Back. The communicators. Nmed [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2015] visit ncicap. Org] guest good morning. We are welcoming you here today to talk about the president plus commission on Election Commission which a little over a year ago issued recommendations, and here we will talk about progress being made and where to go from here. My role is very simple, to introduce the commissioners and quickly introduce and then turp it over to them. Turn it over to them. Thank you. This past year, you have actually been and honor privilege and pleasure to work with bob and nate and all the pleasure to come up with our series of recommendations and best practices. The truth of course is that bob and i have battled over many very partisan battles over more years than bob cares to admit. And it really was a tremendous opportunity for us to be able to come together over these issues. Because republicans and democrats agree that the ability of all qualified voters to cast their votes fairly and without barriers is a fundamental part of our system and needs to be encouraged everywhere. One of the things that all of you taught us is that we have a very interesting system with 8000 jurisdictions that have some responsibility for putting on elections. So that uniformity is extremely challenging, one of the things the commission saw. But for the few number of jurisdictions where there are problems, there are many more jurisdictions who do the individual parts of voting, whether its lines for registration or proper polling places, very, very well. So the great opportunity that we had and the great educational experience that i think bob and i were able to share was to talk to so many Election Officials around the country see the great skills and dedication that they have to the problem. So i hope our report is a testament to being able to find solutions to problems and then having them implemented in those jurisdictions among the 8000 that do have problems in one of these areas. It is certainly worth noting what a great process it was to work with my fellow commissioners and with nate and then all the folks who came and talked to us at the hearings we had around the worth noting what a great process it was to work with my fellow commissioners and with nate and then all the folks who came and talked to us at the hearings we had around the country. So i hope this report is the start of something that will now be implemented, thanks to john fortier and the Bipartisan Policy Center and tammy and don palmer as we go forward. It is certainly true that it is a difficult process to get all the elements of this report implemented, that it really is a state by state operation, and thats both with the successes and the challenges that the bpc project will lie your so with that let me again thank john for whats going on, and bob for this terrific year, and nate for making us all smart. And all the commissioners for your wisdom and insights on how to solve these problems. During the day we are going to delve more deeply into four issues which the commission made major recommendations. I havent counted how many literal recommendations there are because there are definitely very specific recommendations but the four areas were going to talk about today are improving the polling place experience of reducing polling place lines, second, the Voting Technology issues associated with the new generation of Voting Machines and that we certify and test them, the possibility of early voting and how states are moving to that and might move to that more effectively, and a number of issues related to Voter Registration, including online registration and data sharing across states and working with their dmvs. We have a little time in this initial panel which touches things off to Say Something about those issues, and maybe i can ask some of the commissioners to pick one of those and say a Little Something about that. I know maybe the Voting Technology issue i think is one that i thank you. This past year, you have actually been and honor, privilege and pleasure to work with bob and nate and all the pleasure to come up with our series of recommendations and best practices. The truth of course is that bob and i have battled over many very partisan battles over more years than bob cares to admit. And it really was a tremendous opportunity for us to be able to come together over these issues. Because republicans and democrats agree that the ability of all qualified voters to cast their votes fairly and without barriers is a fundamental part of our system and needs to be encouraged everywhere. One of the things that all of you taught us is that we have a very interesting system with 8000 jurisdictions that have some responsibility for putting on elections. So that uniformity is extremely challenging, one of the things the commission saw. But for the few number of jurisdictions where there are problems, there are many more jurisdictions who do the individual parts of voting, whether its lines for registration or proper polling places, very, very well. So the great opportunity that we had and the great educational experience that i think bob and i were able to share was to talk to so many Election Officials around the country see the great skills and dedication that they have to the problem. So i hope our report is a testament to being able to find solutions to problems and then having them implemented in those jurisdictions among the 8000 that do have problems in one of these areas. It is certainly worth noting what a great process it was to work with my fellow commissioners and with nate and then all the folks who came and talked to us at the hearings we had around the country. So i hope this report is the start