>> this congress will be the busiest congress we have had in decades. . >> on top of the campaign message game we are hearing. sun to help the voters sort through fact and fiction in addition how'd we look to the future to see how voters could be setup for informational success that is will lead to the idea for the panel this morning and the people you see in front of you. many of of you know, secretary williams. >> caller: [applause] >> he was elected 38 secretary of state after serving as the el paso county recorder and also teaches law seminar is. the secretary graduated with honors in 1986 from brigham young and the virginia law school. selected as a truman scholar and lives in colorado springs with his wife and four children. and a long histories of service two-seat former and also served as a convicted between 2001 and 2014. taking on a new role less senior practice fellow at harvard at would like to introduce the calf entered for the election maker of food a new or equipment. >> the prior to funding but to deliver election also previously served as. >> also the senior director of policy research and advocacy but with voting rights and the redistricting and also currently serves as the chair to the future board of divisors. she has her harvard and a b.a. from california. also the vice president so this would make associations more effective. but with that quantitative research with the congressman and with that gubernatorial election also as a legislative assistant in two offices. graduating from university of michigan with her master's degree but with that cynic engagement on the platform that are displayed to encourage participation. before facebook of product lead for the civil engagement initiative responsible for products globally. it was then the texas center and then in the diversity of of fox word hugh halftime. >> so rebecca. >> but what eventually wise your approach for what we saw happening in the public simic think you very much for having me here today. also to the -- and believe that they are for of it. >> there were some challenges and relatively few problems but on the ground experience of whiff that infest heat. >> bell looking to understand what does that mean from a broader perspective. >> but as part of that effort with the course of two months leading up toothy election as the day after "israel" free -- we had focus groups to get a sense on either side of the ideal how did they approach the but for them to feel more confident but i would be happy to talk to them on the rest of the panel. >> but then we can dig into that little bit more. >> turning to secretary williams, we heard about the issue in but from and sometimes mother a candidate so why would be responding aggressively to win few for with new and that redo. >> but the last secretary of state in colorado, yes did come of the purvey but mead mail out ballots to everybody but we checked the signatures when they come back and we take it never of staff and there are no voting systems connected but where he breaks and holds his breath for 10 minutes while pulling in to steal a piece of data? you could do that. but not without physically been there. under but people need to have the confidence to do everything they should be to maintain them are -- but they have that confidence in garbling to vote. >> i will comeback and we try to arm of voters with information. where did b.c. some of movement. >> the first member but that is leading up to the election only if it was being -- waited around and that means the majority has of lovell and that is the key to your starting to feel the day after the election. 85 percent of people who participated in the election on election day had a pleasant experience going to the of polls and the ballot box with intimidation say you have all this heat coming from the different entities and that was very positive but as we know having a positive experience at a personal level is well bolster individual feelings and confidence in the up process. >> there were signs in arresting findings but david has been at great asset. we've been lied heavily on your expertise as those communication challenges the merged it felt like that had to be communicated. >> first of all, this was an unusual election cycle like have doing this to decades of a better seen anything like it. there were challenges to the integrity of the system from all over the spectrum. this started well before in the election i ctc of these challenges and to there was a period there were efforts to question the integrity of the results one side or another thought they might lose and that cost challenges for the professionals who run elections. we have things to do and how that question raised causes tremendous challenges. in a heated environment after the election. not true. then a second wave around november that came from a variety of angles and questions of packing. and finally the last wave and with the non credible numbers without the evidence from three months ago. of course, the state election directors and the county looks for the next election. but one of the things is to point out that there is is the exception that they wake up tuesday morning that you're not working every day in between to build protocol and checks and balances every day there is not an election and the day of the election. so those studies that are cited we should be greatly worried there is no study that says that and there is no evidence. allows us 2.0 with the checks and balances in place may vary by state but it does work because we know in this room that if there was massive voter registration fraud we would have seen large number of flagged registrations nonmatching social security activity we have not seen before or a large numbers of request for mail ballots we have not seen before and there are many others. then after the election we do investigations that anybody said that is over. move on they look to see if there were problems so even if there were fraudulent votes getting through we would note to identify looking at several secretaries of investigations they have conducted in their stay exactly as they are supposed to be doing. bette never the of less -- but nevertheless the first is the of pre-election that we were very concerned the machinery of democracy would make them think what is the of point? why should i bother going somebody is hacking or redeem the system one that just was not true? and coming to your point that challenge was met we did not see massive numbers that bought into the it system. but it is of longer term the facts -- defect to say there is massive fraud to be prone to hacking to prevent that. it may lead to a long-term effect on the voter psyche. but that just is not true citizen convent on all of us , -- in convent on all of us that integrity counts for when your party loses. amble sides have fallen victim in the election professionals