 So let's first talk about mailed ballots. Given that processing mailed ballots takes time, I've heard from many that they fear a reprise of Bush v. Gore. That is the delay in declaring a victor in the presidential election will call into question the legitimacy of the election. Do you have an estimate of how long it will take to count the ballots and be able to certify election results? And do you have the time and the resources that you need? And Secretary Benson, you've been vocal about talking about the time and what you need. So maybe you could start first. Sure. And thanks again for having us and hosting this important conversation. This very topic is something that Secretary LaRose and I have talked about often as, you know, he's his states in a very different place. They've had vote by mail expanded vote by mail for many cycles, many years. And as a result, they've really, you know, expanded and allotted a lot of time for clerks to process ballots. I'll let him go through that. But, you know, in the beginning of this year as we work to plan for and this is actually our fourth election here in Michigan that we've had this year this November. It will be our fourth and you're right. We have honed our process and piloted different things throughout and to answer your other question. Yes, we very much are ready for November. We are prepared. We have doubled in some cases tripled machines for high speak tabulators and envelope openers. We have recruited close to 30,000 new election workers far in excess of what we need to accomplish our goals for election day. So I'm very optimistic. And I think it's important that that even in this time of great uncertainty where people are anxious and fearful about so many things that we let them know they don't have to be afraid about whether their votes going to count. It is. And as we work to tabulate those ballots in Michigan, we can't begin counting absentee ballots until 7am on election day. We anticipate that 70% of citizens voting this fall will vote earlier absentee. And that means the vast majority of ballots aren't going to be voted and counted in precincts as we go through the day. They will be tabulated on bulk in mass beginning at 7am on election day itself. That's going to take time. We'll have three to three and a half million ballots to get through across the state. And as we have increased the number of high speak tabulators and people and we're trained to process securely those ballots, it's still really not possible for anyone to any state to go through that many ballots securely and methodically and safely in 12 hours. So we're and we've consistently said you can expect results in Michigan or a full count to be completed by Friday at the latest, hopefully sooner. But in regards to the certification question you asked we have a two week certification period, which has always been the case. And at that point at the end of that certification period is when our clerks will finalize and certify the full results. Thank you. All right, so Friday is setting expectations Friday and with certification two weeks later. Secretary LaRose. So, in Ohio, we've had absentee voting for close to 20 years it's been embraced by both Republicans and Democrats and for good cause it's a convenient secure way to cast a ballot we also know that we're going to see a higher volume this year than we've ever seen in fact, I just reported recently that we've already had 2.1 million absentee ballot requests I know Jocelyn is smiling because Michigan is currently beating us on this but we're going to, we're going to, we're going to over thank you. But we've had 2.1 million absentee ballot requests and that's a good number. When, if you look at past years we would normally be right around a million at this point the second week in October we're all over already over 2 million and have doubled that number and so what that tells us is that Ohioans want to vote this way and they trust it our boards of elections are also ready to handle high volumes of absentee voting, even in a routine election we see 20 or 25% of our ballots come in by mail, and so the boards of elections are equipped for that. And you know what there are some times that errors get made what we're dealing with an issue right now here in the Columbus area where an unacceptable mistake was made by the county board of elections and there was a number of voters that received the wrong ballot they're in the process of remedying that now and sending replacement ballots to the voters that received the wrong ones. Those kind of things can happen but certainly that should not decrease the trust that people have in this process because it really is a good way to cast your ballot and we know that millions of Ohioans are going to vote this way now as it relates to election night reporting this is just an opportunity for a civics lesson in many ways. I did the question a lot will we have final results on election night and the honest answer is we never have final results on election night in any election it's just not the way that elections work on election night we report the unofficial results and that's normally in the past been conclusive enough that people can look at those unofficial results and make a prediction about what the final tabulation is going to be but it's never the final story and one of the reasons is because in Ohio. Our absentee ballots can continue arriving at boards of elections for 10 days as long as it's postmarked by Monday November 2nd the board of elections can receive it up to 10 days later and it will count as that a fit part of that official tally of ballots that we certify just about three weeks after the election here in Ohio now here's something that we're doing in order to be fully transparent on this this is something that I think other states should look at as well and this is making sure that people are armed with the full set of data on election night and that could go by the way into Wednesday morning for us we're able to process absentee ballots as soon as they come in and so that means today as we speak boards of elections are receiving absentee ballots. They're proofing the the the the content the the identification information making sure that name and address and date of birth and and all of that all match up make sure that the last four of the social security number or other identification number matches check the signature against the signature on file. So all of these things are done in real time here in Ohio so that on election night at 730 we hit the tabulate button if you will once the polls close and in every one of our 88 counties almost invariably the first ballots counted are those absentee ballots because they're in already so on election night we're going to report all the absentee ballots that have come in so far all the election day votes that have come in so far as well as the early votes we have a whole month of voting in Ohio and that will be an unofficial number but here's the other thing that we're going to report. We're going to report the number of outstanding absentee ballots. It's a noble number. It's a number that our boards of elections have always tracked but it's never been sort of publicly reported before simply the boards keep meticulous tally of how many ballots go out and from whom and how many ballots come back the delta there the difference is the number of outstanding absentee ballots so that's going to be highlighted right at the top of our election night reporting website and here's why that matters. Imagine a hypothetical where your favorite candidate on election night when we report those unofficial results is the head by a million votes and there are 200,000 outstanding absentee ballots in that hypothetical you can say well that's a conclusive result. We know who's going to win that one but on the flip side if your favorite candidates ahead by only 100,000 votes and there are yet 200,000 outstanding absentee ballots and simply as a matter of mathematics you can't call that race yet and it would be ridiculous to declare victory in a race where there are still 200,000 outstanding absentee ballots and your margin you're that you lead by is only 100,000 so we're trying to empower people to be to be well informed as it relates to the way election night reporting happens in Ohio by the way that's the case and I think every state no state report will report final results on election night. That's just not the way elections administration works. That is very interesting Secretary Benson is Michigan in a position to be able to report the numbers of mailed in ballots that have yet to be counted. We have been doing that you and again a lot of what Frank and I are doing is very similar and and you can go to Michigan dot gov slash vote and see the number of people who've already requested ballots have already returned ballots and amazingly over 800,000 Michigan citizens have already voted which is extraordinary and extraordinary numbers that are growing every day we expect to cross a million early next week. So that's very exciting and it really underscores the incredible amount of enthusiasm that voters have for the election this year. Yeah, absolutely.