 delighted that we're doing this conversation today. They're topic today of un-silencing the vote, fighting for voting rights and suppression hotspots. And we've heard a lot over the last day and a half about how hard the struggle is and it is a very real truth. And I'm really excited to be joined by the people who are on the front lines of the struggle and who are making food. So let me introduce them, left to right or your right to left. To my right is Dwight Fuller who is the senior political advisor for Florida Rising and a former Florida State Senate civil rights project as well as the chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Sam Liber to her right is local and then we're also joined by Danielle Wang who is the senior director of voting rights at the campaign legal centers. We're based in Washington. We look at democracy issues at home as well as around the world. We've crossed the United States and we've certainly heard it on other panels. We have heard so many real stories about how the foundational right that we all have as Americans and any kind of democracy is a right to vote is under attack. You know, tactics of all kinds being used, ones that look legal, ones that use legal means and some that are just even other ways to really vote in action. So thank you that my people are learning lessons from each other, the good with the bads and energy among communities, community leaders, state leaders who are taking back what all of us should have, which is that right to vote. So I'm very thankful for the work that all of the panelists are doing and look forward to our conversation today. I'm going to start with a question for everyone and give our panelists a chance to reflect and then go one by one with some questions. So let me ask if you can just characterize what you're seeing in your stage or in the work that you're doing as the greatest threat to voting rights, but also where you see progress leading us to a level set to start and I think we'll start with you. Thank you. Thanks so much for the invitation to be here. I want to let you know that oftentimes people ask, well, what is voter suppression? Let's start from the basis of can we get everyone who is eligible and those who should be eligible to vote as a starting vote and then anything that hinders that is voter suppression. That way it's not sticky or who's doing what. Let's start from the foundation of everyone should have access and if there's something impeding that, use their bra on the test. In Florida, I do the bad news first. For those who don't know, Florida was a Confederate state. Florida was the state, statistically, where you can most likely be lynched of all the southern states. So we think about voter suppression, we think about the existence of systemic interstitial racism. Florida does not get the credit it deserves for being as overtly problematic as it pertain to its racial history and history of racial violence relating to voting as it has been. Florida put very early on something in its constitution that would prohibit returning citizens from having the right to vote. The good news is, in 2018, thanks to the hard work of a number of folks, most importantly, Desmond B. who deserves all the flowers and all the credit for being in the forefront, Florida became the space where 1.4 million individuals who had been denied the right to vote since 1868 finally got that back and we struck from our constitution this thing that said anyone who's committed crimes could not engage in the franchise. So we're proud of that. We're proud to know that since then, so many ballot initiatives have flourished, including the first southern state to pass a $15 worth of wage and then and so many other things. And so we realize in spite of our depiction on immediate news is combating all of those expanding democracy as quickly as possible. What does it look like in Texas? Great threats as well as what progress? I mean, Texas, we have a lot of threats to our democracy, to the ability to vote. I always kind of looked at it as just, you know, the denial of people's humanity and their ability to exercise their right to participate in democracy as a person. We see the Texas legislature passing bills that make it incredibly hard for people to vote, whether that's voting by mail and that impacts people with disabilities, elderly communities. We've seen the Secretary of State of Texas pull voters off the voter registration rolls because they wanted them to prove that they were a citizen unable to vote. So these are some of the challenges that we've been seeing. It's been ongoing for a very long time. SB 1 is probably the biggest bill that came out of the last legislative session. They did partisan poll watchers, allowing people to intimidate voters at the polls. And my organization, Texas Civil Rights Project has used a community learning model to address those issues. So we're using a combination of advocacy, putting pressure on electives, and paying attention to what's happening during the legislative session to make some of these geniuses expand access to voting. So in addition to two-fold that is happening in Texas, you've got a lot of organizations that are branding together to fight some of these bills. This last session, you were able to put voters with disabilities or curbside when that we had, you know, on the litigation front, we're doing. We're doing on SB 1 along with a bunch of other organizations that are trying to stop these provisions from preventing access to voting. So, you know, at the same time, I know Texas has a lot of challenges, and everyone talks about Texas because we know what happens in Texas, never stays in the state. It is always the testing ground for bad laws across the country, but there are a lot of people that