 So just in terms of the way it works, there's a little office with a computer. And then basically, the drawing of the lines was delegated to a Republican Party official outside of the Capitol for sure. And this woman had had so much experience with the Voting Rights Act and what the courts had done in the future, that when the ACLU finally looked at the map that she drew, all they could say is it's a terrible map. But I don't think we have any standing in terms of suing. So it is a really difficult issue. And it's going to be really different the next time, I believe, because we're all paying attention. People are excited. People are mad. And what we're trying to do with our redistricting efforts is see how we can channel the effort to really pay attention to make a change for the future. So I'm just delighted that you're here, that you're paying attention. It is so important. I encourage you to get involved with the League of Women Voters, Common Cause, the ACLU, become part of a group which actually met this morning called the Georgia Redistricting Alliance. Your group can be a member of that alliance. So as we go forward, are we hopeful that our bills will pass in the legislature? We did have a hearing in the Senate. And then there was no more discussion. But we stopped a very aggressive, geriatric bill. Some folks here in the room worked on it. And a large contingency of advocacy groups formed a coalition. And some of the support that had already been shown earlier in the legislative session for the bills that Representative Gartner and I introduced with hundreds of people coming to the Capitol to voice their extremely strong support for an independent commission and against regained districts made them trepidatious, at least in the Senate, with shoving through this very bad, very blatant geriatric bill. In the end, that bill was not passed. But we are remaining very vigilant because they could theoretically try to jam it through really fast next year in the beginning of the session in time for the 2018 elections. A couple of really interesting things about that that I want to mention really quick. That effort, one of the districts that they were attempting to remove minority voters from in this bill this past year, they'd done the same thing two years ago. Actually, two of those. And they thought in 2015 when they did that, that they had removed enough minorities or rigged it enough that clearly would save the Republican hands. And then the margin, both of those incumbents did win in the last election. But the margins were small, really small. One was like 50.5%. And so they came, so they were coming back two years later, trying to redraw them again. And with just a lot, full of lies, full of trying to do things in the dark of night, there's no actually good reason for them to do this. A huge change this year is that folks in the public have really risen up, gotten behind the bills that we are opposing, shown up at the Capitol and oppose this measure. And it died. In 2015, Neri Apeep was hurt by anybody. And then they just sailed on through and passed, even though it is the exact same thing, a blatant racial generator. So they just thought like, get away with it again. And so it really demonstrates the awakening that's happened in the public around this issue, the power of direct advocacy and showing up. And so our goal is obviously to play defense on any more audacious, unconstitutional efforts to redraw the maps within the next few months, but also have our long-term goal of putting into place a non-perksome independent commission that would draw fairer districts for Georgia. One of the things is we have the fewest in a country that has rapidly headed this way towards uncompetitive elections for Congress, House, and Senate at the state level, Georgia's are the least competitive in the country. I mean, we've got maybe, I mean, when they did the maps after 2010, there were maps among four competitive districts in a general election out of 236. The elections are all in the primary. The districts are so gerrymandered that like, no, I mean, and there are some districts that even if you drew fair maps are gonna skew heavily Republican or Democratic. And that's okay because there are pockets of populations and in the state that just heavily skew that way. But what they've done is made it so that we Democrats, and this is obviously was done in the past under Democrats, we Democrats win our primaries by these huge amounts. I mean, our general elections by these huge amounts where it's like 80%. So, and the Republicans win their primaries, I mean, their generals by like, you know, more like 55, 57. So that's how you get these skewed numbers. You pack like-minded voters into a smaller amount of districts. And- They have somebody that they think might lose the next time. They start fiddling with the map in that particular district and saying, well, this is a Democratic district. So let's give that to Sheila Jones and we'll give some others- Some of her bucket, well, the bucket people that they suspected would be more likely to be Republicans. So this is- It's another guy. Without checking with the other person and they couldn't do that before the section five of the Voting Rights Act was the pre-clearance section was struck down by the Supreme Court. So Georgia was under pre-clearance. You couldn't make voting changes until that was thrown out by the Supreme Court, which is unleashed all these photo ID and other voter suppression things that have been going on, including, you know, y'all maybe have seen the headlines that we kicked like 600,000 people off the rolls just in the last month. You know, so all these things are things that Georgia now has the ability to do without having to go through justice. Now, of course, who the justice would have a role play in that too. The Obama administration was obviously more aggressive about sort of policing some of that stuff than I think it would be under Jeff