take that into account. i have then in polling places and i can say without question the best federal election that i have ever seen. in this particular leave remarkable with the tremendous scrutiny to have never seen anything like that before yet it was incredibly well run. there was constant innovation and integrity measures we need to continue spreading that message and pushing ourselves. >> one of the last pieces of the handout is one of we did discover groups of voters is the perception and the reality but how did you go about investigating that quick. >> cow people of color saw their experience and then the perception vs. reality that was a positive the run but there was concern within of ballot box on election day. and on the day after 44 percent of democrats or 33 percent of republicans said they could change the results. that is not prevented is middle america. to modify and voters poolsides felt the voting machine malfunction could impact the results. and with some of the work the points you're making with those voter blocs what was a heartbreaking number coming out was voters of color felt how they're voting experience went to the said they had the pleasant experience pet they saw a real difference to how they approach that. twenty-four% of the african-american voters were some sort of problem at the ballot box. experience may have been the same but the perception is different and what will meg that is not necessarily for me. but how did get to replace the number in is top down? with caucasian or latinos or african-american. >> we don't expect everybody but to study the latino community with the rigging and hacking depend is taking into. but to pull this together with is a great opportunity to have a great dialogue. but over several decades conducting a comprehensive program of voter engagement and protection in research for the challenges of latinos have during elections. we operated the toll-free need bilingual hotline for voter protection issues. me god 11,000 calls and then drill down on 4400 on what the real issues voters wanted to hear about. where do i find my polling place? but 8% were problems that latinos encountered. says they showed up at the polling place many burn not offered provisional balance with the significant number were absentee voters. of the long line so or malfunctioning equipment within told the state could not get that language assistance but in and at latino community isn't that did is and irrelevant that elections would be sound to the industry to the latino community so how can we address that information? you'll need to take into account the diversity of the electoral process. many get some from traditional sources from english language when jimmy dia and -- media and it is important. however in terms of the internet research shows between 2009 and 2015 the rate of latinos accessing the internet is almost catching up to the non-hispanic whites and they're more likely to use the of mobile devices and add this social media users building information and trust like people from secretary of state with billing quench accessibility advisedly committee on our range of the secretary of the commonwealth on the implementation of from nine trotter restriction the website as nearly 40 and 50 languages. so figure out what that information strategy is critical but talk about a more fundamental issue of trust to the electoral process. looking at the last several cycles more than half of latinos who are eligible are not voting so those that our eligible to over half are not casting ballots so as they talk to you these latinos they don't trust the process with the concept that will not make the difference in the community or the political system is the more fundamental issue of voter trust. we don't expect every secretary of state alone from candidates toward campaigns that be saw from illinois and the york for many people during the election cycle it is part of the 50 stay strategy to build that ongoing lovell of trust and that is what will strengthen. >> i love that you touched on the opportunity has to have a representative from facebook here today as we talk it is trying to create a more knowledgeable voter. >> what degree transition by the way. [laughter] but facebook has been promoting with voting reminders on election day. how many of you here actually use facebook? a does want to make sure i can calibrate that terminology. to provide these to minders on election day with the official information such as pooling location that is the equivalent of the i voted stickers. that is been happening since 2008. but this year we want to help the process to navigate on election day with a series of product work to promote participation and throughout the cycle with similar reminders if you register to vote for voter registration. also we helped on the more knowledgeable voters side two-seat if they can learn about those candidates and on election day itself we did the election day reminder and finally on election night and the day after and that was important and powerful to allow them so they could be engaged on election day and every day after so for this particular election cycle the things that made it very powerful is the value is first of all, has a social multiplier defect -- effect. so that is what we think we can add. there are so many people that are genuinely interested in misinformation but to put this on top of the new speed for people's attention to bring this to those people who otherwise would not. we hope we made a good contribution here. that we are just happy to bring it to people who use facebook and bring it to the of platform. >> igo be talk about the presence as people make their mark but that next evolution talking about concerns of packing to been more familiar and the great press release. >> thank you for having this conversation. particularly my friend denise merrill. she and i have been colleagues for a very long time in connecticut, and i'm glad to be here with all of you. i also want to compliment the secretaries of state and the election directors who i think are not here this morning, but i do think this was a very, very smooth election, as dave said, in terms of the mechanics in an election cycle that, where the word "smooth" is not exactly what you would generally use the characterize it. but on the actual mechanics of the election, you did an excellent job, and i think it really showed. and i think you did an excellent job of standing up in a bipartisan way for the quality of work that you and your staffs do and did during the election. i think the more of that you can do, obviously, the better. because i think the job you did was excellent x you ought to be proud of it, and you ought to stand up for it regardless of where the questions come from. so in terms of my fellowship, just a quick -- i think the idea from the kennedy school and the academic dean, some