are fighting back all across the state. Good morning. Good afternoon, I guess, at this point. Everyone, my name is Sam, and I live in Wisconsin. And yes, I like cheese curds. If you want to see me later, you want to buy some. I don't know. So, with all voting as local, one of the main threats that we're really watching in election sabotage, so that's, you know, really, that's the intentional and purposeful manipulation of either the electoral system or the different levers within the state laws or administrative policies to essentially affect the outcome of the votes that were cast in a legal and fair election. So, a lot of things that we see with this is sort of the 1950s style of counting ballots. There's a movement to switch from electronic tabulation to hand counting elections. There is, we have one of the strictest voter ID laws on the books in the states that disproportionately affects folks of color, college students, even senior citizens. We have a large First American Native American population in Wisconsin, as well as a large lung population. So, this disproportionately affects historically disenfranchised people. And we also have threats and perceived threats against our election officials. And so, that's something that we're watching and seeing a trend growing nationally. And one of the, I guess, lights at the end of the tunnel is this past spring election. We have a turnout for our Supreme Court justice race, someone who, for democracy, since this is non-partisan, I keep it non-partist, since it's 6 o'clock. I've got two daughters, one of them's definitely she thinks she already is. But, so yeah, we're seeing people being re-engaged between spring elections that Wisconsin is known for. I've been historically sleepy, won't turn out. And that has changed. People are waking up, they're learning about what's going on and they're reactivating. So, we're happy to see that. I just want to say thank you everyone for having me on this panel. And it's exciting to be kind of sitting next to a lot of folks that have gone states specific and try to provide a little bit of the national perspective as well. You know, from voter intimidation and the felony disenfranchisement to election sabotage and pet thoughts on mail loading, I think that what we've identified here is that there isn't one single biggest threat. There is, you know, as I've said before, anti-voter attacks these days do look like about 5,000 times. But I just want to shine a light on one of those attacks that I think is really foundational, which are attacks on voter registration. So, we know that the most likely reason someone's not going to vote on election day is because of an issue with registration. Turnout rates are, you know, you're likely going to voting after you've registered to vote goes way up from turnout. That's why we passed the National Voter Registration Act because we knew that with lower barriers to registration, we would improve in our mail. We also know that the biggest problem on election day is folks showing up to vote and finding out that they're not registered to vote. That is always the number one problem reported to election protection hotline. It's the number one reason provisional ballots are not counted. So, we know that voter registration is the greatest barrier to access to the polls. And that is why we are seeing increasing attacks on voter registration. And if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense because if you're a legislator who is not interested in kind of catering to your voters and be responsive to your voters, but only interested in kind of picking your voters, then freezing your electorate in place, the electorate that elected you in place and not allowing new voters in, voters that are disproportionately voters of color, that are disproportionately young voters, you are going to have an extraordinarily effective way of voter suppression. And so, what are some of the things we're seeing now? I think we're seeing the attacks on multiple. So, I'm headed to trial in Arizona in the case where Arizona passed a documentary for citizenship requirement for voter registration quite some years ago. It went all the way up to the Supreme Court in a 7-2 opinion written by Justice Scalia that the court held that they could not enforce that under the National Voter Registration Act. Rather than give up on it, what Arizona ended up doing was creating this dual voter registration system that's very confusing in order to vote for state and local elections. You have to provide this documentary group, but not for federal elections. They turned around a year and a half ago and said, you know, we think this court has changed and we're going to pass a new law that is an open very recent Supreme Court decision to re-up residence requirement, which as you can imagine not only adds to the bureaucracy and paperwork requirements, but also disproportionately affects students, transient folks, native voters, rural voters who don't have easy access to that kind of paperwork. So by the way, if you don't provide your place of birth on your voter registration form, we will deny your voter registration. Now, if they raise a question to you, why do you need to know the place of birth of a voter? The answer is that you don't unless you're planning on discriminating against that on the basis of whether or not they were born in the United States or not. So these are some of the issues that are headed to trial in Arizona, but we see very similar issues elsewhere. As you mentioned, Arizona kind of took some of this playbook from Texas in the way that they planned to urge voters based on outdated information about citizenship status from driver's license. And at the same time that we're raising these barriers for registration, we