Sessions. But, you know, I don't mean to malign him. I'm just saying, you know, that would probably be the case. So, yeah, the bills that we introduced, one was to establish criteria for how you- what you needed to consider to draw the line. The other one, in addition to setting up the criteria, would have created independent commission. And it was- the commission idea is probably in 10 or, I don't know how many states have voting commissions. It's really hard to find independent commissions that can do this job. And frankly, I think the one that we came up with, I'm not sure it would have worked. I really don't think it would have worked anymore. But anyway, the issue was not what the commission would look like because we knew it wasn't gonna pass anyway, but the fact that we should be thinking about a way to create a more independent. There was one of the districts when the Republicans first took over about seven years ago, the court, they filed a suit and the courts threw out some of the districts. So they were redrawn, but they were drawn by the court as opposed to the legislators. And from my point of view, that was the most compact district I ever had. I really love that, right? But that disappeared with the last census. So are we hopeful these bills will pass? No, do we think that they can make a difference? It depends on you. It depends on the public and if the public will is really there to begin to have some serious change. It is gonna be really important to lost money. Well, let me mention them while you're thinking about that. So we've got lists that grew fairly robust during the last session with both citizens that were supporting our legislation and then also folks that were opposing the gerometer, the class of team. So my office has been keeping this whole data as a folks. So I really invite you, if you are interested, in sort of keeping up to date with egregious calls to action on egregious legislation or saying, hey, I wanna come show my support for returning power to the voters in Georgia. One of the, please email my office and we'll add you. Of course, I can give Scott copies of redistricting alliances hand out from the last session. So you can see who the members of the committee are. You can contact them at any point. Right. And you can probably distribute that to the members. Can you now? One of the terrible things about, there are a number of terrible things about the way these districts are so great. I mean, it dampens any sort of competition and also makes it so that basically you can't achieve legislative compromise because if you're from a really safe district one way or the other, you only care about your primary voters. And basically the primary voters in those parties to a bigger extent have views that are diametrically opposing one another. Whereas there's more of a broad spectrum across the entire electorate. But when you just nail it down to very committed democratic activists and very committed Republican activists, then you get these crazy things like us passing the campus carry bill. Or North Carolina getting themselves into the bathroom debate. The bathroom bill. These things are happening because there is an out of whack. There are not only out of whack districts that are creating sort of a discrepancy between the political viewpoints of the population as a whole and those who are elected. But then you make that even worse by having these very safe districts where people are just concerned that they'll be run out from the right in those cases. So you've got in Georgia a situation where no one supported the campus carry bill except for like the NRA. People at campuses didn't want it. The faculty didn't want it. The student body for passing resolutions opposing it. The parents don't want it. The board of regents really didn't want it. No one in Georgia wanted this thing and we passed it anyway because of gerrymandered districts. And in the way that gerrymandered districts and partisan primaries and the way they put all of these public policy thoughts and failure to compromise because you don't care about all those people. You care whether you get some guy who's gonna jump up and down in your primary and say, this guy is not a staunch backer of the NRA. In Second Amendment. So you can't have compromise and you have policies that make no sense that totally are not supported by the general public. So really it's so important to be passing these things. And people don't even care about voting when they know their vote doesn't matter. Which is why one of our turnout numbers are lower than many of their cryptorysis. When you've got four competitive elections out of 236 and zero in the congressional delegation, many more people just, why would they vote? So what is the strategy? I mean, the strategy that we have is to increase the public will, prepare better for the upcoming caucus and the next redistricting figure out all the ways we can make it more transparent. The states that have independent commissions have done so through a process which is a referendum. Referendums in Georgia are not binding. So that's not gonna work in Georgia. We need really good cases. And there are several cases right now in Georgia that are ongoing. And there are some cases around the country. Most of them based on minority participation or lack of. And you probably have been reading about those. There are probably seven or eight of those. There are two for the first time that are focusing on lack of fairness in participation by party affiliation. I think it's three. Maryland, right? North Carolina at Wisconsin. Okay, I thought the North Carolina was based on. Maryland. And it's got to be this. I'm Maryland at Wisconsin for sure. I don't know about Maryland. But anyway, it's clear things are gonna happen in the courts and that's what's gonna be really important. Right, and there are different theories that have been preceded on her. So that's really in the weeds legally. But you know, like