Transcripts For CSPAN Road To The White House 20121029

Cyberspace was and the degree and depth of the vulnerabilities and what were trying to do is take pieces of it and explain the fundamentals and the idea is everybody from my mom and dad to congress and people around the country can understand and so maybe start the process of coming up with ways to defend cyberspace better. Cyberspace vulnerabilities monday night on the communicators on cspan2. President obama was at the Washington Headquarters of the federal Emergency Management agency to discuss preparations for Hurricane Sandy. Following the briefing, he spoke briefly with reporters. Good afternoon everybody, all of us across the country are concerned about the potential impact of Hurricane Sandy. This is a serious and big storm. And my first message is to all the people across the eastern coast going north that you need to take this very serious and follow the instructions of your state and local officials because they are going to be providing you with the best advice in terms of how to deal with this storm over the coming days. Weve just had an excellent meeting with the fema team here and the various agencies in charge including the didnt of the defense and energy that are going to need to respond quickly. Weve had a chance to talk to the regional officials of fema as well and ive talked to the governors of the potentially impacted states as well as the cities in the region. At this stage, everybody is confident that the staging process, the position of equipment that are going to be needed to respond to the storm are in place. But as craig has imp sized this hasnt hit land fall yet so we dont know where its going to hit or where were going to see the biggest impacts. And thats why its so important for us to respond big and fast as local information starts coming in. I want to thank all the members of the team for the outstanding work that theyre doing. But the other thing that makes this storm unique is we anticipate its going to be slow moving. That means it may take a long time not only to clear but to get, for example, the Power Companies to get in to clear trees and put things back in place so that folks can start moving back home. So my main message to everybody involved is that we have to take this seriously t. Federal government is working effectively with the state and local governments. Its going to be very important that populations in all the impacted states take this seriously, listen to your state and local elected officials. My message to the governors as well as the mayor social ready. Gov for the general public if you need to know how to respond you can get centralized information. In times like this one of the things american do is pull together and we help out one another. So there may be elderly in your area, check on your neighbor and friend and make sure theyre prepared. If we do, were going to get through this storm just fine. We have to be vigilant. Dont anticipate just because the immediate storm has passed were not going to have potential problems in some of these communities Going Forward through the week. Were going to have to take a look. Our road to the white house coverage continues tomorrow when Vice President biden and bill clinton speak at a rally in ohio. See it live on cspan. Former First Lady Laura Bush spoke for mitt romney in michigan. Also speaking at the event was a niece of former governor romney. This is about 25 minutes. [applause] they all look so cute. Everyone looks so cute. All right. Nice to meet you. Nice to see you all. Thanks so much. Nice to see you. Thanks for coming. We are so excited to have you. [applause] exciting is this . [applause] we have some distinguished guests with us id like to recognize. Lieutenant brian kelly. The next United States senator from michigan. Our soon to be representative in the 11th congressional district, county commissioner laura cox and the mayor and sheriff. Before i introduce our special guests the great friend of michigan former First Lady Laura Bush was not only a strong advocate for Womens Health issues but shes made a Global Awareness to the all the world Womens Health. She should be acknowledged for that. Along with her very tender and soft voice for aids awareness on a global basis. She started in 2007 the Laura Bush Institute for Womens Health. All of america was so supportive on that horrible day in september 2001. [applause] in a week, we in michigan are going to make history for america, arent we . [applause] i was worried that you arent fired up. Are you fired up . [applause] well, these debates summed it up pretty well, didnt it . And the verdict is in barack obama cannot defend his first term. And you saw those debates which we saw three different barack obamas, the sleepy, the snappy and obama. He cant change the record because the facts speak for themselves. He cut the deaf at this time and it boomed. He said heed fix the economy and it remains broken. And he said heed address the Energy Crisis in america yet he wouldnt approve the keystone pipeline. Knows why in michigan we what we need to do next tuesday. Four years ago we trailed in michigan by 17 . 