 For those of you who don't know me, my name is Caitlin Peña. I am the Director of Operations and Programs for the Center for Election Science. We are a nonpartisan non-profit that is working to strengthen democracy and empower voters with better voting methods. So the main voting method that we advocate for is called approval voting and it allows you to vote for all the candidates you like and the candidate with the most votes wins. We're currently supporting a campaign in St. Louis, Missouri that would implement approval voting for open nonpartisan primaries there. There's a lot of work to be done still so if that sounds like something you're interested in, there are volunteer opportunities and of course money is always needed so we would certainly be open to donations. I'll stick some links in the chat once I stop talking here but I'm so excited to have everybody here. This is a really interesting and unique and particularly anxiety inducing election year I think for many of us and part of that is because we're concerned about election security, right? So that's why we wanted to host this particular event tonight. So with us today we have Chris Landau. She is the interim co-director for verified voting. Verified voting is an organization whose mission is to strengthen democracy for all voters by promoting the responsible use of technology and elections and you know election integrity is something that they particularly focus on which is what we're going to be talking about today. Chris has worked in nearly all aspects of non-profit management including fundraising operations partnerships and programming and she became passionate about verified voting's mission when she worked as a poll worker in Detroit in 2016 and gained insight into the complex systems behind our democratic process. Chris managed Lieutenant Governor Garland Gilchrist's 2017 campaign for Detroit City Clerk and she also served on Gilchrist's transition team upon his election as Michigan's Lieutenant Governor in 2018 and most recently Chris transformed and led Venture for America's largest national program serving hundreds of young aspiring entrepreneurs. So welcome Chris. And interviewing Chris today we have Aaron Hamlin. He is the executive director and co-founder for the Center for Election Science the organization who is hosting this this call. So with that I'll leave it to you Aaron. I will be moderating the chat just really quickly if folks have questions any Q&A that they want to ask of Chris about election security feel free to drop your questions in the chat probably in about the last 15 minutes or so. We'll do a Q&A and I'll read out some questions from the chat box. So with that I will hand it over to you Aaron. Awesome thanks so much Katelyn. So Chris really want to hear more about verified voting so maybe you can tell us a bit more about what it's all about. It's history some of the programs that it's doing. Would you take it away? Yeah absolutely so we got started in 2004 by computer scientists. They were concerned about how technology was being introduced in elections and the vulnerabilities that it was presenting to our democracy. So as Katelyn said you know our mission is to promote the responsible use of technology and elections in order to strengthen our democracy for all voters. So I think you know one of the things that makes us unique is that we're really focused on that election technology piece and on ensuring the security aspects. So we oppose internet voting. We encourage and advocate for rigorous post-election audits to ensure that the winner won and the loser lost so we can have confidence in that. And we also have an incredible database of voting equipment and use in the United States by jurisdiction starting in 2006. So if you go to verifiedvoting.org slash verifier you can learn a lot more about different technologies and how they're used in different polling locations. So definitely worth taking a look at that as well. So you know in terms of election security there's a lot of different components to it. So you know we support an evidence-based election where paper ballots marked by hand are with an assisted device for those who need it, strong chain of custody, robust post-election risk limiting audits and strong cyber hygiene throughout. And you mentioned your database as well looking at the different types of voting machines used in different jurisdiction. So I would also encourage all the listeners to check that out at the verified voting website. I've used that personally. It's a really well done really nice resource there. Thanks. Yeah we just added or recently added the electronic poll books that are in use as well and you can also people rely on paper poll books versus electronic poll books. So we're always trying to add more features into it but it's a really good way to learn more about voting equipment used in the United States. And so election integrity is kind of a complicated topic. It has a lot of facets you mentioned a number of them. Do you have any like when you're thinking about this personally I know like with with us thinking about voting methods like they're like all these components that could be difficult to really conceptualize everything. Do you have any kind of personal strategies that you use or ways that you try to conceptualize election integrity components yourself like do you. So how do you think about election integrity as a whole like how do you think about that generally. Yeah I mean it is a really broad concept right. I mean I think one analogy we use is that it's like a three-legged stool. You have to make sure that voters have access to voting right like that they can register to vote. Then you have to make sure that people actually participate and that they vote. And then the last piece is that you have to make sure that their votes are counted as cast. And that to me it's sort of like the last step in voter enfranchisement right like making sure that people trust that their vote was counted as they wanted it to be counted. And so everything that leads up to that count and then afterwards like it's all part of election integrity you need all those different steps in place. I don't know if that answers your question but I'm hoping it does. One of the areas that your organization talks a lot about is handmarked ballots and you mentioned before the database that talks about different types of voting machines. And you also have them laid out in kind of different tiers. So how do you