the University of Chicago answer or do you like the Emmett Bonner and Common Cause answer? Whichever one works in the court is the one that we want. But those that are kind of behind the Emmett Bonner who's a very well-known lawyer here in Atlanta and has done this work for many years. He, so the Wisconsin will attend this report right now. And everyone's nervous. And so we're hoping that if they decide they don't like that theory or that model which relies on this sort of mathematical statistical formula developed by, is it the political scientist at University of Chicago? Right, the law professor. Okay, the efficiency gap. It's like you can just run the numbers and say, look, it's completely under his theory. All right, if you're a fact, you're a efficiency gap, how many votes each party is wasting to achieve a certain outcome or winning a district. If the factor is like above seven or eight or something like that, his theory is, that means it's gone too far. You have now unconstitutionally silenced the other things. And then the other theory is more a, it's the same, but you can attack it by district instead of more like holistically by the statewide results, the way the Wisconsin efficiency gap does. It's more like you are discriminated based on viewpoint. You are treating different people differently based on their viewpoint, which is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause and the First Amendment. So what do you need to hear from you? Yeah, and then we all talk about those other issues a little bit, but since Pat'll have to go, let's get questions in on Jeremy entering. I've always had my hands up a lot. Oh, good, sorry. So I have, sorry, I was saying a couple of questions. How do, is it possible to change to my friend that's in your perspective by you? If it is possible, how do you get that done? My second question is regarding strategy. How do you see engagement, especially if the millennial rule, as they are here, not just noise leaders, how do you be able to get university students involved to that extent to the level of passion that they typically want to engage in? I'll answer the first one, and that is we have to pass a constitutional amendment that would take in the house of 180 would take 120 votes. Republicans right now have 119. And we find they're usually a democratic, or two, it seems to be willing to go along with the Republicans in order to get something else. Horse trade is, yeah. People get bought off. It's a really long shot in that. Right, it's just as long a shot as like what we're sort of doing. And so it's, for what just needs to be done too, for what you're saying, it is only possible at the national level. I know it would have to be a state, it would have to be a state initiative, yeah. But your second question is really the important one. Yes. Well, no, I don't know that we have tapped enough into the university and millennial communities on this issue, and welcome any connections. You know, personally, I'm gonna be speaking soon to a chapter at Georgia State and of American Constitution Society, which is interested in this issue. And I've spoken at MRE and some other, so I can't say that we haven't done anything, but honestly, everything was happening very quickly last session. And we were fortunate, and we're rarely in this position, we were fortunate to have hundreds of people ready to show up. We didn't really need to, at that time, dig really deep, but we want to, right, we want to grow, grow, grow, grow. So we need to- Most of the people who came were over. No, you're right, I have a group of, I mean, it was hilarious, y'all, sidebar. So they had security, you weren't at that one, that early morning one, or were you? Oh my gosh, they had all this security in the room, and so the chairman was like, I mean, let's please not get roundy. And I'm like looking around their room, it's like all little ladies, I mean, it was absolutely hysterical. They were all so confused. They were like, remember, there were all those police there. I was like, because these people are not- You guys are very good. Yeah, it's just really guilty. But anyway, I would say it's cute, older. But we have tapped into, because you know what, sometimes older people have a little more time on their hands to devote significant amounts of time to activism on a particular issue. So some of these individual groups that have launched around this topic are more like, I would say, middle-aged, but not exclusively. But we want to, so suggestions from you guys about tapping into the college communities, getting them excited, getting them engaged around this issue, absolutely welcomed and needed. And I hope you said, how are we going to do that? Yeah. Not how our, Elena and I are going to do it, but how are we as a community going to change the public will and let people pay attention? Including what? And I ask that because when the campus carry bill was being completed, I was actually at the end of the state and we had numerous conversations, but very anybody from your side of the coin showed up to actually purchase the conversation. And so even, you know, political science classes, the debates were really hard, so that would have been perfect. Now, looking forward, because you're talking about these gerrymandering bills coming up again in the next session, if you're looking to act this at that point, this is, what month are we at all? This is the beginning of the semester, so. Right, it's time to start. And we're going to be doing, first of all there's going to be a tour around the state. One is put together by the dialogue with groups that have been started to really work this issue, to talk to the public about it the way you know Pat and I are going to talk to you. One is going to be a call. So if you want to email me or we can otherwise connect, I can make sure you're aware of that because that might be a really good thing to direct some students to first, but we can come to universities. The