8 years ago by 5 . [applause] real clear politics has the average of all polls at less than 4 which is within the margin of area. Which means all of the thousands of phone calls and door knocks all of you have made will make this a dead heat and put the victory in our court on election day. [applause] you know that one day on a saturday 250,000 likely voters were contacted, more than any state in america right here in michigan. [applause] so i say to you, do not rest, do not think for a moment were ahead. We got to protect our country by putting mitt romney in the white house. [applause] we got to protect our country by making pete the next United States senator for michigan. We got to make sure that we keep our state House Republican like john walsh in the white house. [applause] but most of all, our Supreme Court say it with me, were sending them to the Supreme Court. Now when we elect mitt romney next president of the United States, we know we will have a better america. We know that we will have a better michigan. We know that our children and grandchildren will be in a place that we can all be proud of Going Forward and be safe and secure. So stand with me, stand with all the folks from wayne county. Stand with all the folks from michigan and lets elect mitt romney the next president of the United States. [applause] thank you for being here. Its my honor to call upon romney to introduce our speaker. What do you think about the chairman . He has done such a great job making michigan competitive in this race and because of him michigan is going to put us over the top and win the white house for mitt romney. Thank you very much. I am so honored to be able to introduce former First Lady Laura Bush. Let me just say a couple of things which obviously we all know what a wonderful first lady she was. I look at her differently. I look at her as a mother. As a mother myself trying to raise wonderful children, i so admire what she did with her children and the wonderful young women they have turned out to be and what a wonderful example she is to mothers across the country. And also with Womens Health and literacy. These are things that have a far reaching impact on our nation. So i want to say a couple of things about this election. I know they have assaying in texas that says dont mess with texas right. We know and i want to introduce mrs. Bush to assaying we have here messchigan which is dont this is mitt romneys home state. This is where he was born and raised. This is where he fell in love with his wife. This is where his parent are buried. This is the state thats going [applause] laura bush. Thank you. [applause] thank you all very much. Thank you all so much for coming out. Im thrilled to have the chance to see you all. George and i have many happy memories of campaigning in michigan. Its great to be in detroit today and be here with you all and to have the chance to thank each and every one of you for the work youre doing. Youre doing a really terrific job. You may know youve made in the whole United States youve made the 6th largest number of phone calls which is terrific. So we are grateful to you all for that. I also want to recognize your lieutenant governor. Maybe hes gone on to the next stop i guess. But he was very very important in his job on the Foreign Relations committee, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee when george was president. And its really important you elect him to the senate. It would be great if michigan had him in the senate now. [applause] i also want to recognize the mayor, thank you so much mayor. And a very special thank you to bobby, your chairman hes terrific, he got to whole crowd fired up and that was great. I want to tell you that george sends you his very best. [applause] were doing great back home in texas living what i call the after life in a state calls the promise land. But were doing very well. Were building the bush president ial center is this one working now . Ill try this one. The bush Residential Center is almost complete. The archives will move the president ial papers in late this november next month and the grand opening is next april 25. So i hope you all will try to come to the grand opening or if you cant come to the opening come to texas next summer and visit the bush president ial library thats going to be open. The girls are doing great. They are happily married. Jenna is working as a contributing correspondent for nbc today show. George says shes continuing the bush Family Tradition with warm relations with the media. Our other daughter has founded a nonprofit called Global Health corp. Its placing garage watts in the health field. She has 90 fellows in her group of fellows in newark boston and washington d. C. And five countries in africa. The web. They both are. And the bushes, president george h. W. They spend the summer in main. President bush turned 88 last summer and they are doing great. When he turned 85 t milestone year of 85 he celebrated with his traditional sky diving jump out of an airplane. It happens at the largest he jumped into is a church yard. My motherinlaw joked that was if anything went wrong we could wheel him straight on into the church. But hes doing very well. Theyre both doing really great and we treasure our time with them. General na is going every month to get video footage of her grandparents and telling stories and she wants to have that both for his library but also just for her and all of the family to have this footage of them because theyre so terrific. Now lets g get to what were really here for which is to thank you all very very much and to encourage you to keep working every single day, keep going door to door and making those phone calls and make sure all of those people you contacted turn out to vote on november 6. Its really really important that we have the ground game that wins which and i think you all have set it up so thats what well have in michigan and i want to thank you all for that very much. Ive been with ann romneywe did a reception together in Oklahoma City and she is so terrific. And i think everyone saw it at her Convention Speech which was great. And then i hosted a lunch i dont know for her and raised a lot of money from around the country because that is going into ads in ohio and a few other states where we need to stay on television until november 6. But one of the things that ibuts struck by ann, one of the things she said in her convention which i think is so right is she said that americans are too smart to know that there arent easy answers to the challenges we face. But were not too dumb to know that there arent better answers. [applause] and we do know that mitt romney and paul ryan have better answers. They will make sure we