are also seeing attacks on the groups that are doing the civic engagement to help folks overcome those barriers, criminalizing voter registration drives. So these are some of the areas that my program has been really focused on litigating, protecting the person that writes in the groups that are out there getting folks registered, helping them overcome barriers, and bringing those barriers down. Now you did ask me to talk about kind of the positives, and I just want to say that this is also a place where voters understand these barriers and they are overwhelmingly in support of problems and solutions like automatic voter registration and same day registration. We actually have the technology now to have voter registration systems that are so much more advanced than when we passed the National Voter Registration Act. Everyone should be able to register on the same day that they vote. That's very possible, and it's growing in popularity back in every year. We have new states and modernizing their voter registration systems. Excellent, excellent. Thank you. Sam, I want to come back to something that you talked about with voter intimidation. Can you just explain what you're seeing in Wisconsin and also what are the steps that have taken to counter intimidation that we're seeing in Wisconsin, but in many many places across the nation? Sure. So when it comes to voter intimidation, we've seen, for example, in some instances, we've seen quote-unquote poll watchers from maybe rural or some suburban areas come into the larger cities like Baxter, Milwaukee and to sort of have these militia folks where they weren't perceived or maybe we had open carry in Wisconsin. And so folks illegally walked around with firearms and sort of asked, you know, why are you doing that? So we have instances of that. We also have instances of intimidation of our election officials in Wisconsin. Our elections are run at the municipal level with 1,850 municipalities in Wisconsin. So every town, village and city has a municipal clerk that is responsible for administering those elections. We've seen a huge, huge increase in internal clerks leading the profession. And that's a very unfortunate thing. It's a very technical job. It's a very high stress job, but it's very important. And in many instances, these positions are in small towns, they're elected. And so I think also, too, you have the, again, sort of the election sabotage components of maybe that faith act is running for local clerk winning an election. And the way that law is working in Wisconsin when it comes to elections is essentially it's up to the local clerk to interpret the law, right? So if you're small town clerk and maybe work 10 hours a week that you've got a small town project, you're probably not a lawyer, right? You're probably not, maybe you don't have a master's degree. Maybe you do. I don't know. I don't want to like, you know, silo everyone, but for the most part, these are just regular citizens running for local office because they want to get back. And so you have a lot of issues there, right, across the board. But again, I think there's a lot of things that we can do to protect not only voters, but also election officials. There's actually bipartisan bill right now, making the legislature to, right now, it's only a misdemeanor. If you either harass or physically assault an election official, we're looking to get that puffed up to a felony. And we're also looking to increase how much financial sort of processing would be or how much jail time it would be if you, again, harass or physically assault an election official. So, you know, hopefully, it's little baby steps, but, you know, we really need to make sure that we're looking up for the folks who administer our federal actions or also people who decide to shut up and get lying on that day to cast a ballot, but they're not intimidated to not cast a ballot. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We heard something in one of the earlier sessions or even session yesterday about how weak the infrastructure really is across the country on protecting election officials, right? Protecting our voters is coming along never sufficiently, but we need to look at both. We're showing you more about how, what does that coordination look like on the grassroots and then the legal and the passing laws, but also the litigation as well. How is that coordinated and having to work that together to have it happen? I think a lot of it has to do with building infrastructure and making sure that our elections are protected. Test Civil Rights Project runs the largest election protection program in the state of Texas and we partner with tons of organizations, local counties. We also partner with national organizations. It is a big, big effort. I mean, we have, we run a voice room with attorneys that are answering calls. If there are things happening on the ground, you know, for example, you know, a polling location ran out of paper ballots or did not open on time. So things like that, that can be fly by folks that are on the ground at these polling locations that have volunteered to be there to watch what is happening and then using litigation strategies around, around those particular issues. So that's the election protection arm that is, that is an effort across the state of Texas. I do think there are other issues with, you know, countywide polling. This has 254 counties and not every single county, you are able to vote anywhere inside that county. You have to have your county open it up. So on election day, you have to go vote at your precinct. And typically, you know, if you're working in some other part of the county or you're working out of the county, you're not going to be able to go to your polling location. So that