university thing was a little bit tricky. There were, the faculty was sort of told to stand down a couple of times. They get very nervous because they're dependent on the general family for their funding. Right, and they were told. Yeah. They were told in no uncertain terms. Yeah. They stood up again because they killed them the year before. So they said, well, you like your budget this year. And they will pull money to punish people. So the idea to reflect political affiliation makes me a little bit nervous. I understand and support kind of the theory of it, but it seems like you practice that good, get abusive. I don't really want my voting director to know. Well, it's right. It's right across time. It's not. If it's aggravated, if there's some way of aggravating and anonymizing things, that would be preferable. And maybe it's not that way to be able to be made so that we're not being, right? I've seen districts that were drawn around somebody's house. They're that specific. And this is 1970. I mean, they. It's much worse now because of the sophistication of the electronics. You're bringing up a larger question. I mean, I know that, and maybe you have information on this. I know, you know how the voter commission fraud investigatory thing, Trump put together was like asking all the secretary of state for data. And some of them are like, you know, go lose yourself, but you know, go jump in the Gulf of Mexico. But the thing is, is voter lists are available if you pay for them. And I don't know what the law around that is. If that breaks down by every state, like if the states can be like, we are not going to allow the political parties for anybody else to have the voter roll. I've never heard that being a thing. I don't know. Do you know? I mean, I mean, the survey, almost every state's voter lists are available at a minimum to the local parties that campaign. Right. They're available. That's a different question. Well, I just don't say that to you. You just have to count. To the parties that campaign. Yeah, that's right. But it's a, there are privacy issues. It's very challenging because these voter lists have to rely upon by activists for decades to get to that racist voter suppression. Because we have the data proof that the discriminating race, it's a non-easy system. No, it's, I mean, you're the experts. You're looking at how we create security for these civil rights. Right, and then that gets to the broader questions of security in our voting. And, you know, this accidental breach where our Secretary of State's office somehow released the data from every single person just into like the general public. So those are all, the cybersecurity piece is huge. That, I agree with you. What you're kind of asking for is something that, yeah, it's not in the current debate because it's been that way for so many years. But it's not everything. Like, if they don't get your Social Security report, you know, it's not like that. But it is like, don't know your voting history, your race. Which primary you voted in over the last 10 years or 20 years or down? They'll know all that. They know your address. They know a lot. I'm sure you know your phone number. Question? What, like you guys mentioned, groups showing up to lobby and assess what aspects groups have been getting involved in this, like where can we go in terms of that? So, send something to Elena. Get involved with, I mean, if your group is willing to join the Georgia Redistricting Alliance, then you'll all get the information when something is happening with us. I have a few, the sheets that were sort of the plan of action for the last session for the Georgia Respecting Alliance is which I'll leave in the back. So let us know you're out there. I'll let your leader know. And, I mean, join the ACLU or the Common Cause or the League of Women Voters. All the presidential organizations are working this. There's a whole lot of organizations working this issue and then I have to say the grassroots army right now is sort of launched by them because they all have memberships and people that are interested in their work, all these organizations, but also that all these individual groups that have just absolutely sprung up in the last, you know, 10 months. Many of them are grassroots. So they take the issues they want to work on. But many have been really interested in this issue. So the ACLU, I think they have a policy to name this as their number one issue. So it's a good time to help them. And those are national organizations but we have to find those chapters. So, yeah. More questions? I'm sorry that I have to go, but I... Yeah. I'll say one word. Well, you've been in commission. Is there any, what's that, interest in policy? I have a Republican co-sponsor for the bills. I did the first time. And then he got scared off by his buddies. But the truth is, the bill that was introduced that you introduced and Senator Jason Carver introduced was the bill that the Republicans had introduced five years earlier. So is this... And the governor had backed governor for you. So this is how to maintain the power, kind of. This is more of a national representative question. There's a podcast I've been listening to for a while called Default DC, which kind of talks about Washington inside information. And one of the topics to have, one of the first podcasts was around representation in America and the way that even though you have populations that are growing, you have set limits on the number of representatives you can have. Yes. And especially, this seems to be important for Georgia because we have a really growing population. So is there any way we can address that? Because it seems like also having more representatives you would have, you know, more chance of having people with different views. We have the second biggest house in the nation already. So 180 is a lot of people. But you're talking federal level. There's an argument that basically the congressional