Policing during the coronavirus pandemic. Be sure to watch cspans washington journal, live at 7 00 eastern monday morning. During the discussion. Host there are so many aspects to this story, and joining us from des moines, iowa is paul pate, the iowa secretary of state and the president of the National Association of , and ofies of state course one area is politics, both at the state level and president ial levels. Mr. Pate, thank you for being with us. Guest it is a pleasure to be here. Host you have a primary and iowa slated for june 2. For iowa in particular, will that go on as scheduled, or will you delay that even further . No, that will be as scheduled. We have already started preparing for it, getting voters comfortable with the new processes and procedures, and we are set for it. Host and those new procedures include what . Guest well, we have had to adapt them of course, with the safe distancing, to protect our voters and our poll workers. We have extended our early voting, our absentee voting from also,s to 40 days, and we ill what will have a no excuse absentee, which means you can just request an absentee ballot without any qualifications, if you will. And we are encouraging people to request an absentee ballot now, and we will be doing encouraging people to vote absentee. We have a high of 40 in a general election who might vote absentee, so we are hoping to move that successfully a little higher and keep everybody at home, voting from their homes, comfort of their, safety of their house. Host and does this come at a higher price tech for the state of iowa . Guest yes, it does. We have 2 million active voters, registered voters in the state of i look. Be price tag we will mailing them out an absentee ballot request form, and the form itself will also be postedpaid, so we have the mailing to get it to them and the court to send it back. Our local Election Officials will be sending them i ballot through the mail. That is where we are focusing our efforts right now, that says to be safeans in one hour poll workers to be safe. Not to be clear, this is the caucuses, caucuses which had a lot of problems. Even though they are separate entities, are there lessons from what happened in january . Guest well, again, we had nothing to do with the democratic and republican caucuses. They took a whole different approach than we normally do in our elections. I am very confident in our election professionals that we have in our 99 counties. Conference calls with all the counties, and we have been giving them templates on how they can recruit coworkers in these trying times and how they can prepare to staff for the absentee ballot counting, and a lot of other issues that we normally run into, so i am pretty comfortable that iowa will deal with the primary fairly successfully. Host and as you talk to your colleagues and the other 49 states, the secretaries of state, what are they telling you about the november election . What are they preparing for, in light of what we are dealing with today for coronavirus . Guest well, a good thing to know is that secretary of states are risk integers. Of course the scale is much bigger this time. But we deal with tornadoes, hurricanes, fires, and other disasters that might impact our communities and still have our elections conducted safely, and voters know that there will be an election. This virus is pretty significant, so we are having to New York Times dig a little to, you know, dig a little deeper. We meet conference calling every week, and we share best practices, we share resource ideas, because we are all in different instances. Some states are struggling with, you know, we have got to get enough envelopes, we have to have enough printing stock. If you are going to start shifting over from a traditional come to the polling place to a male and type campaign, you have to make that shift, and that does not happen overnight. We have been sharing ideas on how to get that done, and i think it has been successful, what we are doing. Host let me get your reaction to what the president said voting andt mailin whether he thinks that is feasible. Lets watch. [video clip] pres. Trump no, because i think a lot of people cheat with mailin voting. I think people cheat, and the reason they do not want voter id, is because they tend to cheat. When you buy something, you look at your credit cards, different parts, you have your picture on many of them, not all of them, but many of them, you should have a picture for voting. It should be called voter i. D. And it should not be mailin voting, it should be you go to a displaynd you proudly yourself. You do not send it in the mail, where people pick up all sorts of bad things can happen by the time they signed that, if they sign that. If they sign that. In and ise it gets tabulated, no, it should not be mailed in. You should be at the booth, and you should have voter i. D. That is the real deal. Host the president during his briefing on friday. Paul pate is the president of the National Association of secretaries of state. Your reaction guest . I know for myself, our goal is to make it easier to vote but hard to cheat. We do have forms of voter i. D. In iowa, and that i. D. Is also applicable to the mailin ballot process. We have safeguards in our state for folks who do mailin, so we can be assured we are getting verifiable source. But his point is taken. People want to make sure the voting a secure and we are getting legitimate votes, but i am pretty confident in that during this time of crisis, that 99 i say 99 because of our 99 counties in iowa, but our other secretaries of state across the country are taking every step and measure possible to make sure that i ones and americans have every chance to vote, so it is a balance, but trust me, from iowas perspective, we put their security, to make sure if you are eligible, you get one vote, and that is all. Host this is from a pupil that was conducted at the end of march, based on coronavirus, and in that survey, about twothirds, 66 saying they would not feel comfortable going to a polling place to vote. How do you deal with that issue . Guest well, it is a legitimate one. In fact, i would suspect a love americans are not even thinking about elections at this point. They are concerned about more, you know, when will this thing be over . When will i be able to leave with my family and