is, that is an effort that we see that we need to, we need to combat. So that's another tool that we can utilize in order to expand access to voting and making sure that people are not sent, sent to their, to their county, their precinct where they have to vote on the day of the election when it is open county. So just a few, not just voting rights, but also the other issue areas that we work on like criminal injustice and bordered immigration issues and partnered with legislators to make sure that we were combating some of those bad laws that were coming through and then bringing community members that were experiencing issues on the ground to come and testify at the Texas Capitol. So it's about engaging communities across this massive state because it is huge. I live in Brownsville, Texas, and that is a five hour drive, no, six hour drive to Austin, Texas. So, and then just to get out of the state, it's 12 hours. So, you know, it is a massive state, but making sure that we get communities engaged in what is happening at the Capitol is also another thing that our organization and our partners are invested in and will continue to be invested in. Excellent. Dwayne, let me pick up on something that Rochelle was just saying. You are a former elected official and you are a political advisor now. What does it look like to educate our legislators to put the issues out there, help them understand them and help them understand them in a way that they can be part of the solution and to also mobilize citizens to be part of that process? Yeah, I mean, it's always an ongoing process, especially state like Florida where you have high turnover, turn limits, things that kind of impact the face of what the legislature looks like in any given year. But also, as I mentioned at the onset, this notion of what is voter suppression. And I think sometimes folks get caught up in the access versus security battle. It's a false truth. Access should always be the the paramount. And as I mentioned at the beginning, anything that is an impediment to that needs to find its way. As an example, people will come back, both Democrats and Republicans, and say, well, we need stronger voter ID laws. Cool. Are you going to provide voter ID for everybody who's eligible or should have access? If the answer is no, then we have a problem. You know, and the point I raise is, when you think about our houseless and homeless population, there are this portion of the number of veterans nationwide, but state by state, that make up our homeless population is someone I pose the question to elected officials, irrespective of party and say, is it right that a person who sacrificed themselves in Iraq or Afghanistan, who is now houseless or homeless, to be kept from the polls because they don't have any physical address across the board? Well, that ain't right. What would we do then to fix that? Right? If they don't have, you know, if they have disability issues, physical access, and you don't want to always afraid about veterans, but I always pose at the heart of elected officials because now it's like, here's someone that you say, you know, and of course our folks in Florida like to say, we're the most different state in the union. It's like, are you ridden? If there are people who cannot vote, who sound really bitterly and in so many other ways to be protected. So it starts frame this, but also, and as a former elected, I have to impress this upon folks, you're oftentimes the smarter person. Sit with that. And what I mean by that is, it's this notion of putting people on a pedestal that because they hold the title or some particular committee that they're knowledgeable about what that really has to do or democracy itself. You have a thousand people or, you know, in the hard case, 160 people swear, you know, put their hand on the Bible and pray for the place within the Constitution and then go out daily finding new, innovative ways to violate the Constitution, right? And do that. And so for you all who are trying to work on election protection, talk about democracy expansion, talk about the notion of voting rents, go on with the data, go on with the facts, understand you are smarter than the person you're talking to. I'm not saying that to be condescending towards that person, but don't be under this assumption that you're all equal footing or that that person sitting across from you understands the jargon or legalese or the conversation that you're having. You have to put it through the terms, terminology, and language that they can receive. So their district is disproportionately older folks and you're talking about ageism or the inability for a 65 plus person to access the ballot box, put it in that framework. If they have colleges, you know, in their district and talk about the notion of 18 to 24 year olds, you know, not having a place on campus to go vote, you know, give it an election year, that's a conversation. So kind of baseline it based on who you're, who you're talking to and then when you're talking about democracy as a whole, remind them again, as I mentioned at the level setting, if they are passing laws that in any way prohibit or enable somebody or, you know, disable somebody from being able to access the ballot box, then they are working in voter suppression. And sometimes folks who look like me will sit there and be like, well, that's not, you know, I'm a black person, I'm a black person, I don't do that. Let me show you your voting record and tell you how you meant it, right? Well, I'm military. Let me show you what you did that kept your fellow veterans from being able to access the franchise and to be very blunt in those times. A real question to Danielle, but we love folks to be thinking about whether you have questions, I want you to be part