Conversations we have been having over and over. Define for us the difference between male and and absentee voting. Perfecthere is no definition of these sayings. We use these terms loosely and we use them in different ways. Broadly speaking, i think we can talk about there being two ls for the whale which we might avoid a ballot. Who really have an excuse. They have a requirement on them. On the other end of the spectrum, an outlet for only those who need it [indiscernible] state starting the process. North carolina will be the first state to send out absentee ballots today, september 4. Minnesota will be the first allowto allow state to in person voting. What is the reason for starting early . Advice is toece of know your own state rules and laws. [indiscernible] you if you are worried about your ballot. Etting there. Heck your Voter Registration if you need to request a ballot, request it early. If youre going to vote by mail, get it in earlier. States that require that by like today. There are challenges getting it there. Starting early, knowing early, also, if youre going to a polling place, knowing where that is, perhaps going there as well. Those are things voters can do, no matter what the rules are in their state. Go ahead and make sure thereve host you wrote the book on the subject. You have studied this subject. Do you have concerns about absentee or the early voting process in the u. S. Now . Concerns withre every part of the Voting System normally. Things that could be better. Voters can help by being proactive. There are challenges from covid. More people will be looking to vote by mail this time. Many states and administrators have changed laws and rules to allow that. Is willwhat your system help mitigate problems. Problems with states not processing ballots as quickly as expected. The process would be longer. If you want to ensure your ballot gets counted and does not miss the deadline, getting it in early would be helpful. There are issues. Issues withtegrity parts of the Voting System. There are access issues. There, the administrators are doing the best they can in a difficult situation. Host our viewers can take part in this conversation. We will open up special lines. If you plan to early vote, i want to hear from you. What are your plans . How do you plan to early vote . Male in or in person . Person . In or in 202 7488000. If you plan to wait and vote on election day, i want to know what your plans are, how you plan to vote. For those of you voting on election day, your number is 202 7488001. Mail,re going to vote by i know there are several states that require you to vote by mail, tell us of your experience. Your number for voting by mail is 202 7488002. One last line. If you dont intend to vote at all for this upcoming election, we want to know why. We have a special line for those who dont plan to vote, 202 7488003. Once again, early voters, 202 7488000. Election day voters, 202 748 8001. Mail invoters voters, 202 7488002. Nonvoters, 202 7488003. You can always text at 202 7488003. Im still reading on social and ontwitter, cspanwj facebook. Com cspan. John, with all the talk of the pandemic, we are expecting a large number of early voters. Early votinglain every year. I have had to vote on election day every year. Will this cause any stress on the system in getting votes counted and letting us know who wins the election . Guest there are significant challenges. States are having to deal with a flood of voters. They not necessarily to have the workers they want. Many of them will deal with more ballots coming in. Some systems are changed dramatically and how they count. There could be issues. People have mentioned the possibility that we will not know the results of the election on election day. I am not as negative as some. It depends how close the election is and certainly, the states. There is more pressure this time on the Postal Service and accounting period. If we get a large number of ballots coming in by mail, later than usual, dealing with new systems counting them, perhaps at a slower rate, with legal challenges and recounts, we can see how that can stretch out postelection. With all the votes, there is a likelihood we will take longer. If it is not closing many key states, we may know the Election Results soon after. If it is razor thin, we will place more problems. Host lets let some of our viewers join in. Carolina,cing, north he will early vote. Caller morning. Im going to vote early, when the polls open. I will be online. In line. I dont trust this mail in system. [indiscernible] 175 miles away, days from the Postal Service to do everything [indiscernible] they have got it screwed up. They dont care now. [indiscernible] we are hurting. Carolina in north [indiscernible] summer homes, then they go back and vote in the state where they are from. They vote twice right there. It is something that needs to be changed. Ost go ahead, john guest it may be helpful to lay out terminology on early voting. Voting is in person different by voting by mail and is different than voting on election day. [indiscernible] they have sites where you can [indiscernible] that has risen dramatically over the years. Voting by mail has also risen dramatically. 