my loved ones . When can i go back to work . So voting may not be at the top of the list, but when you start thinking about anything that forces you into a situation where you are not comfortable, for your health, i can respect that, and that is why in our state, we are asking people to vote absentee, but we also have other options for you, and we have curbside voting. This is offered in all the states at some levels, and in our state, we offer it. For those of you in the highrisk population or have a handicap, you can come to a polling site and vote from your vehicle rather than having to put yourself in a situation where you are uncomfortable. So we are taking steps that we think will make voters a lot more comfortable. Host our first caller is from des moines, which is where our guest is located. Felicia, good morning. Caller hi. Hi, paul. This is felicia. Like they say, all politics is local, so you are our local politician, and i actually believe that you will speak truth to power. So my question is this my daughter is an essential worker, and, as a parent, i feel like i really, really want to protect her. Our governor, of course, has not closed us down, so she is still out there working. As a mother, what i taught my daughter her entire life is to work, to strive for her goals, prosper, in order to you need an education, you need to be able to work, you need to take care of your family, and now i am telling her, dont go to work. Dont go outside. And i cant even get her to understand me, because her entire life, i have been telling her how important it was to have a job. Just lost. Rent, im but i to protect her, also know that she is a strong person, and shes going to she feels like she is an essential worker. She has to be out there. But as a parent, my heart is breaking, because i cannot stop her from going out there. And i just want to know what do you say to your kids . What do you do, as a parent, to try to keep them safe when they are no longer your little cubs, and you just want to hold them and keep them safe, but you cant do that . I know you, and you know me, and i am just asking you what do you tell your kids . Host thank you for the call. Caller sure. Guest that is a real tough one. First of all, i want to thank all the folks who are putting themselves on the line, healthcare fields and other key support areas, to give our community is vibrant and going right now. We do need that kind of help. I am in the same boat. Actually,ndchildren, who work in high risk areas, if you will. One of them is the university of iowa hospitals. And it worries me to death. Oralked to them regularly texting, actually, and these in this day and age, please be careful, and we just give him the best support and advice that we can come and i am pretty confident that they listen to us when they were growing up, and hopefully some of that has sunk in, but i cannot thank you enough those who are out there putting it all on the line. Out a notice put that we are putting all of these resources behind voting by mail, or absentee. I did not want to expose the poll workers or voters to any unnecessary risks. We have 1000 precincts in iowa. Most of those are manned by our older population, the over 65 crowd, which is our highrisk population. First off, i do not want to put those poll workers in that situation, and we have an older voting population as well, so both of those need to be protected, and that is why we are leaning toward saying hey, vote absentee or use the curbside. We are recruiting younger poll workers now to help fill that gap, and thank the senior persons who have worked in the past with the heavy lift, but it is time for other folks to step in during this time of crisis. But i dont have an easy answer for you. I wish i did. Other than we love them and we get them all the support we can, and keep coaching them to make sure they are practicing all the safe procedures. What is the National Association of secretaries of state . Guest it is the oldest organization for elected office in the country, but basically it represents all the secretaries across the country. Bework on issues, whether it elections or Business Services or some of the commerce and commercial laws. These are areas most secretaries have jurisdiction over, and we try to put best practices out there and share ideas amongst our peers, and we have been around for quite a long time. Host website, by the way, is nass. Org. Rick from mckinley, maryland, good morning. Caller go ahead. Good morning. Voting ise mail order the way to go. The president says it is cheating. It cannot be cheating. It cannot be nearly as much cheating as Voting Machines that are rigged. It cant be merely as much being as counties were voting districts being gerrymandered. Anyway, voting by mail is definitely, i think, a much better way to go across the nation. I am 71 years old. I have got lung cancer. Being treated for it. I dont want to go out there and vote, take a chance. Number number one, and two, a couple of days ago, i saw a suggestion made on tv that health protectio professional sd go out there and buy swim masks as part of ppe. I saw a lot of jockey googles being thrown in the mud back in my day, and i know they are being made by the millions, and these are really good goggles. Host rick, thank you for your call, and good luck in your battle with cancer. To your earlier point, your response, mr. Pate . Guest i would say that my peers and i spend a lot of time on trying to ensure voters of the integrity of the election process. There are some redundancies built into the systems, and i will just speak to iowas. We have, your friends and neighbors who work at polling sites, we have paper ballots, we have secure voting equipment, so theres no computer telling you how to mark your ballot. Audits,postelection which means we look at a sampling of the voter ballots make sure everything is safe we have republicans and democrats at the polling site. These are all measures we put in place to ensure voters of the integrity of the system, and the absentee component that we have had for some time we are just promoting it aggressively samecycle have the factors to protect the voting process. Keep in mind, whether it is this particular virus issue or seeing challenges as bad actors and other countries trying to influence our elections, we cannot let these types of things