of the conversation. Danielle, gerrymandering is obviously an issue nationally. Can you just tell us how you're thinking about that, how that intersects with the challenge? How it is a tool of or intersects with voter suppression? Yes, absolutely. So at CLC, we kind of work across a number of issue areas affecting our democracy and the redistricting teams and the voting rights teams work really closely together. We've got for a couple of reasons. One is that now a lot of the same legal tools that we work with like the Voting Rights Act, right? Most obviously. The Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is our most critical remaining federal legal tool to protect against both racial gerrymandering and ways in which we dilute the vote of minority voters through redistricting. It's also the most potent tool we have to deal with direct anti-voter attacks on voters of color at the kind of ballot box level. We have lost a lot of our legal tools when it comes to gerrymandering. So we used to have like at least the possibility out there of bringing claims around partisan gerrymandering. The Supreme Court took that off the table and so partisan gerrymandering has kind of gone through the roof in the last cycle and there's no kind of clear check inside. Now, luckily we did get an excellent and somewhat surprising Supreme Court decision this year of holding Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. So we still have that critical tool to help protect minority voters in redistricting. But we know that gerrymandering is extraordinarily harmful to kind of trying to turn votes into responsive government. But I think for this conversation it's also really useful to talk about how these types of policies around voting and translating votes into results can either be virtuous cycles or really not virtuous cycles. So if you have a redistricting plan that is representative and responsive to its voters, you're also likely to see better voter policies because those elected officials are going to feel accountable to the American people and the American people overwhelmingly support voter policies. Just look at any ballot initiative that gets on the ballot in a red, blue, green, purple state. They all pass with flying colors because American people support voter policies. So if you have kind of officials that feel directly responsible to their voters, you're more likely to get voter policies. On the other hand, if you have elected officials that do not feel responsible to their voters because they have gerrymandering themselves into safe seats, well then they can continue in that kind of non-virtuous cycle by further making themselves safe through other anti-voter policies. And I think in one example I wanted to point to in light of this conversation is an issue we're seeing in Tennessee today. So Tennessee has all sorts of gerrymandering issues. It has a kind of super majority Republican legislature that just does not have much accountability to the Black voters in its state. And as a result, it is also the state, I think, with the most anti-voter access policies in the country. And they're only getting worse. So I have been litigating for years against the process for restoration for people with past convictions in Tennessee. Tennessee has one of the strictest laws in the country. But it did have a process by which if you had met a whole bunch of markers, paid off all your fines and fees, paid off your child support, a whole bunch of other things that you wouldn't think are relevant to whether or not you should be able to vote, you could get your voting rights back. They did a terrible job of administering that process so that it was almost impossible to get through. We were headed to trial in a case about procedural due process rights for the people. But they just have a right to go through the process and have that process work and be fair and that if they need the qualification, they get their voting rights back. The state had lost a number of interim battles in that court battle and were headed to trial. They decided to turn around and cynically use a new interpretation of the Tennessee state of law to say we don't actually think any of these people are entitled to rights restoration at all. Issued guidance saying now in order to get your rights restored, you actually have to have a court order restoring your voting rights. Something that had not been the law in almost two years in the state of Tennessee. The Secretary of State did that unilaterally and there is really very little accountability in a state that is so deeply gerrymandered and that does not have kind of elected officials that feel responsible to the black voters in the state. Thank you for that explanation. I'm going to open it up to the audience and look to your questions. So if people want to raise their hand, we'll go right here, one, two, three. Guy Camilleri, National Tennessee, Civic Tennessee, and we'll go on the table there. Yeah, sorry. Sorry. I'm going to walk on by two. Thank you. I'm curious if any of you have seen as we've seen with the election panels and things abroad, all the rolling back voting rights past couple legislative sessions, are there any red track specter states that are actually expanding the franchise at this sort of at this time? So I will give an interesting example from Florida. We are a red track specter state and kind of inadvertently passed automatic voter registration, but not through the legislature, right? So it was basically a regulatory rule where the DMV now makes it ask you the question and gives you the option to opt out. So if you want to get your driver's license, get your driver's license for new, they'll ask you, do you want us to also send your voter registration with that? Mark it in the