of something that will now be implemented, thanks to john fortier and the Bipartisan Policy Center and tammy and don palmer as we go forward. It is certainly true that it is a difficult process to get all the elements of this report implemented, that it really is a state by state operation, and thats both with the successes and the challenges that the bpc project will lie your so with that let me again thank john for whats going on, and bob for this terrific year, and nate for making us all smart. And all the commissioners for your wisdom and insights on how to solve these problems. During the day we are going to delve more deeply into four issues which the commission made major recommendations. I havent counted how many literal recommendations there are because there are definitely very specific recommendations but the four areas were going to talk about today are improving the polling place experience of reducing polling place lines, second, the Voting Technology issues associated with the new generation of Voting Machines and that we certify and test them, the possibility of early voting and how states are moving to that and might move to that more effectively, and a number of issues related to Voter Registration, including online registration and data sharing across states and working with their dmvs. We have a little time in this initial panel which touches things off to Say Something about those issues, and maybe i can ask some of the commissioners to pick one of those and say a Little Something about that. I know maybe the Voting Technology issue i think is one that i know our esteemed cochairs probably didnt think they were going to come into this commission and say, this is the thing we are going to mix a major recommendations about, but do you want is a little bit about that issue or a couple of others of you may be jump in say broad things about the others . John is right in this technology and problems with our existing machines, was not something that we anticipated talking about at the beginning of the process. But in our various meetings and hearings around the country, it was clear that every election official faces the problem of machines bought in the early 2000s, now kind of running out of juice. There was an additional problem in that the technological standards that had to be passed to bring new equipment to market have not been updated since 2007, which is before the ipad was invented. And by the way, you ought to be able to cast a ballot on an ipad these days. Thats a fundamental problem that we saw that we got a tremendous amount of help to come up with some recommendations. Matt masterson and Christy Campbell and the folks at and tom hicks have got a lot of the lions share of getting all this put into place so that it can, there can actually be a solution to it but i think it is one of the things that came out of the commission was hopefully being able to put some focus on it. Certainly, chris thomas who is one of our commissioners has been a tremendous amount of time in his role in michigan in dealing with the issue. Maybe i can turn to chris. I was going to ask you with saying something a registration. I know you care deeply about many aspects of registration but in particular the department of Motor Vehicles in michigan is a model. Do you want to say a little bit about that . Theres a lot of the things on the table. Voting systems is one of them. Maybe i can turn to chris. I was going to ask you with really a model for working with the Election Office and sharing lists. Do you want to say a little bit about that as a key recommendation . It is a key as my cochair indicated theres a lot of things on the table. Voting systems are certainly one of them that we all see approaching. But an ongoing one has been the National Voter registration act which really has not yet occurred. This report helped highlight that. Every person whos eligible ought to be a registered voter and have that opportunity offered when theyre doing business with department of Motor Vehicles. What the data shows is that thats just not the case. So we have highlighted that as a way of really across the board to get a higher registration rate to make it more convenient for voters. What this report is all about is the voter. Its not about political parties. Its not about election official. Its about the voters making this experience a better experience on election day. The worst thing is you show up on election day and your name is not in the book. But your drivers license will have your proper address on it. When the dmvs step up and fully implement this, well get rid of lions share of the provisional ballots which also cause lines on election day. John would one of the commissioners like to say a little bit more about the recommendation regarding polling place lines . That was the initial comments from the president that spurred the creation of this commission. One of the areas. And well have a panel later, but one of the areas were trying to work, the commission with specific counties on these issues. You would Say Something about your findings online . Sure. I will. Good morning, everyone. It is great to see everybody again and to get the band back together here at the table. Thats correct that the lines really spurred the commissions genesis, but what was on executive order was that it laid out 10 very discrete areas to look at, and one of those tied directly into resource allocation and what causes lines, whether its the inaccuracy of our voter rolls or its malfunction of voting equipment. And what we found as we went around the country was that lines occur for various reasons at various points in time during election day sometimes in the same polling place. So its a very tough nut