see handmarked ballots fitting into that compared to these other types of voting machine setups? Yeah so we support handmarked paper ballots as the primary method for voters to mark their ballots. There's a number of reasons for this but handmarked paper ballots don't work for every single voter. There are some voters that have visual impairments or disabilities that need an assisted device. And so we support handmarked paper ballots with assisted device for those who need them. And so in terms of you know ranking them I mean our website the verify you can kind of see what different technologies are in use. I think one thing that's important to keep in mind is that you need to have fail states in place for when technology fails. So this isn't just for the marking method for a ballot but also for checking in right. So electronic poll books have some benefits but we've also seen them really cause a lot of long lines and a lot of locations when there's problems with connectivity or loading issues or just like failures and so any technology needs to have a plan B and a plan C in place especially when you're thinking about people's voting access right. And so I think for polling locations that are reliant on technology in so many different places that's where it can be a problem. So if every single voter has to mark their ballot with a machine and the machines aren't working or there's not enough machines that can create long lines. If you have ballots that are marked by hand and the scanner is down for some reason you can at least store those ballots while you fix the scanner and then you can so you can like keep voters going through it but you know I have to admit like it's not like it's not always like it's it's complicated right like I was a poll worker in Detroit in Detroit in 2016 there they have hand-marked paper ballots but I did see a voter with disabilities wait for two hours because their assisted device was not set up and that's not right right and so you have to make sure that all voters are able to vote. So in addition to like having it as a fail safe should machines kind of walk out like like I think we're all used to technology doing sometimes as well as like addressing the long line component which we're seeing a lot when some machines are breaking down. Are there any other reasons why hand-marked ballots may make sense so just related to security issues or other or other factors? Yeah I mean it creates a like the voter is verifying their ballot in a very clear way and you don't have to rely on printouts that might have like text that's too small like I know some ballot marking devices the printout is in size six font right and so there's like a whole host of reasons why security experts on our board or on our board of advisors all advocate for hand-marked paper ballots there's just you know there's just this kind of clarity of intention there where you don't have the software involved in the marking. One of the rationales I saw in your site for utilizing hand-marked ballots was being able to conduct audits properly so maybe you can share a little bit more about what risk limiting audits are in relation to elections and maybe why we should think more about them being utilized more. Yeah so 99% of ballots are still counted by computers right so even those ballots that are marked by hand are ultimately counted by scanners most of the time and those computers are susceptible to vulnerabilities they could be susceptible to some sort of like accidental programming error or an intentional one so we want to make sure there's a check on that computer and making sure that we can have confidence that the winner won and the loser lost so post-election risk limiting audits are a way to kind of check that computer count of the ballots and so it's what statisticians recommend there's a number of organizations that promote RLA's as kind of the gold standard of election security of that post-election audit process but in order to have an RLA you have to have voter verified paper ballots because you're looking at those by hand and verifying the count right and that the computers can't do it correctly. Would you be able to as we have some a lot of technical folks that tend to join these calls would you be able to share a little bit about what a risk limiting or a risk limited audit looks like in practice? I'm not the audit expert on the team so it's really hard for me to kind of go into the nuts and bolts of it we do have a lot of audit experts on our team I encourage people to go to our website to check out our audit page so yeah you know we can probably share in the chat some more information about how audits work I think you know like the idea is simple that RLA's provide evidence that the computers counted the ballots accurately we've been advocating them for them for a long time and so and have a lot of experience in different types of post-election audits as well but I will admit that like I was a comparative literature major I am not I am not the statistician on the team we do have those folks on the team who are who are those technical experts and I think that that's something unique to verify voting is that we provide that sort of technical expertise um and there's just not a lot of organizations and people that know how to do that and know how to support election officials with with undertaking something that can feel a little bit scary to them initially but really can be implemented and it really does provide assurance so what we're able to do is partner with election officials to provide that sort of technical expertise so that they can implement the risk limiting audit of the election of um that they choose or that's um required by a state statute but it's another excuse to go to your site because you've got all kinds of great resources there so everyone should be happy to to go over there and also having looked at um some of the folks on your advisory board you've got some real heavy hitters there I think um uh like Matt Blaise is on there you've got just like a bunch of really uh uh uh Ronald Rivest I believe is another person that's on there yeah he's a cryptography expert and he's on our board of directors um so yes lots of tech geeks on our board of advisors and our board of directors and I think it really speaks to how verify voting got started right these were computer scientists technology experts who saw how technology was being introduced in elections and we're really worried about the implications