take away the integrity, the confidence in that your vote will be counted and that the election process is on the up and up, and at the end of the day, you will have the results that you and your voters voted. Host katherines neck from st. Joseph, michigan. Go ahead. Good morning. Caller hi there. We decided to vote by absentee vote. We had a discussion here this morning. What happens with people who are in prisons and felons . Vote . Can they i know that the military gets but how absentee votes, about the prisons i system . Because they are felons, they dont have that right anymore to vote . Thank you. Host thank you. Guest thank you. It from state to state, but the majority, if you are a convicted are not voting. I dont want to split hairs, but if you are in a county facility and it is not a felony, those folks will be able to vote absentee, and as you know, military can vote. Weour state, we have what call summary law, that i was successful in passing a couple of years ago, so that military, and missionaries, for that matter, who are in isolated areas of the world, i think that qualifies in a bigger capacity today than it probably did a year ago, with this virus, but those individuals would actually have hundred days to start requesting their ballots, so they could be already voting today for our june primary, just because of the challenge of getting things to voters. That is an issue we have right now because of the out worldwide outbreak, individuals in italy and other places like that who have been heavily hit, mail is not moving because of what has happened, so we are allowing them to vote electronically, so they can actually vote through an email or a fax process. They can go online and look at their jurisdiction, it will tell them how to do it, but we are very flexible in that regard, because we know sometimes our military and our missionaries are in a position where they cannot get a ballot out. This is definitely one of those times. Host paul pate is joining us from des moines. He is the iowa secretary of state pate also serves as the president of the National Association of secretaries of state. Among those surveyed, 68 supporting the idea. What will november look like in all National Election with 50 states, washington, d. C. And u. S. Territories . What is different, if anything . Guest well, we have to plan for the worst and hope for the best. But my own crystal ball, for what it is worth, i am optimistic that we will go back to some level of normalcy come of normalcy, but even having said that, at least now what the Health Officials are saying, we will be encouraging our high risk populations to use curbside voting or an absentee approach for that period. But again, that is too far ahead to see. We moved our special election that was supposed to be in april, we move that to july. It was the first date we had available. We knew we were not an action to put the elections out there successfully with. You just dont get a vendor overnight to put out, you know, 2 million mailers for you, so we did reschedule those special. Lections host this headline from pandemiccom, the threatening monster turnout in november. Good morning. Caller good morning. How are you . Host fine, thank you. Caller you see, my main concern is how people, you know, that are going to be on the ballot, how this will affect them, if it rages on into election season. You look at polls, and, you know, the majority of older voters really have more of a support on the democratic side for biden, and more younger people have a support for sanders, so i am wondering if more people, you know, vulnerable, older people are, like, left out of commission because of the illness or has caused them harm or something, if it will affect the numbers in the end, like it will shift the vote, per se. Host thank you, ryan. That is more of a primary question, not the general election, but paul pate, if you could respond . Guest sure. I think anytime you look at primaries, which campaign has the ability to turn out votes . If you look at the history of most states, and i will speak to ours, the campaigns have been very aggressive on getting those early votes in, vote by mails, absentee balloting. They have a machine of sorts that does that kind of thing. It is more challenging, i think, and it will be a different look, because how do you put phone banks together if we are practicing safe distancing . So there will be some unique components with this, and i am Pretty Company all of the campaigns are looking at what should they do and how they can approach it. It is very frustrating, i am sure, for some of them to be somewhat sidelined, not able to do the more conventional. You are having your rallies and being able to have phone banks 24 hours, seven days a week, somewhere around the country. But i think we will still get through this, and a candidate who has the most motivated voter base will be the one who is successful, both in the primary and, i think, in the november elections. Host i just want to point this out, because it is frontpage and inside the Washington Post , the caller mentioned bernie sanders. Aides urging him to end his president ial bid. Good morning. Caller yes, i work the polls here, and i am going to be 80. And we cannot find anybody young to work at the polls, because ory evidently dont want to, in that, other jobs and it is a long, long day when you work at the polls, and it i wears me out, so would assume not doing that this , so that is my comment on it. I am not afraid of going to work. It at our regular polling place. It does not bother me, but i they are talking here in iowa about doing it by mail, and i think we will have a lot more by mail, but my friend and i have talked to all sorts of younger people and tried to get them to work the polls, but we cant we dont have any luck. Host we will get a response. Thank you for the call, merrily. Maralee, i want to thank you for your service, and your story is the example i share with a lot of people. You are the kind of folks who ,re very dedicated poll workers and we appreciate that. During the time of this virus, we would like to give you a break, so everyone is safe. It has always been challenging. That is why we have to consolidate a lot of the polling sites. Many counties, they are reducing at 25 to 50 . That is presings they are actually covering. They are just merging