of you may know, is for me to try to be a bridge between all of the good academic work that's going on there and at harvard generally, in the academic community even more broadly and the field of practice. including you, but also including all of the organizations who are working on democracy issues. too often there's a gap between a lot of really interesting research that's going be on, whether it's statistical research, philosophical research, public opinion research that's going on in academia if the work that people do -- and the work that people do. so i'm certainly going to try hard to be of use to all of you. i've only been there four weeks, so don't expect miracles right away, but i do offer this as somewhere that i hope a bridge can be made. let me just make three points, stacy, in regard to what you did. i think the basic, fundamental issue of people's sense of participation, of confidence not just in the election process itself, but in our democracy as a whole is a huge issue for us. the numbers speak for themselves, they're just not good in terms of the level of participation in any community. there's a racial divide, for sure, but the statistics are not very good anywhere. and i think that it becomes a real project that all of us have to do in order to try to get it up. let me make three different points about it. number one -- and, by the way, just to echo what rod said, this is a much broader issue than just the secretaries of state can handle. nobody's saying fix this, but i think you can play a real role, i think the offices can play a real role. so number one is i think making democracy something that's not just about election day, but is about the other 364 days is an important thing. the more that people are participating in an ongoing way whether it's community conversations or student mock elections or town meetings or participatory budgeting, there are all kinds of mechanisms that can be done, social media perfect example. lots more opportunities there. i think we should do it, civic education, all kinds of ways in which people can be involved and participate so they don't say you only come around when you want my vote, which is something i'm sure all of you have heard. number two, i do think that inviting the fullest possible participation in the elections is really important. i think there are barriers that are still in people's way. there's a suite of policies, again, that, you know, i know you actually are, this topic of discussion whether it's automatic voter registration, same-day registration, preregistration of 16 and 17-year-olds, expansion of convenience voting, you know, i think that there's just a lot of mail-in, early voting, there are many, many things that can be done, all of which lower the barriers. the restoration of voting rights for people with felony convictions. again, we've got five million people who can't vote because of felony convictions. so i think considering all of those possibilities at the same time guaranteeing the integrity of the vote really important. and lastly, and these are even bigger issues, it is absolutely true that the reason people don't vote are varied and wide. they don't, you know, the integrity of the ballot and the election day itself is probably among them, but probably not the biggest. the more general sense of these issues are not about me, people are not talking about me. the if elections are uncompetitive, if there's gerrymandering and the districting process is unfair, it leads people to say why bother. if people feel that the money is dominating the election and the system is owned -- and this is true on the right and the left, people feel like the system is owned by others, not by me -- i think that discourages people, you know? i think the tone and tenor of campaigning and the negativity also discourages people. so i think there are a lot of things in the culture more broadly, but are close enough to the purview of secretaries of state that it's really worth thinking about and doing something about. so making democracy an everyday day task, really opening up the election process as widely as we possibly and thinking about those things within the electoral process that discourage people from feeling a sense of importance and ownership and agency about it, all those things are things i hope that the secretaries of state will be active on, and i'm certainly willing to work with you and look forward to doing so. >> thanks, miles. so there was a lott, a lot said there. thanks for that perspective. we, i think in order to make this feel very actionable and real, i want to hear from secretary williams again. so we've heard a lot from the panelists, but 40 dow -- how do you feel like this election cycle or any new information you have from this experience will change how you approach 2018, 2020 and really think about how you're talking about elections with voters? >> we call you the field of practice. [laughter] >> well, in colorado immediately after the election we held a meeting with representatives from the county clerks' offices, we've had a series of other meetings with people who are interested in the process. and i think all of us have to continue to say how can we make it better. we cannot simply say everything's fine, leave us alone and then stick our head in a bunker and hope everybody goes away. i think we have to be engaged. and so when i was a clerk and recorder running the elections as a local official, when i had a recount, i brought in the candidates from each side and said, hey, here's what we're going to do, here's the process we're going to use. we're going to walk you through this. tell us if you think we could do something better to make this process work better. and so engaging people in the process, i think, is important. we designed our counting rooms with windows so that everybody could see the process even if they weren't an accredited watcher. they could still have confidence in the process that's going on. and that is important. we do a number of things, and we've not been shy about telling people how we insure the integrity of those lists. and so you've got a handout with those. i'm going to plug eric here for a second. you'll see in the back of the packet a list of states that participate in the multistate processes to say is somebody registered in more than one state. and so we have to address those, and i think this is the last year pew is still subsidizing people coming in to eric. and so i know david's not with pew anymore, but there's a timeline. do it now, while it's cheaper. we have to be able to respond -- [laughter] to say, look, we hear the problem, we're addressing it, and we're trying to make sure the process has that integrity so that people believe their vote's going to count. because if i don't believe my vote counts, if i believe it can be tampered with as you're referring to, and so sometimes as i