25 . Those numbers have been going up steadily. Number will goil up again this year. System, wewe are a dont have one big National Registration list. The states have made great progress within of creating databases where they know john smith in this county, if this is the same person, we dont have them on the list twice. States have started to share info through programs. Cases, typically a small number of people voting twice. I do not think it is a widespread problem. We are moving toward being able to fix that. We dont have a perfect system because states are different. Host i will try to help our viewers. I have voting times and deadlines. In North Carolina, you have until october 27 to request an application for an absentee vote. Early voting states, october 15 to october 31 and your mailin ballot dates will be, that has to be postmarked november 3 at 5 p. M. Steve, anaheim, california. Good morning. Are you there . Caller there you are. Good morning. Before i go on my rant, i would like to commend cspan for excellent coverage. Your programs, the contenders, tv, court review cases, has been very insightful enjoyable. Host thank you. Caller you are welcome. Ould like to congratulate [indiscernible] scully for being the moderator for the president ial debate. Will jump on my pepe here. Pet peeve here. If you want absentee voting, i have no problem. Four states to willynilly for states to willynilly send qualifications to vote, yeah, i have a problem. This year, i received two ballots in the mail from california. This will kick me off the roll s. Personll me if i vote in and they have already mailed me voter cards, i will not be able to vote in person. Imll find on voting day, not doing good on my explanation but that is the problem i have. Guest some of the states have some real challenges to make sure they are doing it well where the some states who have been doing it for a while have this in place. I think things will go reasonably well but i think there are some significant challenges for the way one implements this and another part the caller brought up, sometimes you can vote in person but you and have a mailin ballot states have to figure out how to deal with that. They will check you off the list if you show up to vote in person. Perhaps they will have you cast a provisional ballot which they will deal with later if they think youre absentee ballot is outstanding. These are complicated matters. I think there will be some kinks in the system. Working that out over time will help. It is such a challenging environment for this election. Host President Trump talked about this very issue recently at a stop at the Wilmington International airport. I will play for you what President Trump said in North Carolina. [video clip] they will go out and vote and they will have to check their vote by going to the polls and voting that way because if it tabulates, they will not be able to do that. Let them send it in and let them go vote and if their system is as good as they say it is, obviously they will not be able to vote. If it is not tabulated, they will be able to vote. That is the way it is. That is what they should do. Ofont like the idea unsolicited votes. I never did. It leads to problems. Hey have 11 problems already i am not happy about it. Time, we are going to see if it can be stopped. Send in your ballots, whether it is solicited or unsolicited. The absentee is fine. We have to work to get them to be something. You send them in and you go to vote. If they have not counted it, you can vote. That is the way i view it. Host President Trump clarified he does not mean people should vote twice. But if you do mail in early or absentee vote and you want to be sure that your vote was counted, what do you do . That i want to reiterate no one should vote twice. Sometimes there are some questions about people who voted absentee as you mentioned and want to know if they have had their vote counted or people who have forgotten that theyre going to do so and state laws vary on this. In a number of states, you can track your absentee ballot through the state website. That is not true everywhere. Be in touch should with your local election official. Some will be more likely to provide that information. If you do go to the polling place or even if you have a ,alid outstanding ballot there is likely going to be some procedure to cash someone voting twice. Catch someone voting twice. Whether it is a database that notes that you already voted, or perhaps the state does not know for sure, they might actually ask you to cast a provisional ballot. Make sure that only one of your votes counts. These are difficult things. Procedures are in place, but they are different everywhere and there is some confusion. Checking with your state if they have the capacity to tell you whether your boat has come in, or perhaps whether it has been accepted, that is a possibility for some voters. Host let me add that i forgot to tell for our california voters, you can apply for absentee by mail or in person. The deadline to request your application will be october 27, the beginning of early in person voting is october 5 and the mailin ballot deadline, you have to be postmarked by november 3. Lets go back to the phone lines and talk to tom calling from baltimore, maryland. He says he is not going to vote. Good morning. Caller good morning. It is funny. When i was in seventh grade, they taught me about the Electoral College. Im glad to see it is finally getting the attention that it needs. I have never voted for a president , i dont see the point. Aside from the fact that i think both candidates are subpar. I will take my comments off the air. Thanks. Host Electoral College. Book on thee a new Electoral College, a new addition, an explanation of how it works. I think the Electoral College has been controversial. Certainly polling has been against the Electoral College. It is also difficult to change. I think the caller might be referring to the fact that perhaps his state is not a closed state and it is true in the Electoral College, the key states are the ones that are competitive, that is where most of the resources will be spent. I would encourage voters to vote anyway. There are a lot of things on the ballot. Your vote still does matter, even if we have the National Popular vote, your vote would still matter even if it were on the losing side. It is a good thing to put up your preference to vote. Dont think the Electoral College is the one reason you should not. This caller has a strong word about it and Many Americans would prefer a different system. Host i will point out as well that there are more races than just the president ial race this fall. You have your senate, house, local mayor, governor, city counselor, School Boards on the ballot as well. There is a bigger thing going on than just the president ial election. In maryland, this great chart comes from axios. Com. In maryland, you