system. If you choose to say nothing by default, they'll send it to the address in your driver's license. Now that has led to an uptick or balance out if you will. Everyone frame it of the voter registration number between Democrats and Republicans where 10 years ago there was a sizable advantage for Democrats in the state of Florida. Part of that has to do with the notion of equity. And what I mean by that is who are the people that are least likely to have access to the DMV? And this has become one of those questions. And so even though regulatory policy advantage that and now have that, you still now have a drop off in the number of black and brown folks that are eligible to get driver's license, able to get terms, or have the money, frankly, to get driver's licenses. So that's kind of has ended that. So it's, it's where it goes, where your catch going to. This is primarily for a question for Dania. I have two questions. One, you mentioned that some of these voter registration forms are asking for asking for where people are born. And that's alarming. Do you also know of any instances where that information is being used in any way? Or there's like legislation or there's any effort to like prevent naturalized citizens from voting? That's number one. And my second question, it's about seven states. I think about seven states pulled out of Eric, the voter, the data sharing system that, I don't know, about 25 or 28 states shared to to share their voter rolls and keep their voter rolls clean. Is that part of a voter suppression drive of these states? Can you speak a little bit about that? Yes. So Arizona is the only state right now that is trying to require a place of birth, a required field for voter registration. They're a handful of other states that have it on their form, but I think they mostly just use it for kind of, maybe some demographic analysis, but I'm not aware of it being used in the various ways. But it's really hard to not read the Arizona law as an attempt to use it in a various way, especially because if you read the rest of the law, it's paired with a whole bunch of other ways in which they are targeting naturalized citizens. So they're going to look at all DMV data, the thing that was stale. They're going to look at any other database that they can find, knowing that those data that might show that say that someone is not a citizen or get naturalized citizens, those data that's old that says we were not a citizen. There will be old data out there that says you weren't a citizen at that time. It's just not that complicated. So it's hard to read Arizona as any other way. And it's paired with language about prosecutions. If you are, you know, being like mandatory referrals for prosecutions and what that says, very concerning. And I don't think it's likely to pass master, but you know, I am out of the court prediction business. On the question of Eric, yes, I think it is. And, you know, for those of you don't know, Eric was this kind of pretty brilliant and incredibly hard one system of data sharing that, you know, by all accounts was achieving some of what folks who talk about election integrity should want. You know, using data across states to make sure that when folks move, they get removed from one state and invited to register in the state where they have moved. It both kept the voter rolls clean, but also made sure that those voters were being given opportunities where they have moved. And this exodus has been led by kind of a complete disinformation campaign to try to sneer what has been a bipartisan effort to improve voter registration rules. And it's hard to see it as anything other because of that. And you have people like George's secretary of state, Brad Rappensperger, and all sorts of other, you know, Republican and Democratic election officials coming forward and just saying, this is an incredibly useful tool. What do you want us to do without it? Leading states in the lurch. All of a sudden, they don't have all the state that they're used to relying on to keep their voter registration rolls up to date. What does that do? It creates the likelihood of having more stale data on the voter registration rules, which then folks will use in a nefarious way to suggest that there are some, you know, opens to fraud or whatnot, because those rolls are genuinely outdated. It also creates a vacuum where I think far less, you know, far less effective and also far less accurate programs could try to fill the gap. So, you know, Chris Coback used to have this system called a cross check that was attempting to do this voter sharing exercise, except for it was always wrong. It was constantly cross checking data based on like two data points and, you know, the probability of the data saying that I had moved was like most of the time wrong. And so the result was they were removing people based on this cross check that really had no variability. And so I think that, you know, removing states from Eric is going to be a created vacuum where those states can then use systems like cross check that are going to be extraordinarily harmful to voters and lead to a lot of purges and kind of highlight the problem I said at the top here about, you know, voters showing up at the polls thinking they're registered and finding themselves not in the rolls. Hi, Paul Allen, Oklahoma Policy Institute. Sam, you mentioned earlier a push in, Wisconsin to add a felony conviction for people who intimidate or harass poor workers. We had a similar building up for HOMA that came through our session this year, but we actually pushed against that. We had a really strong push over the past few years. We know new felonies. And so I was wondering what, from a voter rights perspective, we can do to protect our election officials without