districts are far bigger than what the founders ever could have envisioned. And that they really wanted it to be more like your district size. And then so, but I don't know if that's a constitutional convention or if that's just a statute. I mean, believe me, it is a building with 180. So I can't even imagine what it's like in Congress or whatever they have for 25 order. I can't even imagine how you do that. But it's an interesting thing to consider. It probably would be that much crazier than it is now to be able to have such a big Washington if there were that many more people. You would get more and more extreme people. Parting note, I read a book that helped me understand how the cyber manipulation elections could actually work. I never could figure out in my mind how they'd do it. You know, the old days, they would just take a whole bunch of ballots and put them in the trunk and send them. They would never get to the place where they were counting the votes. They went and they went and they went and they went. This is called the people's house. And it's written by a guy who is the chairman of, you know this book? I saw it. It was, well, I mean, it's a novel, but it was just, it run too true to the kinds of stuff that we know and how the scheme created by the Russians and the Ohio governor ended up taking the hit for it. How he managed to change districts by fixing the computer. So I hope you're going to talk about our antiquated old days. I will talk about those. Yes, now. Thank you very much for having me. We look forward to you being active in the next few years. Thank you. I'm Kathleen Allen. Myself, my name's Kathleen Allen. I'm running for the U.S. House of Representatives in Georgia's seventh district, which is most of Gwinnett County and the little gerrymandered bit of South Forrest, like all the way over downtown. So the south side of Lake Lanier. I heard you were coming back. Yeah, you were. I was very quiet and running all the time. Thank you. And so I obviously care about redistricting as it affects federal candidates because I am in a district that is, if we looked at the sixth district, it was in R20. Republicans won by over 20 points in the last election. Don Ossoff brought it down to about R6. I could look forward to that. Rob Woodall is the incumbent in the seventh district. It was with R12 in November. It's down to about an R9. And I don't see Rob Woodall doing anything to make it get any higher in the Rs. between now and next November. Right, I think that that district is really heavily being looked at. This is more of a partisan side, but I'm glad. So glad that you're running. That district has had huge opportunities for swinging. And interesting notes to help the voters, especially Gwinnett County. Gwinnett County is now a minority-majority county. And so they are required to have all of their voter information in Spanish. So it was just on the news this morning that they're starting to do outreach and train poll workers. So if you have friends who speak Spanish and want to get involved in the elections in Gwinnett County. Yeah, it's an organization, Galeo, which is the Georgia Association of Latino elected officials. They're comparable organizations that work in the Asian-American community. For example, as they are all, they've been mighty but very small for years. So they need to step up and need help. And there's gonna be good work for them to do in 2018. Oh, times. And they've done it for a number of years. But from my perspective at the state legislature, these English-only things have been around a long time and we've had to kind of beat them back for a while, amazing, because there's been, it's been opposite. It's been very determined to not have Spanish or any other language on anything. So, yeah. The demographics forced Galeo County to do something about it. That doesn't parallel, a parallel. Yes, it's a kind of a bi-county. It didn't come from Georgia, yeah. It didn't come from our legislature, yeah. I know that it is shutting down or considering shutting down a lot of voting polling locations recently. Is there anything we've done about that effort? Well, the ones in Fulton County, is that what you're referencing, those are the ones I'm aware of. And I do think that some of that is getting revisited, I believe. So, the activist groups that are working on that and Pave It Blue is a big one, that's women-only, but largely, Facebook group, about 4,000 years now, big. And they are showing up at all of those commission initiatives and meetings. Yeah, so they're showing up being very active, raising their voices, and I think that's having an impact. It is, they're delaying or changing some of their plans. Yeah, yeah. So, I have a question. I know that you're not a technologist, but when we're talking about all this kind of redistricting, which would play maybe into the technology of voting, but she's also, I don't know that everybody really understands how technical it is and what's used for it to, maybe you don't actually know and cannot actually see a machine that makes it happen. But I'm curious, how is that appropriated in terms of funding? Like, who's responsible for that? What committee does that go to? Well, we have, at that capitol, we have the reapportionment office and they have the technology. Their technology isn't as good as it could be, and I don't know if, like I don't think it can break down into census sub-blocks as easily as some other technology that, for example, I'm aware of how county has, so it's a little bit antiquated, but they certainly have the capability of drawing these maps. However, as Pat was saying, the real drawing of our maps took place, sort of wholly within, they hired the lawyer who had been a Republican party lawyer and they did it all away from the capitol, you know? So they told someone what they wanted, basically. Oh yeah, really knew what they wanted. What they did is they drew these maps that we currently operate under to try