for our democracy and we're trying to figure out ways to advocate for more security and it's sort of counterintuitive to think that a bunch of computer scientists would be advocating for paper but they were and they are and they still are right because we're still we need that as um as a big part of our election security is we need that paper another area that I think maybe folks don't uh think it's much about which is the better registration books whether they should be digital or paper what are your thoughts on this in terms of the can between the two by voter registration books do you mean just like the the voter lists like the the poll books themselves that's right not you're not talking like online voter registration versus not online voter registration correct not talking about that talking about like at the polling station itself yeah so there's a number of advantages to electronic poll books um we did put out like a brief paper on this and um maybe courier you can add it into the chat as well um so like for places that have vote centers for example where voters don't have to go to just one location to vote they could go anywhere in the city um some sort of electronic poll book is helpful because you would know that someone voted in a location regardless of where they went hopefully that makes sense to folks so it also can enable people to update addresses in real time or do same-day voter registration so there are some advantages the challenge is that there's also risks right and there's vulnerabilities in place um so if there's problems with connectivity load issues the device isn't working you have to train poll workers on how to use it it can really create some serious long lines we saw it in Los Angeles and the primaries we're seeing it in Georgia right now with early voting a lot of that's been linked to the check-in system actually um so I think with any election technology you have to make sure that you're planning for these vulnerabilities thinking about what the plan B plan C will be and making sure that those things are in place so we always advocate having a paper poll book backup if you are going to use an electronic poll book um so it's also important like that there's um systems in place for those voter registration lists to constantly be having backups and security measures in place um you know that that's sort of related to the online voter registration like you have to make make sure that there's security measures in place all the way through right because it's all connected and at one point I hear you uh repeating a lot is the interaction between using some of these components like uh handmark ballots and uh poll books and the interaction between that and the long lines uh whereas like I think a lot of the times in the media we hear we see these long lines and the rationale is like oh people are just excited to to vote and uh and we're never going to have these long lines when people are excited rather than pointing to some of these other components that you're mentioning which is like using handmark ballots and physical poll books to avoid some of these breakdowns or limitations of resources yeah and I should say it's not like a it always is a one to one cause and effect there there were long lines in Detroit in 2008 and that was not an electronic based voting system um there have been long lines in places where there are handmark paper ballots so it's not like it's not always so simple um it's what causes long lines is complicated and should be studied one of the things that I find um disheartening and troubling is that like research consistently shows that black and brown voters are waiting in line longer than white voters um and to understand the causes of like why there's that disparity I think it's really critically important and I think it's probably not just one reason right there's probably multiple things right so um are there enough uh devices if it's a device issue was there sufficient training are there enough polling locations period are those polling locations accessible are I mean there's just like transportation like there's just so many reasons why um there could be long lines and it's not just one thing thank you for that those are some really good nuances to pick up on uh looking at uh electronic tabulators for for ballots what kind of concern should we have such as looking at software whether they are able to connect to the internet uh thinking about things like chain of custody what sort of sort of components should we think should we be thinking about when we're looking at uh ballot tabulators yeah so any computer is vulnerable what's important is that you have ways to mitigate both intentional and unintentional problems with tabulation so election officials have um chain chain custody chain of custody and security measures in place for the proper storage of ballots beginning to end um because if something happened with that computer that tabulated you want to make sure that you can then still look at the ballots later after the fact right so chain of custody is super important security measures in place from start to finish and then you have to make sure that any computerized voting system has up-to-date software has been tested um we really like these shouldn't be uh connected to wireless modems they sometimes are um but that's um it increases that risk factor right um and the best thing to do though is to check that those ballots were counted accurately which is why we're such strong like proponents for post election audits and specifically risk limiting audits um so uh regarding uh internet uh connectivity I mean uh if you can answer this answer this do you think it makes sense to have some of these uh devices have a modem in the first place if they shouldn't be connected to the internet so again I'm not the technical expert on the team there is a lot of people who could speak to this in way more detail than I can so I like part of me hesitates to even go there just because it's not really my area of expertise but again like anytime you have that added technology layer you have to make sure you're mitigating for any risks associated with it um the reason my understanding is the reason why some of those are connected to the internet is because of the way they report out results to like central offices or things like that um so there's risks involved with that right and I it's something that we're continuously looking at and that a lot of secured election security