can face the challenges we have. The challenges to our real economy, the personal challenges that we all have across our country because of the downturn in our economy, and the challenges we face overseas. Really, the way we want americans to be thought of. That is, strong, friends to our friends, and i think it is really important that we have that kind of foreign policy. I know that mitt will have that. [applause] so, i just want to encourage you to keep going, keep working all the way through to november 6, drive yourself to the polls along with everybody on your block. [laughter] make sure they all get there. It is great to see you all. Thank you very much. God bless you all. One last thing. Cheer the tigers to a win tonight. [applause] we want a win. Thank you all. God bless you. [applause] i do not know. I do not know the rules i will see you again. I will do my best. Over there. Is that you . I wish i could get someone to me and mytur eoee of team. How are you . Doing great. Love you, laura. We spoke with the newspapers editor about the decision. Again, the headline, the faces of the middleclass. Writing about its role in this election. The first in the caucuses and now that it goes to focusing on the editorial coming out overnight with these words American Voters are deeply divided. They had a debate over this endorsement. Our discussion circled back to the single most important challenge, pulling the economy out of the doldrums, more americans back in the work force, and getting the federal government on track to balance the budget in a bipartisan manner. Based on all of that, endorsing mitt romney. Joining us is rick green. Thank you for being with us. Walk us through the process, why mitt romney . As we pointed out in the editorial, we explored an exam and a long list of issues. We continue to come back to something we have seen repeatedly and our own polling in countless interviews and in counters from farmers and business executives, about the political climate, this partisan divide, but even more important is the economy. Uncertain future as we sat down and deliberately, it was the economy that was front and center for us in terms of who can best jump started, who can pull us out of the doldrums. Who can position as not necessarily looking back at the past four years but the next four years. It is for the editorial decided to focus on governor romney. Host this question, does your endorsement matter . Then you have a sidebar explaining the editorial process, i do point out we would be shirking our responsibility as if we took a pass. This question, does your endorsement matter . Caller i absolutely believe so. This is not a battle cry for mitt romney supporters to go out there and vote for the governor. What this is is that iowa is an incredibly unique state filled with incredibly smart to voters and readers of the Des Moines Register and other publications. We have had the incredibly in the perspective an opportunity over the past 2430 months to take a close look at governor romneys campaign. Even before that going back to the 2008 cycle, both senator obama at the time and governor romney, spending time with the Editorial Board. We have talked to the candidates. We have really explore the issues. Is our endorsement matter . I think it does. It has been a century at least that we have endorsed a president ial candidate. It is part of our tradition. Politics is indeed dna of the Des Moines Register. We take very seriously the first in the nation status as a caucus state. We take seriously the ability to affect candidates that are not on the radar screen until after they emerge from iowa. Very informal opportunity to sit down over coffee to talk about what is in front of us. What is the position for that. I do think our endorsement matters. We probably spent a lot of time doing diligence and being thoughtful in all of our conversations, particularly the final one to support governor mitt romney. Host we are talking with the editor of the Des Moines Register. Let me ask you about the process. You had a telephone conversation that ran 30 minutes with the president. The white house said it was off the record. And it was released in the published the transcript on there website. You had a different face to face meeting with governor mitt romney. Did any of them make a difference . Caller initially the white house had asked for an off the record five or 10 minute conversation. We protested. I spoke with the Obama Campaign and said, this should be on the record. They said they would try to get it on the record, but we never heard back. The next day we had a conversation with the president , it was so important. When he talked about needed to be shared. That was the reason for the call that i had written. Did it play a role in the Decision Making . Absolutely not. I said at the time, considering what unfolded at the white house and the campaign staff, as it related to transparency we had met several days before that incident and the direction we wanted to go with the editorial. It was already kind of drafted. It did not have a single rule at all with where we were. Host the published past editorials over the past 100 years. The first endorsement was William Howard taft in 1912. More recently, you have to go back to 1972, the last time your newspaper endorsed a republican. Since then jimmy carter twice, walter mondale, michael dukakis, bill clinton, al gore, and john kerry, and barack obama. Caller when this Editorial Board said down, we did not look at who has an r or d behind his name. The whole conversation focal point was the economy. What is best for the next four years. Partisanship was set aside to examine the issues that i once care the most about, an issue that is at a high level on the national level. It has to be in a bipartisan way. This red state, blue state gridlock that we find ourselves and as a nation is not just being saw in washington, it is being saw all over the