 Do voter legislation laws ensure secure and trustworthy elections? Or are they a way for political parties to manipulate the democratic process in their favor? At a September 8th debate in New York City hosted by the SOHO Forum, Eliza Sware and Becker from NYU's Brennan Center for Justice argued that state legislators are using arbitrary rules to suppress the voting rights of vulnerable citizens. The Heritage Foundation's Hans Von Spakowski countered that these rules are necessary to guarantee that every vote cast is valid, noting that in states where voter ID laws already exist, registration rates have risen. This was an Oxford-style debate in which the audience voted before and after the event to see which side swayed more people. It was moderated by SOHO Forum director Gene Epstein. Legislators in multiple states are actively making it harder for Americans to vote. Defending the resolution, Eliza Sware and Becker. Eliza, please come to the stage. Opposing and taking the negative on the resolution, Hans Von Spakowski. Hans, please come to the stage. It's okay, Eliza, you can sit there because you are coming to the podium right now to defend the resolution. You have 15 minutes. Take it away, Eliza. It's nice to be with people in person. And thank you so much for the introduction and thank you all for being here in person. In last year's general election, voters turned out in historic numbers and used mail and early voting at unprecedented levels. Presidential election turnout was seven percentage points higher than in 2016 and the number of ballots cast by mail or in person before election day more than double that of 2016. That is good news for American democracy. But the response from many state houses across the country has been clear. By July, at least 18 states had enacted 30 laws that make it harder to vote. And more have been signed since. The reality is actually worse than those numbers suggest because states like Georgia, Florida, Iowa and Texas have enacted omnibus bills that contain multiple restrictions. The Brennan Center has been tracking state voting legislation for more than a decade. Excuse me, I get a little winded these days. This is without a doubt the biggest wave of new laws to make voting harder that we have seen in recent memory. It cannot reasonably be disputed that many state legislators across the country. You guys can hear me okay? Thanks. It cannot reasonably be disputed that many state legislators across the country are actively working to make it harder for Americans to vote. First, when you actually look at the text of these laws, it's clear they put barriers in the path of eligible voters on the way to the ballot box. Second, studies show that these kinds of restrictions burden American voters and in particular voters of color. Third, there's a tightness of fit problem. Supporters of these new restrictions argue that they are necessary to protect the integrity of American elections to prevent voter fraud or at a minimum to restore public confidence in our elections. But the laws don't largely improve American elections. And that's because study after study show that our elections are not actually plagued by fraud. In other words, the downside is big. These new laws impose greater costs and burdens on voters in some cases decreasing turnout. But the upside is nil. That is a bum deal for American voters and American democracy. Taking those three steps in turn, let's first look at these new laws. And I won't describe every feature of the dozens of laws that have been enacted this year but starting first with Florida, for example, the state's omnibus legislation, SB 90, strictly limits the availability of mail ballot drop boxes, which have been used in the state for many years without incident. These boxes are now accessible only at certain government offices. But that's notwithstanding the fact that mail ballots can be dropped off at any blue mail, excuse me, blue mailbox on the corner 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So why did Florida lawmakers decide to make it harder for voters to access drop boxes? It seems like the popularity of these boxes might have something to do with it. During the 2020 general election, at least 51 of Florida's 67 counties offered a drop box that was available 24 seven. And as a result, 1.5 million Floridian voters used a drop box to vote, making up more than 10% of voters overall and more than a quarter, excuse me, and more than a quarter of those who voted by mail. It's also worth noting that the percentage of black voters who cast their ballots by mail doubled in Florida from 2016 to 2020. State policies that make it harder to vote in Florida are not new. In 2019, after the state voters adopted a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights to people with past convictions, the state enacted a law conditioning eligibility on the repayment of court debts arising from criminal convictions. In other words, for hundreds of thousands of Floridians, the only thing determining whether they can vote is the balance in their bank account. Expert analysis has found that this denies eligibility to more than 700,000 Floridians who are disproportionately black. Georgia, too, has restricted the availability in hours of drop boxes. Now the four major metro counties surrounding Atlanta will be limited to an estimated 23 boxes total. By contrast, there were 111 such boxes last