advocates including those on our board have advocated um strongly against but I'm not I'm not the computer scientist here but I think it's like the most important thing is to be cognizant of those risks to mitigate against them and to um to to really be aware that our election infrastructure because it's so decentralized it can be a little bit hard to regulate it right and so to be cognizant of the different risks in place in the different jurisdictions in different states because every state slot is different and every voting system is different like all of that has to be happening simultaneously it's a it's a big job and not not one that any one person can do so maybe you can imagine yourself being able to set up an idealized scenario in terms of best election price practices what would that scenario look like to you in terms of going from A to Z from the the voter getting their ballot casting it all the way through tabulation what would an idealized process look like to you yeah so first off an eligible voter should be able to register to vote um they should be able to then vote um whether it is by mail or in person um with as few of her as hurdle uh sorry as few of hurdles as possible um we also want to make sure that that vote was cast um and counted as cast right so making sure that um we trust the results so from an election security standpoint which is our expertise paper ballots like I've said many times strong chain of custody risk limiting audits and no electronic return of voted ballots or voted materials at all um you can't ever bring the risk down to zero so in terms of your like idealized A to Z I think it's really important to recognize that you can't bring the risk down to zero um what you do have to do is set up processes so that you can monitor detect respond and recover from any sort of attack or again like an unintentional um problem and uh that that's that's a nice point that we can always kind of reduce probability but we can't eliminate it all together in many cases we're thinking about the current setup that we have what do you see some of the biggest deficits maybe thinking about some that are just uh moving us as far away from reducing risk and maybe also thinking about perhaps some though hanging fruit that uh election administrators can deal with uh pretty easily to reduce the uh to overall increase uh election integrity yeah I mean I think it's really important to understand and realize that there's just not enough resources and funding for election officials especially in this um really difficult election cycle where election officials are being tasked most of them with running two types of elections they've never run before a large scale vote by mail and a large scale in person socially distanced like keeping in mind all of the different health recommendations from health experts uh in person voting experience and they're having to run two elections that they've likely never run before and to do so on two string budgets like they did pass some initial funding but it really just hasn't been nearly enough in terms of what election officials need um I think that there should also be more kind of federal guidelines for paper ballots and for audits I think there's benefit to the decentralized election process but um in having some of those guidelines I think it can be helpful um they're currently updating the the voting system guidelines um for folks and um there's just there's a number of sorry I got a little distracted by that something was going on with the check um there's a number of things that I think um would help election officials in terms of creating um more secure elections um we're trying to fill the gap between technologists and the practical realities of running elections right um a lot of the election officials um don't come from like a computer science or technology background um and so um we're we try to kind of fill that gap between technology experts and election experts that's one of the things that we're trying to do um and then I guess you know this is something that I think is so critical for folks to understand is that there's like the hacking of the actual infrastructure there's also the hacking of the mind and I think what we're seeing right now is that a lot of people's minds are being hacked in terms of like the trustworthiness of elections even like I think what happened in 2016 with um the evidence of Russia infiltrating our election systems is that it caused this sort of internal panic right um in terms of our election infrastructure and so I think that that's another piece that like is really critical is um doing something around how much disinformation there is right now in terms of social media and misinformation and people don't know what sorts of trust and who to listen to and um that's been a really big challenge as well for for um I think anyone who cares about elections in this country. So I guess I guess like if the budget component wasn't as much of an issue or was limited as an issue do you see any kind of like lower hanging fruit that election officials can can do like given a somewhat sufficient budget or something that may be as much more cost efficient as an intervention to reduce some of these risks? Lower hanging fruit in terms of what exactly sorry? So for instance like you've talked about some of these different types of interventions like having handmarked ballots, risk limiting auditing and also looking at polling books and there are others as well. So are there some of these that are perhaps easier to implement overall that are that are kind of lower hanging fruit that we can implement that are maybe not as intensive or I'm just trying trying to think of given the situation that we have now with the the status quo are there certain things that we can be doing that are a little bit easier to increase election integrity overall? It's hard for me to answer that like across the board because every election jurisdiction state has they're in a really different place for election security and election integrity so like what I would say in terms of like low hanging fruit for Colorado would be really different than for Louisiana or you know what I mean like it's just it's really hard to say across the board this is low hanging fruit. I would say for this election cycle it would be great to make sure that polling locations have paper poll book as a backup if they're using electronic poll books and that they also have emergency paper ballots if they're