visit with clerks, they would say, oh, it would be so much easier if i could just use my staff or if i could just use the people from one group and that bipartisan team of judges that comes from the parties. and sometimes they don't always appoint the people we wish they would appoint, but we have to have that bipartisan team so that people are confident that neither side is tampering with those results afterwards. and so those processes that we take have to instill that confidence that my vote's going to count. one of the things we did in colorado, we adopted new standards that require a paper record. and so the concept that, well, the little -- someone tampers with a machine, well, we've got a paper record of every single ballot that's cast in my state, not just the mail ballots, but the ones in person as well. even the ones with the accessible devices. and be in that process, we worked with the disability community to insure they felt that was an accessible way of casting those ballots as we adopted a new standard. and we have to be open, we have to be engaged in dialogue, and that's, i think, part of the election official's challenge. because sometimes -- and some of you work with people who have been a county clerk for 20 years, and this is the way we do things, and i don't want to listen to anything else. and we have to engage them in that dialogue to say how can we make it better, what can we do going forward to improve the process. and we have to listen to people on both the right, the left, and people have no ideological preference at all and include them in a group, working groups. i established a bipartisan election advisory committee and seek that input so that people feel like we actually are committed to this process. so they feel confidence in it. >> excellent. and i think what that sort of gets to is all of us at various moments know what it's like to be a skeptic, and perhaps from working from the voters roll, play the skeptic for a moment. while we all have confidence and feel comfortable about the things we know, imagining from the perspective of someone who is maybe contacting an office for the first time and starting with a baseline of how elections really work. playing that role of the skeptic in our own shoes helps us, i think, understand their level of trust and moving them on that dial. rebecca, can you repeat again -- if you shared earlier -- the three treatments that folks were given the move the dial on them for this rigging and hacking conversation, and then i'd actually love, david, if you could weigh in on kind of ways that you think we should be approaching media from here on out for the next, next cycle but really in between election cycles. >> uh-huh. and i just take a moment to say how incredible the story that you told lane about the windows that you have for the vote count? one of the things that we heard again and again in focus groups and in the conversations that we did was that real need for transparency, right? that real need. they don't necessarily know the process. voters don't necessarily know the process, and so they might not, they might not mistrust it, they just need a little bit more. and be so hearing about that, like, those are the types of really easy type stories that we're able to talk about, things that we're able the share that show no one's trying to hide anyone anything from you. this is not being done behind closed doors. we're not trying to get you or pull one over which is what i think folks are so worried about right now. it really is a straight forward and easy process. something we've found in our research is not talking and is not really an option, right? if you don't have the conversation with voters, they go down a rabbit hole of fear, and they start to work things out in their minds that goes back to that idea of someone -- they don't -- they're not looking out for me. and so having conversations about the fact that this is a decentralized process, right, so it's not -- all the power doesn't fit in one place, across locality, across states, decentralized. having a conversation about how this is a system that is built on checks and balances, having a conversation about how this is a transparent process. that does so much more the move the needle with voters than just not saying anything at all. >> and, david, then if you could jump in with so moving forward on that, what role will the media continue to play in this? >> so normally around this time we would have expected the media wouldn't care about elections again, and they'll start showing up on your doorstep probably around october of 2018 when the story is sexy again and when people on the fringes are raising questions about a variety of things. so one silver lining is this conversation's still happening, and that can be a real opportunity for us all. and one of the things -- and it struck me in what you were saying, wayne. this is often a false dichotomy put forward in the media and by some that's and integrity -- that access and integrity are mutually exclusive, that we cannot build a system that is secure and has integrity and also afford access to all eligible voters. i think everyone i've ever met in the election field wants a system in which all eligible voters can vote and only eligible voters can vote. i think there's widespread agreement on this. so things like eric where it allows you to clean up the lists and get the records of the people who shouldn't be on the rolls anymore off under federal law, allows you to update the records of those whose information is updated and also allows you to get new, eligible voters onto the list. and colorado's been a great example of that, registering a opportunity of new registered voters. those things are not mutualingly exclusive. now, this isn't always a sexy story, you know? it's sexier to have conflict. and it's not just eric, there's a whole bunch of other things. i talk all the time, we forget it seems like was so, so long ago. [laughter] but two states offered online voter registration in 2008, and today that number's 34 states plus d.c., and many others are building systems that will be live by 2018. and that issue, although it was perceived as something that was only about access, which is not what it was, it was really about access and integrity, now it's widely adopted by red states, blue states, every state in between. and there's all kinds of examples of this. so i think finding ways to use this opportunity to communicate with the media, find some strong talking point, talk about the checks and balances, what you're already doing to the point you raised also, wayne, that we're not resting on our laurels. we think we did a good job in 2016, 2018's going to be better. we're learning from things we've done in the past. more and more states are looking at robust and transparent audits, and that's very good. there are also things that you