country. I think there is a growing demand from voters i think this election will probably prove it they want washington to work. They want there to be leadership. There has to be an effort from somebody to reach across the aisle and make something happen with another party. When we sat down and really thought about where we wanted to go with this, we looked at the list. At theidnt even look list. Host let me bring up one other point. We are focusing on the Des Moines Register in part because of mitt romney spending half hour with you and the president s spending almost half of an hour on the phone. They clearly view your endorsement as important. Caller i think so. They both told us how much they wanted our endorsement. Unlike previous years where and president ial cycles you would have candidates camp out in iowa for several months, the iowa caucus happens. Everybody disappears. For the most part, our electoral votes are considered pretty irrelevant. That has changed this year. Every state matters. We are fortunate enough to be one of the swing states. Six electoral votes are a critical part of the formula for both campaigns. I know the demolition register Des Moines Register has a great voice and influence in the state. It has a responsibility to vet the candidates. That is what we did last item published this morning. Host thank you for being with us. You bet. Now a discussion on the early 2012 boating turnout. This is 20 minutes. Host we want to welcome Michael Mcdonald. He is an associate professor. Early voting under way in half of the country. We keep saying 12 days to election day or one week ago in the campaign. Many has already cast their ballot. Guest over 12 Million People have already cast their ballot. It will really ramp up this week. We will see probably somewhere between 20 million and 30 Million People cast their ballots. We really are getting very close to election day. A large number of people will be voting over the next week. Host we remember the hanging chads and making sure the ballots were counted. Ohio could be the florida of 2012, potentially. Why . Guest if it is very close in ohio, which could we do not just a recount, ohio has a large number of provisional ballots. They use provisional ballots to deal with address transfers. The Election Officials want to make sure people are not voting twice. They have the individuals cast a provisional ballot. We will see over 100,000 of those types of ballots. In addition, we have a large number of people that have requested mail ballots in ohio. If a person does not return the ballot but show up to the polling place and they want to vote, they will also have to cast a provisional ballot because Election Officials are making sure people do not vote twice. Do not try to do that. You will be caught if you try to do that. They manage this with provisional balance. If it is a very narrow margin in ohio, it will take the Election Officials a while to count the ballots. We could be in the situation where literally we have the lawyers and officials looking at the ballots and making sure the names matched. We could be in in overtime situation in ohio. Florida will be using provisional ballots for address transfers. We will see a lot of provisionals in florida. On top of Everything Else going on, they have to plan to implement something new. Host let me share with you a couple of bullet points posted on reuters. Wanting to know if there will be chaos ahead or lessons from 2000 . Guest once we get the provisionals counted, we will have to see. It is the prayer that we do not have a close election. They want finality. They want the election over. We have to be prepared just in case there is a narrow margin. The recount does vary across the state. We will have to look to see how close the election is and if the candidates plan to contest the election. We will proceed forward if that happens. Host what are the lessons from 2000 . Guest it will be lawyers in every state where it recounts are going on. We will have Election Officials there scrutinizing every ballot in the recount. Other than the fact we made some mistakes in 2000 in the way we counted the ballots, we would not see that again. We would see a statewide recount. Host let me share with you some of the coverage. This is cbs news. Calling the election and retracting to remind you what happened 12 years ago. [video clip] lets point out the television and Radio Networks using a pool of data exit poll information have made some mistakes over the night. It the big one being in florida, first calling it for al gore and then calling in for bush and then calling it back. The television and Radio Networks are not the only ones who had to take some calls back. I have one newspaper, this is the new york post. They called it for george bush. Just like the networks, they came out with a new edition, they called it a nail biter. When it happened to us, it was based on technology. This is kind of scary what we are basing it all on tonight. They may yet be right. In the case of the chicago newspaper, there were wrong. It still could be right, but they pulled back. In fairness to al gore making his concession phone call, he was probably listening to us. No doubt about it. It is 260 al gore, with 270 needed to win. Floridas electoral votes. The reason florida is in white is because if this state remains undecided as of this hour, a recount has been ordered. You will not know who carries the state of florida. It could go longer than that. Host that news clip points out a couple of things. First, the exit polling. All of the Networks Using and sharing the same information. We seem to get caught up in believing the exit polls, and they are not always accurate. Guest the exit polls were not being used to call the election in florida. The election was so close that the polls themselves could not be used because they had statistical errors in them. Instead, the networks and the organization that actually