using ballot marking devices or direct recording electronic devices as well. So I would say like those are two things for those are two things for this election cycle that that could be implemented but like that's that doesn't that's zero relevance to an entirely vote by mail state like for example. So it's yeah it's kind of hard for me to say across the board. Speaking of the kind of the uniqueness of like this election in particular and vote by mail this is quite a bit unprecedented in the amount of people that are doing vote by mail. Are there particular measures or things that we should be thinking about when we have such high vote by mail incidents like for instance others say it's like Oregon I think has been doing vote by mail for a while, Colorado also moving moving forward in that direction and now this year like everybody really kind of taking a a fourth step forward there are there are there some additional measures that we should be thinking of related to voting integrity or election integrity when we have higher vote by mail incidents. Yeah so I'm going to have Corey share in the chat we put out some recommendations early on in the pandemic related to the increase of vote by mail and some of the security measures that we recommend when looking at an increase of vote by mail. I think there's a number of things I mean it's sort of I don't want to say it's too late but it's yeah it like right we're 14 days from the election like there's there's only so much that you can do right now but I think ballot tracking is something that's really critical for increased vote by mail it gives voters like some you know I decided to vote through a mail-in ballot I dropped it off at a drop box in Philly but that's how I chose personally to vote this year and it was really nice to get an email that said hey your ballot's been received right and to be able to track my ballot. I think that thinking about different aspects like that is important when you're thinking about scaling vote by mail and doing so in a secure way. Chain of custody rules have to be really you know thought through for start to finish right for drop boxes for how it's going to work with the post office but a lot of states have done this like you said like there's some states who've done this for a while it is hard to scale it up as quickly as a lot of states have had to do but there are also a lot of folks out there who are helping others do so national vote at home institute and others who I think have been working with election officials side-by-side to help them figure out some of these processes. One other so before we talked about risk limiting audits so what happens when we do see a discrepancy so we see the ballot count and then the risk limiting audit is done and it's showing something that they provides a significant discrepancy over what we would expect so what are the what do you see as the appropriate responses when we do see these anomalies or these discrepancies? Yeah so if you think if there's something that indicates that something went wrong um that's I mean you can start a recount of all those paper ballots to look at what the voters marked and what the what the outcome really should be and you can try to figure out what went wrong with the scanner let's say um so that's one way to correct that. You've also uh in your intro you mentioned internet voting and a lot of the experts just not being a fan of that approach is and that's also a question by the way we we get asset quite a lot even though that's not our area now given that would you um you see internet voting and again this may be one where you don't feel comfortable answering and that's okay to punt it over. Do you do you see particular security concerns specific with internet voting that could possibly address be addressed in the future or all the concerns with internet voting um just something that current or even future technology having a challenge with? Yeah so um the way I like to explain this just to kind of like non-computer scientists right is that the the challenge is thinking about how to do so both securely and anonymously so um you know people will say well I can I can bank online like why can't I vote online well when you're banking online you can check your transaction the bank can check your transaction the store where you bought the shirt can also check the transaction it's all tied to your identity it's all tied to your uh account right there's no anonymity at any point in those processes zero anonymity right um voting is supposed to be anonymous you should be able to vote and not have someone be able to find out who you voted for right and so I think the challenge is not just in the um in keeping it secure but in keeping it both secure and anonymous and I think that that's the piece sometimes when you explain that to folks who say well I can vote on my phone or I can bank on my phone why can't I vote on my phone when you explain yeah but then like how would you do so secretly truly secretly yeah like for the entire country like it's just it's not like our technology is not there um and that's why I think there's such um you know like merely unanimous agreement between computer scientists about the fact that we are not there in terms of technology uh uh what do you normally do when uh uh someone responds uh something something uh blockchain uh related to uh uh internet voting yeah so blockchain's designed to keep information secure once it's received it can't defend against the multitude of threats that um exist prior to receiving that so voters can't verify their votes if they're entered into the blockchain correctly without compromising that ballot secrecy um so there's there's papers out there about blockchain um it's all like a lot of researchers or a couple researchers out of MIT um did a study on votes which is a blockchain voting application um and so it's definitely worth checking out again I'm not I am not the computer scientists out of MIT um but those people are on our board um and they have done research on it and so we can share a little bit more about it um in the chat well um oh uh with uh with our work we are all about different uh voting methods particularly with approval voting and different voting methods have their own uh uh challenges and advantages to each individual one uh so you have voting methods that involve uh ranking scoring approving as many as you want and of course the classic choose one and these voting methods have different