introducing new felonies or over-policing precincts, which we can figure will allow lead to intimidation of voters, especially voters of color, and make some pretty bad trends in the criminal legal system. Sure. So the question was, what are other ways that we can protect election workers? Well, so one thing that we do with all voting and all voting is all Wisconsin. One of the programs that we run is called the Court Engagement Program. And through that program, we're not naturally a grassroots campaign, but we do partner with other 501c3s to sort of run this campaign. And what we do is we find volunteers and communities who want to support their local court. Many times, courts are underpaid, overworked. And so we sort of help build these support teams around municipal courts to help them out. And some of the items that we work on through this program is helping them recruit and retain new poll workers to work with their local boards to increase their budgets every year. A lot of time, there's been a lot of pushback on election officials accepting private grants, you know, the zucker bucks and all these other things that are out there. And it's like, well, courts wouldn't be looking for more money if we just properly funded our elections and then there are officials in the first place, we won't have an issue. And so I think that's a way to support our courts through these volunteer programs. You know, another way to support our courts as well. Again, I guess that through the recruitment of poll workers is in many communities, sometimes when we found folks who are either election deniers, or maybe they don't understand the full election process, is then to invite them to a poll worker training. And I think once people, once you've sort of pulled the sheet from, you know, see who's behind the, you know, the great Oz, right, behind the sheet there, they really see that in Wisconsin, especially, we have a very silent system, like I said, we have 8,250 municipal courts, then also we have 72 county courts that support the municipal courts. And then at each polling location, you have to have a minimum, I think, like three to five election workers. So on election day, you've got an army of 10, 12, 15,000 people statewide. And for a lot of our process is to, I think a big part of protecting election workers is education, educating the public. So at all voting as local, again, we work with partners to go around the state and hold town hall meetings, with courts, with the general population to talk about all elections work. And a lot of our mechanisms in Wisconsin, when you have to sign off on the chain of custody or ballots, or who's turning on the tabulator in the morning and who's reporting the numbers at night, many times you have to have either every poll worker in that location looked and say, yes, this is correct to sign off on it. And many times you have to have both a Republican and a Democrat poll worker signing off on a lot of these checks and balances. So I always tell people in Wisconsin, they would, you'd have to have Democrats and Republicans colluding together essentially to do that. So I think when you have education, and you educate the public, I think that's a huge defense tool because when you get folks on social media and that you can have educated people in your community saying, no, stop right there, that's wrong. This is, let me tell you how the elections work. And we found it to be pretty successful and hoping so. Yeah, just going back to the challenges that they're facing with being pulled up. This is something that happens when they can't get their bursary tickets from, and that is because they have been born with a midwife, it mostly impacts Latinos that are born in the United States. You know, it was in the news some time ago that the federal government was denying passports to these individuals saying that they weren't a citizen. It happened with my own family. I had my aunt who was denied her passport. But it is an issue that presbyterian being able to, you know, get a driver's license or to even go to school. So TCRP has done some litigation around this, especially around parents that need to get bursary tickets for their children. And they were being denied that by the state of Texas because they didn't have the proper identification because they were not citizens. But that would impact their kids. And so I think that, you know, in a state that is 40% Latino, that is 6% people of color. I mean, this is, this is part of something that you're going to see happen in other states. It is the testing ground to look at all of these issues as interconnected being able to exercise your right to vote to be a part of a functioning democracy. And it starts from way before being able to register to vote. We have time for one more question. I'm going to take a village to get that mic back. So thank you. Thank you. My question is for Mr. Bullard. I'm a Florida resident. And although my line of interest is activism is not technically have been, has been denied here today as registered registration, but I'm a non-partisan and an independent. I just like to get your quick reaction or opinion on the state of close primaries in Florida where there's four point, some million now that are not affiliated. And with 82, excuse me, 86% of the 2022 state of elections either being unopposed or uncompetitive. Just one of your thoughts on close primaries, please. Well, I want to start by saying that I'm an advocate for open primaries. I'm also an advocate for my interest. I think both are important tools to expand democracy. The challenge in Florida is that both parties benefit from close primaries. And so the advocacy at the state level is probably, you know, moved in terms of giving some level of agreements on modifying that or allowing folks. I was actually sharing with some of the panelists earlier that you now represent the largest political party in the state of Florida. 