executes the exit poll was using actual Election Results. They were basing their forecast models out of how much was left to be counted in florida. But we have seen in past patterns of of voting. One county misreported. Suddenly, all of these a very narrow models were saying, we are in recount, we will not be able to call the election. It all shifted dramatically over to george bush when we had the error. The corrected it quickly, but the information got into the system. All of the models pointed to a george bush to victory. People started making calls. They had to be pulled back. The lesson that was learned by the media is that you need to really be careful in calling the election. You have to look closely at the data. If an unusual pattern starts emerging, you have to look it that and understand what is going on. I have been involved with exit polls and i have been the in the room and we have seen audit numbers coming with the Election Results that we do not expect. We sit there and try to understand what is going on so we did not make the wrong call. Host 50 states, 50 sets of laws and rules and regulations in terms of what would constitute a recount. Host in order to make this a legitimate call, what needs to be done . In terms of transparency and making sure this is done in a way that people say the vote was counted properly. Guest there are so many Little Things that can go wrong in an election. We have a margin of error in elections. And in close election, there will be Little Things that go wrong. Unfortunately, Political Parties have an incentive to de legitimatize the losing side. They want to rally their base around that issue. What ever things go wrong in that recount and any flaws that are exposed in the system like a butterfly ballot in florida is a good example, these become part of the folklore of what happened in the election and people will say that that person really did not win. That is a rallying point for the other side. If we look at this in a sane way, we have to realize that the that if the election is close, there will be errors and we have to accept that whatever the process tells us is the eventual outcome. Back in 2000, despite having bush lose the popular vote and win by the narrow margin in florida with all sorts of other allegations that were swirling around, by and large, we did not have a revolution in the country. We moved on. That is what we will do as a country if we have that situation again. It will be fringe elements that complain about the election outcome but most people in the middle are rational and will trust the outcome. They may not like about that will accept it as part of the democratic process host our guest is michael mcdonnell. You can join the conversation on facebook or twister. You can also give us a phone call at any of the numbers on the bottom of the screen. This is from the l. A. Times. This is one of a number of scenarios that would happen if there is an electoral tie. Mathematically it is possible especially if you look at the battleground states. Guest fortunately, that scenario is a low probability but it is always possible it will happen in any election. Right now, if you look at some of the forecast models out there from the New York Timesand the other places, were looking at a probability of less than 1 . Its take a deep breath is and on likely scenario but it is possible. Of all the things that could go on on election night, an Electoral College taught is probably one of the least possible. Host shelley is joining us from memphis, tenn. , democrats won, democrats line, good morning. Iscaller i have a question abt the early voting. With the early voting, i am a new voter this year and i just turned 18 and i finally get to vote. I dont understand last night, they were saying taht that it was a debate between the democrats and republicans but what they are saying is that met romney would be a good president or whatever. How do we know if he gets elected that it was not counted wrong . Guest Election Officials count all the absentee ballots. Any vote that has been cast early is counted on election day with all the other boats. Your vote will be counted. As far as the accuracy of the account, this is very important. If you are going to vote early especially by mail, it is in port and for everyone to follow precisely the procedure is listed by your state that came with your ballot. In 2008, Election Officials reported to the federal government that over 400,000 ballots were discarded by Election Officials because voters did not follow proper procedures. Sometimes people think they are doing a favor to Election Officials to put two ballots on one envelope. That invalids both those ballots. Election officials need to track each individual ballot in an individual envelope. You look at our rules and procedures veteran place, they are it there for a good reason. Dont secondguess them. Follow them precisely and make sure all the signatures required are on the outside of the envelope. Make sure you probably fill out the ballot itself. You were working with a paper ballot. Some states can be difficult to decipher. Be very sure to follow all those procedures. We dont want you to inadvertently disenfranchise yourself by doing something wrong with your ballot. That is the greatest way by which people disenfranchise themselves in this election is by having some sort of error related to the mail ballot. Host the president is traveling to his hometown city of chicago to cast his ballot early. Ohio and has has had early voting. Guest we have had different laws in different states. Is important for people to understand that no one size fits all in which we run our elections and the country. Host why is that . Is by having some sort of error related to the mail ballot. Host the president isguest gor Founding Fathers who were debating in the constitution whether there was going to be a National Eligibility requirement for voting. Because of the time