can apply for your absentee ballot online. The deadline is october 20. The early in person voting date is between october 26 and november 2 and your mailin ballot deadline will be november 3. Im going to go to a question that came from one of our social media followers. This person wants to know if our vote is 95 accurate, what can be done to get that last 5 . I am not sure where the number 95 accurate came from. I think our vote is pretty accurate. If the caller or the social media commenter is asking about could there be some ballots that are not counted, that is going to be true. There are restrictions and deadlines in different states. There are ways in which sometimes voters make mistakes on their ballot. We have done a fair amount to remedy that. If you remember in florida in 2000, we were looking at things s, wethe punchcard ballot dont have those systems anymore. We have many things in place to keep people from making mistakes. I think it is a complicated system. All of the different states with different rules. There are some places where people can make mistakes. There are going to be some mistakes made in the accounting and casting process. I think we are pretty high on the scale and we have done pretty well. As a voter checking your Voter Registration, knowing what the rules are and how and where youre going to vote, i think those are important. There are some things after the election we can talk about to improve the registration and the system as well. I think we should feel confident that your vote will be counted especially if you are proactive. Host im going to go to another question from a social media follower. It is a similar question that i would ask myself. What procedures are in place to protect the chain of custody of a mailin ballot . With an absentee ballot, people request it. With a mailin ballot, people do not. Guest it varies from state to state. Typically you are going to have a ballot and you are going to fill out the ballot and then put it in an envelope. That envelope will have certain information you will have to put on it. It is there to verify who you are. States, it is more extensive. You might have to provide a reason or get a witness. Other states maybe you have to put your name. Also there is a privacy aspect and that nobody in the mail system is going to treat it like another envelope. Once the local officials receive them, typically you are going to have a system of looking at that ballot or opening the ballot which is monitored by representatives from both parties. You will have an election official and both parties watching out for the other making sure that no one view is represented or not. Sometimes there are disputes about whether a ballot is legitimate or not or has met the requirements. Have made a if you mistake on the envelope, they may contact you and give you an opportunity to correct that, to get the right signature, to get the witness requirement. Getting it there on time is important. There are things that we can do that keep the ballots safe and a lot of it has to do with the fact that we allow the parties and their representatives to watch over the system at every step of the way. The rooms are guarded. There are cameras and there are people from both parties watching out. Host lets go back to the phone lines and talk to bill who was calling from columbia, maryland. He plans to vote by mail. Good morning. Caller good morning. Two reasons why i plan to vote by mail. First of all, i am a hard worker and i dont want to take time off. Second thing is as a trumps supporter, i voted before at the polls where i live and i live in a very blue section of maryland. There is a certain amount of hostility that i face. I have not faced long lines but i suspect there will be long lines this year. I have three comments. Is, when i order something online, i get a message saying where it is received and it tells me when it is going to be delivered and all that. I dont know why we cannot have technology set up where when the , yout is received by mail get a notice via email or some other way that it was received and then you can go online and look at it and see that it was actually tabulated for the candidates that you chose. The second point that i wanted to raise is there is all this theern about manning polling places and i am wondering why they cannot take members of the National Guard, young people who are healthy, who are not that susceptible to Serious Problems from covid, why they cannot have them man the polling places. The third thing that concerns me as a trump voter, the postal union has come out in support of biden and we are expecting them to make these deliver the mail. I have read stories about postal employees just throwing the mail out because they did not want to go through the trouble of delivering it or potentially postal employees who are very probiden and they are like, im going to throw them out because im in a red district where there is a lot of potentially trump voters coming in. Those are my comments and i would like to hear your response. First point, in many states you can track your ballot. It is a process that is evolving. The stateten go on to election website and track the ballot coming into you. If you requested it, it might be able to tell you that it has been sent out or it has reached the post office and on the way back, that the officials have received it or not. That is possible for a number of jurisdictions. You just have to check your own circumstances. Russian, ional guard think there are some significant issues about poll workers. Voting in person will be an important part of this election even if we do more voting by mail. We are worried that we are going to see some dropoff in poll workers. On average they are older. Some of them have not wanted to show up at the polls. There might be lastminute illnesses or reasons people cannot come. It is a big push to make sure we have that capacity. Some of it is more volunteers and many of you out there can do a Great Service by volunteering to be a poll worker in your state. I thi