year, and more than 300,000 voters used them. To put that into context, the presidential race was decided in Georgia by less than 12,000 votes. Georgia's omnibus law also prohibits election officials from affirmatively sending out mail ballot applications to voters, gives voters less time to apply for absentee ballots, and criminalizes the act of giving snacks and water to voters waiting in line at polling places. It's hard to see how any of these policies has anything to do with improving our elections, but it's easy to see how they incrementally make it harder to vote. Most recently, Texas enacted omnibus legislation as well. The law bans 24-hour early voting locations, drive-through voting, and mobile polling place structures. Without any basis for why these conveniences could undermine our elections. The law makes it a crime for public officials to encourage voters who may be eligible to submit mail ballot applications, yet places no such restriction on party officials. At the same time, the law makes all voting fraud offenses misdemeanors instead of felonies, which seems like an especially odd thing to do in a law that supporters and the Texas Governor claim was designed to discourage such misconduct. In Iowa, SF413 shortens the early voting period by nine days and limits election officials' discretion to offer additional early voting locations. Why? In Alabama, HB285 prohibits curbside voting entirely, an essential voting method for voters with disabilities. One of the bill's supporters in the Assembly there claimed that the law was intended to ensure that there was no fraud in that voting procedure, even as he acknowledged that that didn't happen in Alabama last year. I could go on, but won't. What's clear from the plain text of these policies is that these laws add to the hurdles that voters must overcome to exercise their fundamental right to vote, and that the purported justification for these rules is simply pretext. You don't have to take that from me. The proponents of these restrictions have said so themselves. During Supreme Court arguments earlier this year, the lawyer for the Arizona Republican Party defended Arizona's law in validating votes cast in the wrong precinct by saying that not having that policy on the books would put them at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats. It's the difference between winning an election, 50-49, and losing an election. Similarly, an Arizona lawmaker when justifying new restrictions in the state's mail voting process this year stated that, everybody shouldn't be voting, and quote, the quality of votes mattered. And when discussing proposals to expand access to mail voting last year, President Trump stated that an expansion of early and mail voting would lead to, quote, levels of voting that if you agreed to it, you'd never have a Republican elected in the country again. Second, a mountain of research shows that these kinds of voting restrictions do indeed burden voters and make it harder to vote, particularly for racial minorities and other groups like voters with disabilities. On one hand, data show that measures that make voting more convenient, like increasing the proximity of voting locations, adding more voting days, those things matter to voters and to turnout. Voters surveyed as to why they didn't vote in the 2018 midterm elections, for example. Most commonly responded that it was because they were, quote, too busy and had a conflicting schedule. Others cited an inconvenient polling place, while others said they faced transportation problems. That's why reforms that make it more convenient to vote have been shown to increase turnout. For example, one peer reviewed study showed that for every additional early voting day in Ohio, turnout increased by a quarter of a percentage point, and that joins other research showing the positive effects of early voting on turnout. Enacting no excuse mail voting has been shown to increase turnout by between 1 and 2 percent. And studies show that mail voting especially increases turnout for younger voters, voters of color, voters with less education, and voters with disabilities. On the other hand, the inverse is true. Policies that make it less convenient to vote decrease turnout. A 2017 study of a local New York collection found that polling place consolidation decreased voter turnout substantially by about 7 percent. In a 2020 study of cities in Minnesota and Massachusetts found that increasing voter's travel distance to the polls by a quarter mile decreased the number of ballots by 2 to 5 percent across four elections. A 2021 study indicates that every hour spent waiting in line reduces turnout in subsequent elections by about 1 percent. And other studies demonstrate that wait times and polling place closures disproportionately affect black and Latino voters. Notwithstanding all of this data, many states are going backwards by enacting laws that make it harder to vote by mail, make drop boxes harder to access, make polling places less convenient, and cut early voting days. Additionally, several states have imposed harsher voter ID requirements this year, including Georgia, Florida, Texas, Montana, and Arkansas. Yet there is no data showing a correlation between voter ID requirements and the occurrence or prevention of fraud. What the research does show in peer reviewed studies is that strict voter ID laws decreased turnout. For example, after