to crack and to decide exactly what are causing the lines, but what were finding and will result in our hearings in some of those local election investors are here today is that Election Officials are looking to try and discern why these lines are occurring and looking to the facts on how they can mitigate that from occurring in the future. So which one thing to kind of cut through there are problems with a line at a particular polling place because machines have broken down, but then you find out had nothing to do with machines breaking down, but it was, in fact, a problem with poll workers workers liking and being kind to each other and listening to what theyre supposed to do. So theres a wide reason that lines occur. So what we have to do, it was okay, how can we provide tools to local officials to figure out why theyre getting lines and how to address them when they occur. And we did make the recommendation in the report that voters should not have to wait longer than 30 minutes in order to get to a point where talking to an election official to get their ballot, that sort of thing. That was really for the means and when youre doing a resource allocation, and poll workers to our, how many pieces of equipment, how many ballots should you order, to try and think about it in terms of want to process these people than 30 minutes. We provided some tools. They are out on support the voter. Com is the website so it is www. Supportthevoter. Gov and the tools there that allow Election Officials to go when or in what really, public available, putting the expected turnout or the registered voters, however you want to cut that up, and anything joe going and how many things you are going to be allocating. What we come from Election Officials is that the challenges of resources. And some resources into lack of resources. Some cases its the quality of the resources that they have. In other cases it is the point of allocation of the resources. So putting what you have in the right place is the best way to serve the public and were hopeful these tools that we provided will help the local administrator in doing that. And i think thats part, for me, the commission in this report we really thought of having three separate audiences. Theres an audience that would require state legislation to enact, like online Voter Registration. But then theres also things that state Election Administrators can do via rules and things that local administrators can do just by made in adjusting some of their processes. Thats what we really want to make sure the tools being provided to everyone engaged to make sure the voters are well served. John let me quickly turn to nate, the Research Director because tammy mentioned dave and i think this commission was datadriven, and one person made that call more than anybody else. It was nate persily calling for more metadata and really getting out into the field and engaging political scientists and other scholars and other sources of data. Can you say a little bit about your efforts to remake this commission datadriven . Nate well, thank you again for having me here, and ill talk a bit about that. I am both hoarse and wistful. Bringing, as tammy said, the band back together but does overcome me. And i will say the Research Efforts of the commission while i was up on the Research Director, was a product of the work of so Many Political scientist, Charles Stewart being among them, as ive said on other occasions. There are few people in academia generally who are so invaluable to a profession as Charles Stewart is to the field of Election Administration that we dont know what we would do without them. He and others led a team of researchers Whose Research actually is featured this month in the election law journal. Go to your local newsstand and get that. And the effort included a survey, National Survey of Election Officials. It also included a series of Research Papers on all of the topics in the executive order. And we had about a dozen between one and two dozen political scientists and other empiricists working with the commission to provide them the best data. Notably, in the report, toward the end, there was a plea for more and better data from jurisdictions and to try to sort of replicate what we were doing in the commission, to bring information, to make it a more professional datadriven exercise. There is, as Charles Stewart is fond of saying, this is not intended would dont have all that much data. There is a lot out there, its just that easily accessible to allow the professionals who would like to use it to improve elections. Let me just say one final thing, and this picks up on what bob ben said, about the success of the commission. Theres a sense in which at the end of this process it seemed like it might be inevitable that we would all, the commission would all come together unanimously in recommendations. But it really is a testament to their efforts and the design of the commission that the commission was able to do what it did. And it is sorted unique i think in this era of polarization to have two the people like bob and ben who are trusted by the parties and who can lead an effort like this with professionals who are on the commission to come together really to sort of deal with the problems that are widely known in Election Administration and to deal with them in a nonpartisan professional way. And that spirit that you see in the report is one that we recommend and hope continues after the reports release, youre one of the main recommendations as bob said was to begin to think of Election Administration as a profession a problemsolving profession that is datadriven, along those lines that i was saying. 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