36% of our voters are now rich to the bees in the state of Florida, non-party affiliated, I apologize, are non-party affiliated voters. And so we now have a real challenge in terms of how you exercise representative democracy with the largest group of voters are no longer identifying with either party and how we address that. I know there has been on the bright side some conversation around same-day registration, at least getting on the ballot in one of the upcoming years, kind of intervening out a little bit, therefore allowing somebody in a moment's notice to then get into a space where they maybe want to register for a close primary on that day, then go back to the EPA the day after as their choice. But unfortunately, nothing is really surfacing from a, you know, policy standpoint to address the unfortunate reality of close primary voting. Thank you. We have just a couple more minutes, so I'm just going to allow the panelists to have final word, speed round. Anything that you want to share and it could be something that you're hopeful for, it could be something that you're concerned about that this audience needs to be aware of, but speed round, but I'll start with the video and come back this way. Yeah, absolutely. I feel like I'm kind of giving you all a lot to worry about, so I'm going to spend my speed round just saying something I'm very hopeful about that goes back a little bit to your question too about where we're seeing progress even in, you know, red states, let's say. And I think felony disenfranchisement is that point. It's right. It is our biggest barrier to equal and equitable participation with five million voters still disenfranchised, but it's also the place where we are seeing progress in red, blue, green states. Every single legislative session, we are seeing progress. We have seen major progress in states like Alabama, Louisiana, Florida. Those are not states we normally see on the list of like pro-voting agendas, but we have seen huge strides there. And in states that are more pro-voter, we are seeing moves towards complete abolishment of felony disenfranchisement. It's a place where there is incredible movement led by affected people. That kind of gives me a great deal of hope. I think for me, just actually coming to this conference has been very eye-opening. Again, a big part of the work that all voting as local does is coalition work. And so we're all about empowering our state partners and building each other up and communicating. And so that's what I would encourage folks to lead with of anything that talk to each other in state. Find like-minded 501c3 partners and others who believe in your mission. I think everyone here will be asked the same question. We might agree 75 to 80% of the thing, but I think for the most part we all agree that the more people that vote, the more people have access to the ballot box, the better election results we have. And then when we have that more representative government, we get the laws that we truly want and deserve. Well, thank you for having me here. I want to say that this has been a really wonderful experience and being able to share our experiences at the state level and hearing the national perspective. I think it's been really, really helpful and understanding that suppression tactics, they're very micro level. They start very, very small throughout each of our states. And I'm really just proud to be in coalition with all of you. And happy to chat with folks offline. Two warnings and an aspiration. First warning is watch out for attacks on democracy in terms of ballot initiative thresholds being raised. Many states are trying to go from 50% to 60%. And so we're trying to go to two thirds in order to pass a ballot initiative in your state. And that is a full on attack against democracy. Also, and I think Sam alluded to this, look out for election deniers at those hyper local spaces in Florida. In our 67 counties, we have supervisor for election. These are oftentimes overlooked races on the ballot. These are oftentimes overlooked in terms of people who want to run for those. But for the election denier, that is nothing but opportunity to advantage themselves and advantage their desire. And the aspiration is that what I'm seeing on the ground, not only in Florida, but even in national and other states, is a real yearning to expand democracy from 18 year olds to the, to the 99 year old people who really, really view this as an avenue, despite what the turnout numbers may be or whatever the case may be. Folks really don't like the idea of totalitarianism or fascism becoming the thing. And they see democracy and the expansion of democracy as an opportunity to hold on to what we had. And so lead into that. Don't just be an ally, be an advocate and a COVID spirit in keeping democracy. We are unfortunately at time. I am taking away the struggle, as all of us know, is extraordinarily real. The importance of voting right is central to a democracy that's central to our engagement as citizens in one. But just as real as the struggles are so are the courageous people who are doing the work, and we got to hear from the four of them today, but all of you all are in that, and so many people in communities across the nation are those courageous people that are making the changes. The tools are there, but the struggle is real, but the progress is available and some of it's being made, but there's a lot more to do. And so I think Sam's admonition to us to be in coalition with each other and to really work together because we can bring that change. So join me in thanking our panelists for our great