properties such as uh some require central tabulation where you have to have all the ballot data uh together in one central location before you can even begin uh tabulating them uh others of them allow for precinct sum ability where you can take totals from different precincts and then uh some of those different precinct totals together to get your your grand total so not requiring a central tabulation so given some of these uh voting methods with both the different type of data that they have the different properties that they have such as central tabulation and precinct sum ability how does uh do those factors how do those factors make a difference with regard to election integrity when we're thinking about um uh whether to uh uh perhaps looking at different machines or hand marked ballots or even other concerns like risk limiting audits yeah so every it everything depends on how it's implemented um so there's not really an efficient way to audit all all these different voting methods um so it tends to be a bigger problem for alternative voting methods than a simple vote for one system in terms of that post-election audit like I I think of the the pictures of my audit team out in the field and they have these tally sheets and I don't know how those would work in a in these different kind of alternative voting method systems but you know again I'm not the statistician but I know that it creates a lot more challenges um so it's just it's hard to hand count ballots when there's many different ways to vote in a contest um so it's important to think about the nuts and bolts behind a voting method and whether voters are able to actually verify the final result so it sounds like what you're saying is the simplicity of the voting method plays a role into some of these other components potentially yeah the simplicity and then also how it's actually implemented I mean um yeah there's a number of of kind of practical elements I think that come into play when planning uh or submitting audits now I think we've have an anxious uh chat ready with some extra questions so I haven't been looking at it so uh Katelyn do you want to start taking questions for Chris? Sure yeah I've got a few here that have folks have added if anybody else has questions if you haven't put anything in the chat feel free to go ahead and add some questions there now we'll try to get to them um so at the very beginning Kathleen Bradley um asked she says we use many iPads for electronic poll books and nothing but microfiber cloth is supplied to poll workers to clean the screen what do other jurisdictions use I and she said I should have added that dirty screens may result in a problem in reading signatures um so I don't know if this is a something that you can address Chris um definitely not our it's not like verified voting since we're too interested in how people are cleaning the different devices I have heard of people um this is sort of a different question but um I've heard of people using q-tips as kind of an alternative to having to use a touchscreen during the pandemic I've also seen like little finger covers that have been um given out to um voters in different jurisdictions where it's required but for for screen painting I feel like I'm I feel like I'm not able to help unfortunately sorry that's okay hopefully hopefully Kathleen you guys can find some other better alternatives all right and then we've got a question from Paul Burke this is another question about risk limiting audits if it's a bit too technical we can direct him maybe you all can direct him to the website or another resource but he says is risk limiting audits are risk limiting audits useful where the public can't see marks on sampled ballots who are bringing from storage Paul I'm not sure exactly what you meant about the bringing from storage but does does that question make sense to you Chris um yeah so I think that there's um a component of risk limiting audits that we advocate for around transparency to the public um and making sure that um like if if the goal like the goal of it is in part to increase public confidence and transparency in the process I think helps increase that public confidence one of the challenges that I think election officials are facing right now in COVID times is how to how to make certain processes including tabulation or for those audits viewable to the public during the pandemic in a safe way we've seen some people get really creative with it in terms of like live streaming certain events and things like that but again like a lot of those take resources and planning and a lot of election officials are underwater we do have a paper on the observability of audits um which Corey can drop into the chat which might be of interest to the viewer who asked that question and I'm sorry your name is escaping me but yeah we'll share that because we we did put out that paper um a while ago awesome all right and then we've got a question from sass um he says while states like Washington and Oregon have had phenomenal success with vote by mail new york has not in their 2020 primaries what are the most important things to get right about vote by mail and do vote by mail exclusive elections disenfranchise any voter demographics that we aren't told about yeah so um it's there has definitely been some problems I think that we've seen in terms of trying to rapidly scale up vote by mail um so valid votes should count and invalid votes shouldn't most jurisdictions have processes already in place to minimize verification problems um and that sort of control measure but it isn't perfect um I think we have to figure out what the scope of the problem was in some ways I think it was good that we had so many I don't I mean no one thinks anything was good about the pandemic right but having all these primaries happen has allowed a lot of jurisdictions to learn a lot of lessons before the general election and so you have to assess the scope like what number of signatures are rejected which ones aren't is there a discrepancy um and there really needs to be there doesn't need to be a process in place to verify voters um but there's also a way to cure a signature mismatch in a lot of these places like in Oregon in Colorado um and so making sure that you have the opportunity to correct that so like if a signature is mismatch for example that a voter can correct that so that they're still able to vote is something that we um advocated for in those in those recommendations that we mentioned