to achieve legislative super majorities, Republican super majorities in the chambers, which means two thirds of each tax. That would like the goal, you know? Because if you have that, then you can pass constitutional amendments without having to buy off Democrats. So it was mostly done. So yes, we have a lot of technology and the ability to produce maps within the capitol. I can go to reapportionment and ask them to draw me maps. They certainly were a big part of that effort, but a lot of it also was happening elsewhere. And the decisions were all being made by these kind of higher hands referring back to party officials and then probably the leadership of those houses. Honestly, the people that they even have to be in charge of the reapportionment committees, those aren't club assignments. There's not, no, there's not a lot of power there. I don't know. There's not a lot of power. If you're chairman of reapportionment, it's all gonna be, you're gonna be told what to do. So the common cause on that type of rice rates activity would be those are those are the areas where we can have the most effect, not from even the technology standpoint, but asking people where it comes from, where the money is. I think it's important to ask those questions. I mean, the reality is the reason this has gotten so bad is with rigged districts is because the technology exists at such a level that you can move person by person. And that just is something our founding fathers never could have imagined. And when you think about it, it made sense back in the era of the launching of the country that the state legislature is kind of hat-fied necessity had to be the ones to draw the maps because they would sort of know the geographic lay of their state, you know, but I mean, obviously you couldn't do it from Washington. They could have come up with a better system, you know, obviously in retrospect. But what's made it so gastrically is the ability now through technology to slice a dice like crazy. First of all, you're a creative one, so I guess this year moving forward, we're going to go from the state level as a place of cybersecurity. Right. Particularly in the Washington incident that I've heard and maybe what some of your fans might be, the individual or the Democrats in general moving forward, so I'm just wondering if you know that. Right, I have not made it cybersecurity one of my like top issues, so I can't speak to you guys about it because you know, we all have to kind of change the organ and it's like limited bandwidth. Now I am on the science and technology, well, I'm kind of on the science and technology committee in the Senate, which does deal with some of that stuff. And actually, you know, Fort St. Gordon in Augusta is a big cybersecurity command center. Yes, out of DC and we as a state are putting a bunch of money into making it like really sort of the focal point for a lot of cybersecurity that's happening at the federal government level. As I understand it, it's we don't have nearly enough high school and college graduates who are well versed in the, have the skill set to work at those jobs. They are a lot of them and they are multiplying because of the need and we all see. As I understand it, the threats from, you know, I mean, there's Russia, but then there's also just, you know, any number of countries, people, whatever, hacker, regular hackers, going nuts at the systems at all times. So we need, I mean, the information and technology and security field is, you know, just scrambled and it's not changing, I'm saying it, you know. But George's, my big point on that is that work has to be done, work needs to be done, but Georgia is actually kind of big in that space. So people who know kids heading to college, we need a lot more folks who can work those jobs and will be good jobs because companies need them too. And let me mention a little bit about our voting machines. So they are very old. I think they're rolled out 2002. You've all voted on them, so you know what they do. If they're not calibrated properly, they will, they will not have the correct results. But there is no paper trail by which one to check that. So there are lots of documented cases of people going to their polling location, doing their, pressing the buttons, and at the end, very important to thoroughly check what it says you're about to, the vote you're about to cast because it'll ask you to review all your choices. Many, you know, a not insignificant number of people have said, whoa, wait a minute, I voted for X and it is telling me that I'm about to cast my vote for blah, blah. If you alert the poll officials, they will take that machine out of circulation because it's not calibrated properly because of the sensor behind it is not matching up with what the choice was. But that just, I mean, even that example shows you how easy it is for things to go awry with the voting machines that we have now. More importantly, they have no, no auditable paper trail. They, I mean, so when you- And they made it illegal to take a picture. They brought the voting machine. Right. To prove what you did or what you voted for. Yeah, exactly. People probably do want to know, like I want to show it, yeah, I know. I just thought of that, I was like take a screenshot right there. You could, I mean, it's still, I mean, unless literally every person did it, it wouldn't, you know, work. But anyway, it's making the electorate very nervous. We, what we need to do is, there are lawsuits going on. It has gotten to the point where I have seen some of our top officials say, look, these machines are outdated in light of all the threats that we know are out there. A public would be a better idea to have machines that would be able to be audited that the public have confidence in. All it is is an appropriation. In the grand scheme of things, the numbers aren't even that large, but it is basically like the general assembly needs to appropriate the money in order for the