administration. Mark, in the stories you all are done, again going back to that great series you did on vote harvesting, have you ever been contacted by any Law Enforcement officials saying please send us the names of the folks you uncover doing this so we can investigate and prosecute . No. Heavens no. Part of the problem though is that as journalists ourselves, how many journalists out there are interested in investigating voter fraud . Like i could frankly help the number on like one hand. They kind of news organizations that have the resources to go out and do voter fraud, like us a 20 years ago the wall street journal was doing pieces on this but the new site at least of the wall street journal, the news side was different than the editorial page, wouldnt touch this with a tenfoot pole now. It is a significant problem in that basically its become a giant people will say, they go out of the way to make it institutionally painful or anyone either as a journalist or within the Law Enforcement or within the legal system to go out and investigate and or prosecute these crimes. And then when no one is doing that they turned turn that arod say theres no voter fraud. I mean, we know exactly whats going on in a lot of these communities around the country historically been plagued by voter fraud. Ass pointed out earlier where not that far removed from actual like armed gangs stuffing ballot boxes in this country. It really is part of our dna, unfortunately. I think things have gotten better in terms of things getting less overt, but we still regularly see voter fraud prosecutions on a small level. Given what weve seen with the institutional incentives you have to know there is far, far more out there. Yeah, again, its really troubling and alarming and im trying to do the right thing again by focusing on the process but just so were clear, i do share adams cynicism about this process and the difficulty of getting people involved because it is nakedly political and it is nakedly about engineering specific Election Results. Important piece of this when we talk about close elections. We have a situation in Harpers Ferry with just a handful of folks not counted improperly, the Supreme Court forced that and when those votes were counted changed the outcome of the election and the nature of politics in Harpers Ferry so every vote, the mayors daughter voted twice in that election to try to change the result the other direction. Youve got to take these things seriously and the whole Election Fraud piece of this is so difficult to get to a conviction. My frustration in the 2018 election we had a situation in one district where i talked about john kennedy being bought in 1960, there are still problems in that area with voter intimidation and suppression going on, adding precincts. Our investigator was chased off so i called the fbi, couldnt get somebody to answer the phone and the fbi later explained they dont work on election day, they dont want to be at polling locations and be accused of voter intimidation. Thats not a hit on the fbi. I understand the policies and procedures but as a state election official if the local authorities may be involved in Voter Suppression tactics, who am i supposed to call . Needed and out of state or out of that area official, Police Official to go to that and we lost the opportunity to pursue that and there wasnt anybody responsive. That is why we increased around the state, putting radios in hands where they cant even connect with a cell phone, self service, arming people with today weightier two way radios. Our approach is to stop it before it happens. Put information out, deterrent value with Antifraud Task force, they can report these things but still dont have a good federal agency that would be responsive on election day as was happening and once the voting occurs or doesnt occur, a less than real infection by this they got the votes they shouldnt have. It is a real frustration. On that very front people have to our time is up. I want to thank all 3 of you for being here for the great work you have done in all of this. I encourage everybody out there to go vote in this election no matter who you are going to vote for. As a candidate, do your best to vote in person if you are able to do that, the best way of guaranteeing your vote will count. Thanks for being with us today. Today Donald Trump Holds a Campaign Rally in greenville. Live coverage begins at 1 00 pm eastern it on cspan2. Republicans would need to pick up 21 seats in the november election to win a majority in the u. S. House and according to the political report 90 one of those races are considered competitive including georgias 6 Congressional District being held by democrat congresswoman lucy mcbeth first elected in 2018. Shes running against republican karen sandel. Welcome, i am a political reporter with the atlanta journalconstitution. You are watching the Atlanta Press club Loudermilk Young debate series for candidates and district 6, Congressional District 6. To ensure everyones safety the candidates and panelists are participating from their homes. The press club gives a thank you to georgia public broadcasting for helpi
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