can do to educate your voters. one of the big, one of the big challenges i though you all have -- i know you all have is voters understanding the difference between election night results and certified results. they expect you to take millions of ballots that were counted when the polls closed at 8:00 and deliver them out at 8:01 and be absolutely perfect. and, of course, you still manage somehow to get those results out within a couple of hours. [laughter] preliminary results, you guys all have the proper language, you tell them what they're supposed to know, but they don't understand you're going through a process often of audits and certification that might take several weeks, and that's entirely reasonable and the way it should be. so use this opportunity to the degree that people like i can help, friel free to reach out to me. -- feel free to reach out to me. whether i like it or not, the media has been reaching out to me lately. i've been trying to communicate these kinds of things. every state is different, but this can be an opportunity to educate voters and educate the media on these things well in advance of the next be natural time they would come to you which is, of course, when you're most busy preparing for the next big federal election, and you've got all this other stuff going on. >> i think that's right. and as david has said, he is certainly welcome to hear comments and feedback. democracy fund, i know, is open and willing to hear more from the audience. secretaries and advocates alike on what we should be doing and thinking through right now. the eac has been a tremendous resource during this time as well to make sure we're getting the fundamentals right with, in communicating with voters. but i want to then offer it up here to the our panel. you all are experts in many regards, and so i want to give you guys a chance to ask one another any questions, especially maybe in sort of more forward-looking opportunities. what are things you would want to know, say, for various minority communities or opportunities with social media? so want to see if you guys have any questions to ask each other. >> i just wanted to point out one thing on the social media. we had a very robust on line voter registration system. you can texting to vote to register in colorado. text to vote to register in colorado. but the biggest spike in registration is when facebook put their notice up, and we could follow it. bigger than all the media appearances i did on national voter or registration day, on tv stations and radio, and facebook does a little notice -- [laughter] and has a bigger impact than anyone else. so i think it is important that we work with our social media partners on this. >> yeah. and we appreciate the opportunity to be able to have that impact, and it was really wonderful to see, you know, across the country various secretaries of state report the impact that we were able to help them with. so from west virginia to georgia to nebraska, colorado to california and, you know, everywhere in between, it was wonderful to see the kind of impact that this can have and looking forward to talking with all of you for other opportunities that we can have to help throughout the cycle. >> i just wanted to raise some questions for all of us to think about and some trends for us to keep an eye out. in light of the fact that we are now operating in a very different political and policy environment than we were before the election, especially when there is so much divisive dialogue about immigration, about noncitizen voting and just some questions to think about and keep an eye on as you look ahead. so for the latino community, the concern and the fear about what is the government going to do with information or data that i provide to the government is going to be much more heightened. and you might think, well, this isn't relevant to the election sphere because election officials have information on u.s. citizens and all the things that have to do with immigration enforcement relate to noncitizens. but, you know, latinos live in mixed status families, and there is a lot of talk between u.s. citizens and people with different immigration statuses. so i think it's important to keep an eye out on reassuring the latino community about the fact that daca is secure, that it is not going to be shared with agencies that are involved with immigration enforcement. you know, being part of that discussion especially with the census being only a couple of years away, i think that's one important thing to think about and to put out for people to talk about. the other thing is just, you know, we really think that there's a research opportunity with respect to latinos' use of social media to get political information. we know that latinos, you know, rely very heavily on traditional media for political information, but we think there's a research opportunity on, to continue the research on to what extent social media tools can be used the talk to latinos, to mobilize latinos. you know, i think there's some opportunities for that looking ahead. >> all right. any other questions for you guys? all right. >> actually, if it's okay, one of the projects that we worked on was insuring that as reporters either at the national or even with some local publications had questions about the process before the process was a really exciting, sexy story to cover, they had the facts, and they knew the speakers that they could go to to actually reach out for facts. david was one of them. democracy fund provided others. but i wonder, david, if you could talk about your experience. what did it mean to have relationships with some of these process-oriented reporters before they actually had the story to write? >> it was actually really important. and i know there's a lot of people who deal with the media in this room, and you know often you might get one single quote in a story when you talk to that person for 45 minutes. and when you've dealt with it well, that 45 minutes led to the right quote being inserted in there, so they really understood it. and i experienced this recently in having kind of a network of reporters that are starting to understand the nuts and bolts of the process is really important. the best example i can think of of is explaining the difference between what it means to have a voter record or and a possible out of date voter record and what the problems are with that, the inefficiencies that are created with that and the difference between that and an actual fraudulent ballot cast, that those are not -- there's not a straight line between those two things. there are a variety of checks and balances in place between those. and to walk them through all of that to say, yes, we should be cleaning up the rolls. it's not that that's not a problem. bad records on the list are a problem. there are ways to deal with it. many states are dealing with