um around vote by mail during the pandemic and how to make sure that you still have security measures in place awesome that's really helpful um and I don't I don't know if you have any insight into this uh Chris but sas was also wondering about you know if there are any voter demographics that maybe are disenfranchised that we buy vote by mail that we don't we're it's not as obvious to us um and I know that's not exactly in in the mission of verified voting but I don't know if you have any information on that there's a good amount of research on this um it's interesting because I think um you know you can look at Colorado's stats on voting and they have been able to increase turnout quite a bit um but in terms of like the signature mismatch um there it has been shown to disproportionately impact certain voters um sometimes younger voters sometimes people of color and also older voters where maybe they're having problems with dexterity your arthritis or something like that um so um voters with disabilities there's sometimes there's different measures in place to give people an option if they can't sign their name for some reason every state is different and I don't pretend to be a law and in these different aspects or I don't pretend to be an expert in these different aspects of the law um so so that's important to realize the other the other category of voters that I think where I think vote by mail is challenging is people who move a lot um and people who are from low income backgrounds tend to move more than those from higher income backgrounds um so making sure that there's always an option for people to vote in person I think is really critical um and to make sure that that option is available on election day and ideally beforehand as well um so you can't you can't exclude in-person voting I think from from the options available to voters ever good to know all right sorry the other category of people that just came to mind is um Native Americans um because they may not have like sometimes they have the PO box and you can't use that or whatever so there's there's a number of reasons why those communities are often disenfranchised by vote by mail as well so like I said you have to make sure that you still have the option to vote in person absolutely that's really important to remember um all right this one is less of a question but I more of a comment but I thought it was interesting sandy mentioned that she's found that as a poll worker one of one of the reasons for slowdown of voting processes is people not knowing what district they vote in so then they have to take the time to look it up um and then also people assuming that they're still on the books but actually they've been purged so she says she thinks all citizens um should who are eligible should be eligible to vote and electronic poll books that have everyone listed would take care of those slowdown issues so it seems like maybe um the the important thing would be to have those electronic poll books right that are all up to date but having um having the paper backup like you said chris yeah and the paper backup is probably only going to be for that polling location because you know you can imagine a paper backup for all of Los Angeles so yeah don't be ginormous um it wouldn't really work um but it is actually the this question speaks to one of the reasons why we have a campaign called check your reg um so we really um support people checking their voter registration consistently um it's a good way to spot if there's there have been any problems in the voter roles um and it also can give you more familiarity in terms of your precinct number and like things like that that sometimes I think people don't like know instinct I mean some people do right but not everyone does but if you're checking it more consistently I think that you're more likely to know about those things and we can share I think um we have a page for our check your reg campaign in case you want to download any of the digital assets and share it on your social media perfect all right it looks like right now I just have two more questions um I'll I'm going to do a last call if anybody else has additional questions they'd like to add please go ahead and stick them in the chat now um all right so Chip Spangler asks what would you think of a system that utilized non-networked DRE systems that also printed out paper ballots that were then scanned in in an optical scanner such a system would have three vote counts available the DRE machines the scanner totals and the paper ballots I think that I think that such a system would provide more options for verification polling locations could have paper only ballots available as backups and also for mail-in voting I know that's a lot so let me know if you need me to repeat any of it I think I'm not quite understanding the difference between that and and ballot marking devices um I I think we can share our paper on why we don't advocate for ballot marking devices for all voters um so yeah I think that that's I I'm a little bit confused by that question um I am not the voting technology expert we have a lot of those people on our board so I'm going to go ahead and rely on some of the policy pieces that we've put out um prior to this um call for folks to check out that would answer some of those questions awesome all right then we've got one from Craig Dimitri he is in suburban Philadelphia he says I have been categorically recommending to everyone who asks me vote by mail or drop box it's safe secure COVID safe for voters and poll workers and to make a plan to vote vote as early as you can I've been told that every mail-in ballot will put less stress on the in-person voting system because it means one less person on election day under pandemic conditions is this the best practice for me to recommend um so I it's really hard for me to say recommending a best practice for voting method because it's just so person-specific um just like as an example right like my husband's a physician his schedule is really wonky like voting by mail is great for him he um there's not a drop box location like now there is that when he was wanting to vote like there wasn't a location that was close to us um anyways it's just it's a really there's like really personal decisions with voting and how people vote some people really like to go in person they want to get that voting sticker on election day um I'm not a public health expert in terms of like COVID spread um I think