each state was doing things differently, they could not come to an agreement. The Founding Fathers decided that they would have the states be responsible for election administration. The congress can enact below and we have had that. There are ways in which the federal government imposes how we manage voting in the country. The states really still are preeminent what comes to the way in which elections are run, the method in which the states are founding going to run the elects and that makes sense. It would look at early voting, we see states like oregon and washington in the west, they have all mailballot elections. It makes sense for them to do that. The longdistance is and it is a large rural area. Having an all mailballot election in the west makes sense. If you look it in person early voting, that is sometimes we see in southern and eastern states. It makes sense there because it because you have people who are more concentrated in urban areas and cities. It is possible to run elections in person in early voting in those states. We dont want to have a one size fits all the election in this country. State is different and as a different population. And each state knows best was good for their voters. Host riverside, conn. , from our republican line. Caller good morning, thank you for taking my call. I have a question about the early voting situation. Lets all hope it is not close. Lets hope it is closed in many states, not just one. I have seen a lot in the media about how difficult it is in many of these voting precincts all over the country to actually get, on election day, republican and Democrat Volunteers to show up to make the voting process legitimate and fair. With the early voting, how can they possibly in sure that they always have equal numbers of republicans and democrats in these voting precincts where people go to vote which stretches for such a long period of time . How can it possibly be fair . Guest we actually do early voting not in every school and small polling place in the country. These are in satellite early voting locations. There are much fewer of those than the numbers number of polling places we see on election day. You can be assured that in the battleground states, both Political Parties will make sure that those early voting locations are covered. We see literally hundreds of thousands of people voting each day now within those states that have in person early voting. The parties will make sure that things are on the up and up. They have the resources to look at these much narrower numbers when we open it up on election day. Host a tweet. Guest another great question this is another relic of our past from our Founding Fathers when they were trying to decide how they would elect the president. They decided that there would be this group of what is it like doris that would be appointed electors that would be appointed by each state. Some states did not even hold elections in the past. The state legislature drew up be appointed the electors to the Electoral College. It is in the federal law. If, god forbid, we had a real problem with Hurricane Sandy hitting the northeast, the emergency procedures in our constitution said the state legislature then would elect or nominate the electors to the Electoral College. If we cannot run an election for some reason, we still have a backup plan in place in that eventuality. Each state has a slate and when you vote for president , youre not voting for president , you are voting for the slate of electors. These people are going to vote for who they think is best to be president. Each state gets a number of electors equal to the number of representatives plus the number of senators which is true for each state. Those people are elected on election day. They dont actually come together. They mail it in. It is early voting with them as well. They select the winner. In the event of a tie, in the Electoral College, we go to the congress and the procedures there where each state votes as a unit as to who they think is going to who they would want to be president. You have a majority of each states delegation in congress and they both as a unit and they select their onevote as to who will be president and we have another vote. That is the way it works. Back in the day, when our Founding Fathers were thinking about the constitution, they expected it to go to congress more often than not. They thought we would have a diverse electorate and it would be difficult for the Electoral College to come to an agreement. They designed a system where they thought congress would be the ones selecting the president more often than not. As it turned out over time, they did not anticipate the rise of two major Political Parties in the country when they were forming our constitution. When we have two major parties that are battling things out, you tend to get into that situation where one party has a majority. As time has gone on, there is the notion that congress would be the one that is responsible for selecting the president. It is not part of our culture anymore. Host here is a comment lets go to william joining us from pittsburgh, on the independent line. Caller good morning, gentlemen the thing i have with the early voting in new york where the mayor and all the councilmen were busted for doing absentee ballots and got their dna and they are convicting them as we speak. In addition to that, we have all these people that have been sent by said by a judge to be incompetent. They cannot write a check and they have alzheimers and all this. Yet they are allowed to vote. Who is actually voting for them . Do they have supervisors or management at the care facilities they are in . Guest if we look at where the vote fraud occurs in the system, it is rare and when we do observe it, it tends to happen with mail in ballots. We dont know exactly if someone has requested a ballot. There are signature verification is that officials do. Signatures dont match, they