general assembly to decide to make it a priority. The public, either the courts have to make them or the public is going to have to fuss and scream and make it so that they hear enough, like, okay, we don't want these 15-year-old machines that we have no confidence in anymore. So. Have any of you been aware of the hackathons that they're doing on the going machines? Okay. You're getting done. This is probably the hackathon crowd. I was just going to tell me, you know about this. Yeah. Because that's one of the things that the activist groups that have bubbled up here in Georgia are paying a lot of attention to it, putting money behind, getting more publicity and those hackathons. Yeah. Publicity really helps in that space. Because I did see KVK or somebody and then like, yeah, I think we might need to update them. Good. Yeah. So you just presented two options as far as the forces to make the machines have to be up there. One is public noise and then one of those, you know, you just go to the court. Or legal, legal order out of court. Right. So where are we at right now? Right now, I have some hope behind the public effort. We have to have sustained attention to it. Yeah. I can't just be like fired up and then, I don't know, I don't know. Yeah. We need sustained public interest in this and anybody who has anybody, any contacts in media just to continue to work with the nonprofits that are out there that are activated about this and keep up attention and reach out to the media and make a fuss. Well, the longer and lighter you make a fuss. Right. And the more you actually show up to vote in the meantime using the things that they've changed. It's not that much money. I feel like maybe we could achieve success. They sort of need to be embarrassed into it because all these experts, voting experts around the country have specifically called out our teams for being woeful. And isn't it Rod Gellkennig that's moving back to a paper mallet, taking a step in that direction of going back to a paper mallet? It's like, I think it's like 50 million bucks, which in our, I mean, our budget's like 22 billion. So it's not a, it's not a, it's not a lot of money now. No, it's like really not a lot of money. Because it's money that's in not many years because the last person did that, it was in 1922. Right. So it might be a little more than 50, but it's like not a lot of money. So there's two issues with the, my moment is with the outdated equipment, it's not audible and in fact it's running really well operating systems that aren't supported anymore. Oh, right, I forgot about that. Thank you for making that point. Yeah, yeah. I think it went out of support in 2014. They were only supposed to be machines in one market for about 10, maybe 15 years. Right, so it basically makes this look like totally backwards and absurd. So they don't like that. The state leaders won't want us to look back. And then the other thing too was the, they actually showed that Russians had been able to gain access to the voter rolls, which is equally important, because if you can change voter rolls then it would show up on polling day. If your name doesn't match with the voter roll, you can get the right vote. So that's another avenue that needs to be approached as well as setting access to the voter rolls. That's pretty terrifying and all true. And then meanwhile there's all these other lawsuits going on across the country and the state. So you may be aware that the way you clean up inactive voters is under litigation and a number of states has been under litigation in our state. The Justice Department had under the Obama administration been supporting litigants against what Ohio was doing that was like throwing people off the ballot and they had been turned inactive. But now they've reversed course. Oh, and the civil rights staff is not sending in these new briefs from the Justice Department. It's all the political appointees under the, so the session's political appointees are now siding with Ohio and saying they should be allowed to throw all these folks off for lack of voting activity. Now it is a legitimate, the rug comes in, what is a legitimate activity to try to maintain a somewhat accurate voter roll? People do move, people do die. We don't have a national database. We could talk about things like where states can more easily share information. That way if someone did move to another state, obviously not an uncommon thing. It would be more seamless. Same thing with moving to different counties. It needs to be within a state. That needs to be a little more seamless. You do want to be able to remove folks. It's like updating your own email addresses when someone, your friend changed the job. If someone's dead, fine. We probably do need to take them off. But how you do that and whether you're using it for nefarious purposes to kick off people because they haven't voted recently is a whole other matter entirely. Because they only manage a name and date of birth, right? Is that the only two criteria? It doesn't use social security numbers? No, it doesn't. It does not use social security. So I mean, it seems like there'll be a lot of overlap between states that we've named and date of birth for moving people from motorhomes. Yeah. There might be. Oh, there will be. Yeah. I don't know. I've been to D&D and then once you get here, no, I was not just here. Yeah, unless you have a really unique name. I mean, yeah, there will be. Yeah. So they send these little cards out and they try to make everybody respond. But people are busy. They think it's like junk mail. And there's not people who know nothing about this. When they tell candidates, you should reach out to your voter seven times to get their attention. Oh yeah, that's right. They're sending one postcard. Oh, that's gonna get a response. 