like it's really critical for voters to have options right now and to have options for voting and so I think we've seen some states increase those options because of COVID which I think is a good thing but um yeah it's just like there's just so many factors transportation accessibility language issues um I mean I was talking to a voter the other day who spoke no English like mail and she had applied for a vote by mail ballot because she was she's very nervous about COVID but she's having a really hard time understanding the method she's never voted that way before and speaks no English so it's just like there's just such personal decisions when it comes to voting it's really hard for me to say like yep that's what you should recommend for everyone because like that I don't know I don't know everyone's story yeah I think I think the bottom line that you got to there Chris is options right we need as many options as possible um to make it as easy as possible reduces as many of the barriers and make sure that everyone no matter their personal story their background their accessibility whatever has access right all right we've got two more questions then and then we'll wrap up so from sass again I think this is a really interesting question sass asks people posting pictures of their filled out ballots online is an issue that is not going away do you think this means that protected voter anonymity has become irreparably broken what should be our collective reaction to this issue um to people like posting their selfie with their voted ballot I think that's the question more or less that I'm getting yeah um uh every you know there's different laws and different states around this um so the question was how to prevent it Caitlin or what was that um yeah what what should be our collective reaction to this issue do we think that people I don't know maybe people aren't as concerned about anonymity as as they should be yours that were you know as they previously were or what are their actions that we can take to help prevent this is there any you know particular reaction we should have to people posting these pictures maybe thinking is it is it a big issue if someone explicitly kind of opts out to the anonymity um I you know like that's really not an issue that verified voting has um that I know of and I like I joined in February that we've um really been focused on because we're focused on the verifiability of elections um I think just because like one person over shares on the internet doesn't mean that we should like make it a thing for everyone to be able to do so right like these are these are principles that are enshrined in our constitution for a reason um so yeah I don't know I don't know if that answers the question at all but I'm just like I don't know if I can control what like people post on tiktok or on like Instagram um I think there might be like some public norms around like why anonymity as far as voting matters um that like you know maybe needs to be revisited but I don't I don't know if that answers the question at all that's my thought I don't know Erin if you have any thoughts on that I uh I won't comment I'll leave it I'll leave it to you or to uh as you can uh or you can punt it to the uh to the other folks okay all right then we've just got one final question and then we will hop off of here so um this is another question about uh RLA's um if we need to refer to a resource that's fine so Paul Paul says Dr. Dr. Stark says ballot comparison RLA requires an independent unhacked tally of 100 percent of votes does anyone know how to create a publicly verifiable tally I am I do I do not have the the knowledge to answer that question well so I'm not going to try um again yeah it's just really not my expertise um we'll share one of our resources in the chat I'm not sure if it'll answer that question do you mind if I ask one final question Kayla and Chris so should it matter which polling location uh someone goes to that that is should a system really require individuals to go to a particular location rather than um it being I guess agnostic for the voter to allow them to be able to cast a vote regardless of the polling site that they're at yeah that's really not verified voting's issue in a lot of ways right so like if you think about it like we've been really focused on what happens after someone casts their ballot not where they're casting it so I don't you know I don't know if I have an answer to that question totally fine totally fine yeah like you're asking basically about like vote centers right versus like being required to go to the one you know like church across the street you know that's like three blocks down yeah I mean I think as far as like accessibility is concerned like people should have options that are close to where they live so that they don't have to rely on transportation and any number of things um but our concern really hasn't like our focus is really around technology use in elections and really the verifiability of our election results and what happens after someone casts their vote it makes a lot of sense yeah and and don't feel bad we get lots of questions about election issues that are completely unrelated to our particular mission all the time um it's you know it just happens so it's totally okay um well thank you so much chris for taking the time to be here with us tonight this is a super important topic it seems like people are really engaged there was lots of comments lots of resources being shared in the chat so um to anyone who did join I would definitely recommend that you download that chat log because there's lots of good links in there coming from kori at verified voting and there's lots of other good links and information from fellow audience members um but thank you all for attending uh like I mentioned we are the center for election science and we have lots of we have a campaign going on right now in st lewis we have lots of chapters and other campaigns in the works for the coming year or two so um we're we're getting really excited about bringing approval voting to more cities and empowering voters with that if you would like to donate erin has put our donate link in the chat and definitely go check out verified voting's website like I said there's lots of links to verified voting in the chat they have so much good information so many good resources about election integrity and security um and everyone please stay safe and go vote in whatever option works best for you