know. They compare signatures verses the Voter Registration cards. That is the check in the system. There is some suspicion that Election Officials have that someone has requested a ballot for another individual, that will follow that up in individual and investigations and occasionally they find people who do this sort of thing you are saying. They requested ballot in the name of another person but there could be situations where people forged signature and it looks close enough and maybe some one does request ace a ballot and then someone cast a ballot for those individuals and they manage to put pressure upon them to vote a particular way. If we look at the biggest vulnerability in terms of vote fraud in the system, it does occur with mail in ballots. This is tongue in cheek we know it does not happen with impersonation fraud, it happens with the mail in ballot. Impersonation fraud or someone tries to vote under someone elses name is extremely rare. The rubble and the been seven prosecutions over decades there have been only seven prosecutions over the last decades. We know that is not a problem. If you are republican and you want to force people into a system where we know where the fraud occurs, you would adopt a photo identification law. The photo identification law does not apply to the mail in ballots. That is where the problems ocher occur and we can see an early voting this time around, for whatever reason, more people are voting million ballots our voting mail in the ballot. Mail in ballots. Maybe they are afraid they do not have voter id. We are shoving more people into a system that is greater bomb greater vulnerability. We can look at procedures to deal with them a bad situation we have now if there is vote fraud and the system, it is occurring with the mail in ballots. Host here is an observation from one of our viewers guest absolutely, when a state adopts an early voting law, over time, we see more people deciding to vote early. That has been the experience. The state of washington is probably the best example where the state had a system of mail and balloting called no excuse mail in balloting where you can request a male in ballot for whatever reason. That had a procedure that allowed people to permanently receive that absentee ballot and overtime, so many people within the state of washington were signing up to permanently receive their absentee ballot that Election Officials said we will just run an election by mail. So few people are showing up on election day at polling places. That is essentially Washington State does now. As time goes on, you see more people finding early voting convenient. The other point is that if there is a problem and you show up as a firsttime voter, it is important for people to understand to register for the first time. There are several laws regarding identification that you have to show at least a utility statement with your name and address on it is not an id. You could show up to your polling place, and this happens every election, people show up and they dont realize they are a firsttime voter and they show up with no identification in every state. It is not just the ones who have doppler adopted these identification loss and then they have to cast provisional balata may not follow up and the vote is lost. If you used early voting, you are alerted to this problem and you have the opportunity to go again with that idea that might be required in your state. Host let me state that Security Issues aside, if you are able to work through that and you envision a time where people can just use their smart phone or laptop or tablet guest we have online voting going on right now in this election. There have been states who have adopted electronic transmission of ballots, sending them to voters and receiving them for our military and overseas civilians. The state of north carolinas one of the states where we are getting those statistics and we can see that thousands of people have cast ballots by e mail. This is how it works. The individual printed out and signs it and they scan it and they send it back to the Election Officials. The Election Officials entered into the system. There is vulnerability there. If someone could intercept the ballot and vote on behalf of that person, or change their ballot, that is possible. It is probably very rare and unlikely that would occur. You would have to take the signature. These Election Officials are doing signature verification. If that did not match and if you took a signature and moved to another document, these and not think you can easily automate as part of a scam or virus that will steal an election that way. It is possible that some votes could be intercepted that way but is unlikely. Were firstballots used during the civil war. Abraham lincoln encouraged soldiers to vote by mail. When we look at innovations in elections in the u. S. , typically happens with the military. With the transmission of electronic ballasts, theres and opportunities for people to look of this and see what the better mousetrap would be. I would not be surprised downed road now that we have offer this to oversee civilians that we might see a greater incidence of this in the future. Host were talking about voting. Some of the whatif scenarios. Birmingham, alabama, democrat line. Caller good morning, gentlemen. I wanted to ax Michael Mcdonald ask Michael Mcdonald a question. A question. I am a proud democrats so i am probarack obama. And a lot of his early voting on the democrat side, there are a lot of voters that normally would not vote on election day. Is that why he is getting a big push in ohio and other states . They might have made an effort to locate firsttime voters and voters that normally would not vote on election day. Is this not true . I want to make a comment after you are done. Guest so far, where we have party registration, there are a good number of democrats who have voted already. The polls are showing that