it in a variety of ways. but just because you have an out of date record or someone who's moved out of the state and registered to vote in another state -- as we know millions have. i don't call my former state when i move and say take me off the rolls. in fact, i've talked to people who have tried, and you can't do it. i mean, you shouldn't be able to. hi, i'm david becker, can you take david berke off the rolls? just take my word for it, i'm david becker. it shouldn't be done that way. in today's day and age, in the 21st century, there's this expectation that you shouldn't have to go to 20 different government agencies to give them the same piece of information. you expect government's going to have it act together and share that information with each other, and actually people don't alms understand the difference between federal and state and local government and how they interrelate are. so so understanding that expectation, reporters get that to a degree, but walking them through some of the process, and i think this voter registration thing, if people saw reports that were done on nbc news and other places where normally they don't have that long to explain it, but they got some of this issue. the voter roll problem is one rob be, it is different from the voter fraud problem in scope and scale, and this is why things are different and need different solutions for them. that's really important. so, you know, obviously, we'll be talking a lot with reporters, i hope especially building up that base of knowledge with a network. that's very important. >> and let me follow up on something david just said which is if you wait until they call you when the news report shows up, when you're in the middle of the election process and and they're on deadline, you're not going to be able to give a very good ec la nation -- explanation, and they're not going to be able to follow it. so what we've tried to do is reach out to the press well in advance of the election and say here's the process that's going to work. here's what's got to happen. by the way, when we announce results on election night, here's what's still going to have to happen afterwards so they understand they're not final results. >> yeah. >> and so engaging in that dialogue not just with interest groups, but also with the press to say here's what's going to happen. hey, come on over. why don't you come over, shoot some b roll now so you can see our people starting the process, the initial ballots, and let me visit with you about what the process is and how it's going to happen. here are two bipartisan judges who are picking up the ballots from this site. notice that one's a democrat, one's a republican. this is the way it works. and be helping them so they get that information when they're not on deadline, when they're not trying to get a story ready or an article out, i think, is going to give you a better opportunity to communicate information accurately. >> i just want to add one very brief other point which is that i think before this election cycle started if you'd asked me how many reporters nationally really get this issue, i might have said two or three. and i think that number now is closer to a dozen nationally. and i think in the states that number is much larger than it was before. that, you know, i think it'll be or not to work with these folks in between so they don't move on to other things, forget this issue, and come october of next year have to be reeducated on everything that's going on. that's going to be particularly challenging now because every day is a flood of news stories, right? so getting -- finding bandwidth in this environment is going to be challenging. but do your best to maintain those relationships and keep that network. >> miles, do you want to add anything? >> just on this idea twofold. one, that the conversation's continuing and, two, the idea of preparation. again, we don't know what will happen, but it's entirely possible that there had been a major commission on the issues of election process and election fraud be headed up by vice president pence. i think the idea of, i think all of the secretaries and all of the election officials are going to be, you know, potentially sort of on the spot or can be called for interviews and all that. so this, so i think preparing and really knowing -- i mean, i think you have been doing this, but really knowing what happened in the state, what are all the questions that might be asked in this situation, what are the safeguards that you already have in place, issuing an ini invitan to come and observe. anyway, i just think getting prepared for the possibility of a major further be conversation in and around this commission is probably a wise way of preparing. >> right. well, thank you, guys. i want to open it up to, actually, what i believe is one of the most fun parts of having a panel, is to ask the audience to provide us questions. so i think kay's going to -- >> come forward. come on down. >> hi. i'm dennis richardson, secretary of state for oregon, and we have a question that keeps coming up about the numbers of those who are not eligible to vote who are registered to vote. how do you track to insure that those that are registered are actually eligible voters? >> so i'll initially respond to that, and i'll let my colleagues follow up on that. i think there's a number of things that you do. in colorado one of the issues is do they actually live in colorado, do they actually exist be as a person. and so one of the things that i think is important to have is confirmation they actually are at that address. so we send out mailings, and if the post office sends it back to us, then we follow up. and that individual goes into a different status. in terms of are you eligible in terms of being a citizen of the united states, when someone obtains a driver's license in colorado, if they use non-citizenship documents to obtain that driver's license, we're aware of that. and so we compare that to see if that individual accidentally, most of the time, or occasionally intentionally checks the box that they wanted to register to vote, and then we let the clerks know so that individual can be removed in accordance with colorado's procedures. we've had resistance in the past eight years in getting the data that ideally we should from homeland security so we can compare that list to insure that noncitizens are not registered. we've had resistance sometimes from the judiciary when someone gets a jury summons and says i'm not a citizen, and then they don't communicate that information to our office. for follow up. and in some cases they may have been lying, they were just trying to get out of jury service. but we have to have those processes in place so that people have confidence in that. and so i think there are some things we can do that give people more confidence in the elections process and cause