100%. No, and what we send is candidates are like these, you know, you try to send out like an eight and a half by 11 glossy, get them to look at it. They send these like little, you know, this big like, you know, by just fall. It looks like one of those like inserts in a magazine that's not, you know, it's just like register a friend and get it your free. Like that's what it looks like. So, you know. They do in fact know what they're doing. Oh, they know what they're doing. It is quite deliberate and they know exactly what they're doing. Voting is a constitutional right. Why don't we have an automatic voter registration? Well, we should. I know. I've never heard of it. Right, we should. We, I mean, we introduced that legislation. It is not received dead in hearings. I mean, in our state. They don't want more people to vote. We've got to look every year. I mean, we definitely have one active right now. So it would have been introduced. Our sessions are in two years. So I'm sorry, our terms run two years. So you, you, we would have introduced it in 2017. It's alive again for the 2018 session. Then we would need to reintroduce it to have it still be active after 2018. So what's the deterrent? Why was it very important in the system, in the 2018, you guys should have a license or whatever for the petitioner session? Well, we don't have, I mean, we do have certain things, right? Obviously we have passports, we have birth certificate, but we have decentralized record keeping devolving down to the state level. So then that means the states are in charge of making the decision. And conservative states are utilizing, changing the electorate to try to win. You rig the district. You make it hard to register to vote. You kick people off if they haven't voted in a lot of time. You cope with all these things. Automatic voter registration makes it easier to get registered to vote. They don't want that. They want it to be hard. Because they don't want, they want the people that are, for whom it is more of a burden, because it costs money. Or you have to travel to get the right ID. They know, they feel that those people will be more likely to vote for their, the other party. So they don't really want them to vote. I mean, it's, it's like voter suppression. It is. Yes. Because if I didn't get a person to do that. Right, no, we don't, we don't do it that way. But it is interesting that other states are experimenting with some of these sort of voter support systems that make it easier to vote. So we'll be able to hopefully get data from that and look at some of the differential. And, you know, I mean, all these things. Also, like if you're not really in the know about the issue or you're really, you know, highly educated and determined, some of these things, like people just hear things and they get scared away. I shouldn't try to participate, you know. My family might get to, I'm a citizen, but my aunt might get deported if I try to register to vote. Or, okay, I know Trump's doing that commission. I don't want them to know anything about me. I'm just gonna unregister. And that's, I mean, like, I've talked to experts that are like, they don't even necessarily have to put into place the hurdles. It's like the messages around it, yes, that people get scared off and do what they want them to do. Because they're like, they think it's like this, just draconian thing, or they're scared that there's some negative repercussion. Yeah. Is there any, is there anyone right now who doesn't have, like, your- Yes. So this woman that I was on a panel with, she really was very well versed in all these issues. Gosh, what is her name? I actually think I have a card. She's opened up, she's now opened up chapters of her organization around the country. She lives in LA, but she just opened up our chapter here. Yes, spread the vote. Spread the vote.org. And she, you have to hear, she knew all these specific stories, but also just what you have to do in each state. And she, when she, I can't remember all of it myself, but when she walked through it, it was so fascinating. And she concluded with something like, it's a miracle that we have even the level of participation to do, without all the hurdles that really are in place. She, on her card, it says 21 million people do not have government IDs. The obstacle to obtaining voter ID or a new press. So, so they do education and they also help people. Spread the vote.org. Yeah. And her name is, she's the founder of Pat Cowley. She's got me, another thing you can do is post some of these links like spread the vote.org and the Georgia redistricting alliance. Yeah. Those things, I can probably send them out to the other action list. Send? I think you can put it on the phone though. Yeah, if you can send my email in Stephanie's, you know how you were working with my assistant. That would be good. And also links for the, to the redistricting pages on Common Cause, Common Cause's website and also Legal Women Voters' websites. There are a lot of really good tools on there and, cause the redistricting alliance doesn't have like its own website. But, if you get on in my list, then you will be aware of part of the campaign that we're forming. And Stephanie, you're kind of fighting on as far as the campaign is going to be. Yes, you come to this. As far as what? As far as the campaign is going to be. Okay. And then for the ladies in the room, if you're interested in joining Pave It Blue, because it's limited to only women, it's a Facebook page, but if you search for it and request membership. And then 259, Georgia together is another really big one. What are some of the others? The Indivisible Groups, like you guys have been mentioning, depending on where you are, if you go to the, there's a indivisible.org, where you can find your local one. Indivisible GA7 has about 1,000 members. More on Facebook now. Awesome. And there are a bunch of others in the state. So I'm sure there's one in this area. Oh yeah, those Indivisible staff. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, thank you so much everybody for having us and coming to learn about Lisa Porter.