obama is leading the early boat much like he did in 2008. That is an aberration from our part previous count. From previous elections before the 2008, typically, republicans won the early voting. We have had such a high volume now and the Obama Campaign is encouraging their supporters to vote early. We have seen a change in behavior when campaigns can take advantage of early voting to encourage their supporters and mobilize them over a longer period of time. That is was going on on the democrat side. If you look at the numbers, there are more republicans voting early ban in 2008. The Romney Campaign is not conceding the early vote as the Mccain Campaign did in 2008. We are seeing greater interest among republicans and we see level increases of democrats and republicans compared to 2008 in early voting. Up to this point, when we look at the statistics, most of the people who have voted early so far were people who are very strong partisans and have registered with their local party. In ohio, we have data where we know that people have voted in a primary or not. By and large, people who were voting in ohio were people who have voted in primaries. These are people who are high propensity voters. They want to be assured of good they are voting for and have made up their minds and a vote in every election and a cast their ballots. That is true on both sides. As we get into this next week, we are already starting to see the numbers of people who are not registered with Political Parties, who dont vote in every election, and we see those people rise in numbers as we get closer to election day. We have seen a pattern in every election. This is not really crunch time. These are people who are low propensity voters and more persuade a bowl. Persuadable. Obama has a greater amount of people to go after but mitt romney cannot ignore these people either. These are lower information voters and not people following the elections as closely as many of the cspan voters are. These people can be persuaded to vote for mr. Runyan. For romney. Both campaigns will be out there working very hard to get the vote on election day. Host quick comment . Caller i wish the gentleman would look at the desk moines, iowa race. That was a very fevered endorsement that he gave. The economy is linked to what is going on in other countries. That is an endorsement that was given. Thank you all. Host one final call and one tweet this is in the New York Times this morning this comes down to a county by county talent as we saw in florida county count as we saw in florida. Guest ironically, if al gore had asked for a statewide recounts in florida, he would have won. The Supreme Court would not have shut it down. The media came in afterwards and requested those ballots. He would have lost under the recounted s four which was to do only the high democratic counties. There were a lot of democratic votes for gore in those counties that were not the deep blue counties where he thought he would get the votes. The lesson i think the party iis learned is that when you do a statewide recounts, do that and do not to aid local recounts. Host our last call is from missouri, go ahead. Caller i want to say that i have less faith in our system that i have ever had after listening to the professor. I believe he stated that mail in ballots or electronic, there is more propensity for fraud. That really worries me. If it can be done, it will be done. Host what yowould you say to sterling . Guest to pull this off and a massive sort of way, you have to have Elections Officials complicity. They are doing verification. If one person requested ballots for a large number of people at a particular address, that would send off warning flags for Election Officials. That is not to say that every now and then, you find Election Officials are corrupt. It is a large country and it is possible and it happens. There are big prosecutions and investigations and people are serving time in jail for trying to subvert democracy. Is important to understand that these are rare events. There are people out there really scrutinizing it. If that happens in a key battleground state, if we go down to a recount in one of these states, these things are likely going to be scrutinized. People will observe what is happening and they will be able to identify these things. If you think the election will be stolen in ohio or florida, someone can try and do that but they will spend time in jail. Let me tell them now, a lot of people are going to be upset. You will spend some time in a jail. Anyone who thinks theyre going to try to do that. Do not do it. Its not worth it the cost. Youre doing a disservice to all of your other citizens out there. Host , donald, associate professor at george mason Michael Mcdonald. Where can they go for more information . Guest and tracking the early voting and keeping a lot of the informations to post online. I am doing commentary as well. Elections. Gmu. Edu. Also on twitter electproject. Host think you for being with us. We appreciate it. Tomorrow, from the center for responsive politics looking at 2012 campaign fundraising. Then a look at the issues in the battleground state of iowa with mike glover of the associated press. Sue dvorksy and aj spiker. Washington journal, at 7 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. Watch our coverage of the president ial candidates and debates from house, senate, and governors races from around the country. Next, a look at the issues in pennsylvania. After that, in a debate between the candidates in the u. S. Senate race. And then a discussion on the effectiveness of the sanctions on i ron. Would you support an increase in the presence of the National Guard at the u. S. Mexico border . This is a complex issue. It takes cooperation between the United States and mexico. There was an agreement in 2008 between the United States and mexico where we help with Technical Support and aircraft to help with the war on