people to be more likely to vote as they know that their vote actually counts. >> i would just like to quickly mention that i think it's also important to help educate people about the fact that incidents of non-eligible voters casting ballots or registering are, like, extremely, extremely rare. and that we would also just say that this effort to, you know, ascertain or compare records, for example, with records from the department of homeland security on people's citizenship status has to be done very carefully because we know, for example, that when people naturalize and become u.s. citizens, that is not necessarily going to be reflected in the department of homeland security records. and so we would just say, you know, we understand the need to build voter confidence that only eligible people will register, but this has to be done very carefully. and, again, i think part of this is also having the dialogue to the public in a way that does not perpetuate this, you know, basic myth of the ineligible voter. >> the -- >> casting ballots, yeah. >> entirely a good point because sometimes there's information that's not accurate in a government record, and so that's why we have that follow up. but it allows us to initiate the dialogue. we have to do it recognizing that there's the possibility of an error, and so the letter isn't you're a criminal, it's we everied information that indicates -- we received information that indicates there's a conflict be, would like to get the information from you. so when i was clerk and we sent these out, we had a number of individuals who said, well, i naturalized, here's the papers. we said, great, awesome. we had some who said, yeah, please remove me from the rolls. and so it's the way you approach it that's respectful, it's recognizing we know that not every piece of data the government has is accurate. and so we have to recognize that as we engage in the dialogue with folks. >> good morning. i'm -- am i on? i'm mike turner with the military officers association of america. bit of a commercial here. we're the fourth largers military association -- largest military organization in the country. thanks to a grant from the democracy fund this year, we have kind of dived into the issue of the complicated process of military family absentee voting. and i think the enduring outcome that i've gotten from this six or seven month experience is we really don't even have a clue what we don't know. it's a very complicated process. those of us who have been in the military understand that it's a complicated process. i'm concerned when the national narrative takes a turn towards voter fraud that is not a fact-based narrative that it will make it even more difficult for military families to have confidence when they're overseas and trying to vote. and so i guess my question, what's your sense of military family absentee voting process? are are you, are you comfortable with it? do you think it has challenges that are unique that we need to pass on? the population at, i many guess, of the 1% of the population and spouse toes is probably between 4-7 million voters. thank you. >> i think it's absolutely critical, and i think every election official i know is committed to making sure the men and women who protect this nation have the opportunity to vote. colorado offers a number of options, but one of those was e-mail return of a ballot, and there was concern raised by individuals that that could potentially be intercepted or hacked. and so this year we established a new secure portal that they could transfer the ballot direct hi to us in -- directly to us in an encrypted fashion. so you see states innovating on this having seen the ideas award nomination at various times which is our organization's annual award, a lot of those deal with how to make it easier for military to vote, their family members, overseas citizens and do it in a secure fashion. so i think, absolutely, secretaries of state and our local elected officials are committed to making this as easy and secure as we can possibly make it. >> i'd just add real quickly, i mean, to answer your question about where we are and how well we're doing for these important voters, i think, i think thanks to things like the uniform -- [inaudible] voting act and then the move act which was passed a few years ago and then the work of many people in this room to implement the move act, i've worked in this for many years and worked on the move act, i think we're doing as well as we've ever done, but we're not doing well enough. we still have a long ways the go to improve things. looking back ten years, military families have much better access to information, much more likely to have good information in their voter records, etc., but it's still not all the way there. and military families are particularly emblematic of the most challenging voters, highly mobile voters who are likely eligible in more than one jurisdiction. they usually could be eligible to vote in multiple places where they thought their perm innocent home was, where they happened to be stationed in a variety of other places. doing things like finding ways to proactively reach out to voter is more important than ever because military families in particular aren't always in control of their own mobility. and so they might be moving at a relatively short notice and have to be changing their information. so i know everyone's committed to doing that and, hopefully, the technological tools will continue to to be innovated that will help with those important voters. >> that's right. david, a message that you ghei earlier, i think, rings true for this community as well. they're better off than they've ever been with information and opportunities to understand the process, but i think we can always be looking to improve. and a grant, the grants that we were -- the grant that we were able to give to moa definitely digs into that a little bit more and tries to understand where those informational gaps exist. >> good morning. i'm the executive director of fair vote. we work on the issue of -- [inaudible] voting as a way to keel with the challenges -- deal with the challenges of runoffs and as a potential part of the solution to gerrymandering puzzle. and we have two election officials that are working with us -- [inaudible] and one thing that they're doing quite helpfully and productively, i think, is working with some of the national discussion groups trying to deal with certification. when you're doing something like -- [inaudible] voting which is something that a lot of cities and states are starting to move to, sort of having a national conversation is helpful, it seems like the eac has been a helpful, productive part of the, part of their, you know, the process of election administration. and be as david said, it seemed like the 2016 elections on the federal level was run particularly well. you know, there is this sort of complicated question about the future of eac, and there's some moves to get rid of it. to me, it seems sort of part of this conversation about, you know, having sort of elections we can trust and not to sort of, you know, be controversial, but i'm just wondering if the panel might address sort of the future of the eac, if there isn't an eac, how does it fit into this conversation? and i wanted to quickly ask secondly about the fake news aspect of facebook that when people share things, it isn't true. that was sort of part of the 2016 election cycle too. thank you. >> i think we can keep it in the order that we're given and, hopefully, have time to answer one of them, or both. i think depending on who thinks they want to weigh in on the eac. >> i mean, there's, i mean, i've been working with the eac since it was first formed. i've talked to people across the political spectrum about this. i think the eac is working as effectively as it's ever been working in perhaps an environment as challenging as there's ever been to truly be a resource to the election community, a truly nonpartisan, research-driven, technology-focused resource. and i think it would be a particularly unfortunate thing in this moment if the eac was eliminated. i think we need it now more than ever. >> and i just wanted to quickly agree with that and say that for the latino community, the eac has provided great technical assistance materials on language accessibility, on poll worker training. it is a critical role, it is a critical resource, and we are very troubled by efforts to eliminate it. >> the, i should note that the official nass position, the national association of secretaries of state, is to eliminate the eac, and that's by resolution. i happen to be in the minority on the adoption of that resolution. one with of the things that we have to have in a federal agency is responsiveness, and i think this eac has done a much better job of being responsive to the needs and a need to be response i to the different standards -- responsive to the different standards, different requirements in different states. so as kansas, arizona, perhaps, adopt different requirements, the need to adapt to that. but in terms of the certification of election equipment and standards and the testing labs and insuring those labs can test the equipment well, people need to have that confidence. and be, frankly, there's no other agency in the federal government that i trust more than the eac to do that. i don't see the finishing ec -- fec as functioning well. i don't see other agencies in the federal government that don't have the bipartisan leadership that you have at the eac functioning as well. so i believe it is serves as important function. i think we can continue to improve the process. and i note that i am not speaking as, on behalf of nass because they have a different position than i do individually. and i think our current commissioners have been working hard to respond to the needs and to be more flexible as different states adopt different standards. >> [inaudible] i'm sorry, very quickly. looking ahead, you know, clearly all of the issues about hacking and, you know, the lek on -- electronics and the cybersecurity and many other things, i think having an interface point between the federal government and the states in terms of the election process is probably more needed now than ever. on one hand, on the standards which i think has always been the cay, but order, how to -- on the other hand to, how to manage all these conflicting things coming down the pike. >> and to follow up, when homeland security is saying we need to federalize aspects of the elections that are properly run by the states, the eac was very strong in saying, no, we need to respect the role of the states and not designate that as critical infrastructure which the secretaries, i think, largely believe was an inappropriate designation in the waning days of the last homeland security -- >> this is a good moment to stop and, unfortunately, we'll have to take the facebook conversation offline. we'll be here to -- and and other representatives from facebook would be happy to probably answer those questions independently. i want to thank nass for letting us have this opportunity. i think everyone should give a round of applause to our panelists this morning. thank you for for being here. [applause] and we hope there are many conversations on this topic that are just starting, and we'll go from here in 2017. thank you all. [inaudible conversations] >> next on c-span2, u.n. ambassador nikki haley's comments on the middle east peace process. then the senate confirmation hearing for dade freeman. then state officials discuss election integrity and public confidence in u.s. elections. and later, auto industry executives testifying at a congressional hearing on self-driving cars. ♪ >> c-span's "washington journal" live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up saturday morning, norman solomon of roots action.org calling for impeachment proceedings against president trump. then the project on government oversight, discussing the rights and protections of whistleblowers. and in our spot height on magazines segment, we're featuring national review. we'll discuss the piece which takes a look at president trump's climate agenda. be sure to watch "washington journal" live at seven a.m. saturday morning. join the discussion. >> so which presidents were america's greatest leaders? c-span recently asked 91 presidential historians to rate our 43 presidents in ten areas of leadership. top billing went to the president who preserved the union, abraham lincoln. he's held the top spot for all three surveys. george washington, franklin roosevelt and theodore roosevelt, dwight eisenhower who served from 1953-1961 makes his first appearance in the c-span top five this year. now, rounding out the historians' top ten choices, harry truman, thomas jefferson, john f. kennedy and ronald reagan. lyndon johnson jumps up one spot this year to return to the top ten. but pennsylvania's james buchanan is ranked dead last in all three c-span surveys, and there's bad news for andrew jackson as well. our seventh president found his overall rating dropping this year from number 13 to number 18. but the survey had good news for outgoing president barack obama. on his first time on the list, historians placed him at number 12 overall. and george w. bush moved three spots up on the scale to 33 overall with big gains in public persuasion and relations with congress. how did our historians rate your favorite president? who are the leaders and the losers in each of the ten categories? you can find all of this and more on our web site at c-span.org. >> after a u.n. meeting on middle east security, u.n. ambassador nick city haley talked about -- nikki haley talked about the middle east peace process.