North Carolina adopted a strict voter ID law in 2013, researchers at Stanford found the voters who lacked ID turned out in fewer numbers. And that turnout effect continued even after an appellate court struck down that strict ID law. A study published last year showed that the adoption of strict voter ID in Alabama, Mississippi, Virginia, and Wisconsin caused turnout to decline by more than one percentage point and effect size larger than the presidential vote margin in many states. Other work shows that people of color are less likely to have the required ID and that strict voter ID laws disproportionately reduce non-white turnout. Let me pause here to emphasize that overall voter turnout is not the only thing that matters. In fact, focusing exclusively on overall turnout numbers can gloss over the way that changing voting rules affects racial minorities and other subgroups. Voting restrictions can change who votes in a given jurisdiction, even if they don't change the overall number of voters in that area. For example, even with historic overall turnout in 2020, there remains a significant turnout gap between white and non-white voters. Overall, 71 percent of eligible white voters cast ballots in the 2020 general elections, compared to only 58 percent of non-white voters. And the racial turnout gap has actually grown since the 2012 elections. Notably, the Supreme Court Shelby County decision came down in 2013. That decision stopped what's known as pre-clearance, which is the process by which states and jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination in voting had to get pre-approval for changes to their voting rules. The evidence is overwhelming that voting laws do in fact matter, but we shouldn't need a study to tell us that fair, free, and equal voting access is a core democratic value that needs to be defended and expanded. Voting restrictions are harmful even if they have no impact on overall turnout. Putting aside all of the evidence, the intent of these state measures is clear, to make it harder for Americans to vote. And it would be strange to argue that simply because state lawmakers may not succeed in shutting millions out of the democratic process, they should be able to continue these efforts unimpeded. Whether a given anti-voter policy will have a large partisan racial or turnout effect, the bottom line is that restricting access to the ballot is wrong and inconsistent with a free and democratic form of government. Legislators proposing these changes because they want to limit the electorate may continue introducing these bills until they find something that works. Third and finally, state lawmakers and others have justified the need for new voting restrictions by pointing to their desire to protect election integrity and prevent fraud. But the truth is that extensive research reveals that the incidents of voter fraud in contemporary U.S. elections is exceedingly rare. Voter impersonation is virtually non-existent and many instances of alleged fraud are in fact mistakes by voters or election administrators. That's the same goes for mail ballots as it does for voting in person. Even taking the Heritage Foundation's own database of purported voter fraud and putting aside methodological questions about that database, the organization claims it has identified 1,333 instances of voter fraud. But that's over the course of 40 years and billions of votes cast. In other words, the incidence of fraud is infinitesimal. Indeed, President Trump's voter fraud commission was disbanded in 2018 after failing to find evidence to support widespread claims of fraud. It is not an accident that we don't see widespread election misconduct in this country. That's because there are many protections already in place that ensure the integrity of American elections like paper ballots, poll books, ballot barcodes, mail ballot tracking through USPS, penalties for those who commit misconduct, voterless maintenance, and risk limiting audits. In other words, it's quite difficult for an individual to commit fraud and if a person does so, the effect of anyone person's misdeed is necessarily limited. When candidates or officials attempt to perpetrate more systematic fraud on voters, those schemes are generally caught. For example, the North Carolina State Board of Elections detected a consultant's effort to rig a 2018 congressional election. This year, the Los Angeles District Attorney has filed a criminal case against a candidate for city council who won his race by a single vote, a legend conspiracy to commit election fraud, and that criminal case is ongoing. In other words, our system is working. As I described, the downside of imposing more restrictions on voting is high, but the upside is low. The problem these laws report to fix is not a significant risk. 30 seconds. It's possible that an asteroid falls to earth or you get struck by lightning, just like voter fraud is possible. But we don't ask every person to incur the costs and burdens of buying asteroid or lightning insurance, especially when there are already effective protections in place. To the extent Americans have a lack of confidence in our electoral system, that distrust has been sown by activists making misrepresentations about fraud. Before putting obstacles in the way of Americans exercising their most fundamental right, there should be a good reason to do so, and that reason simply is not present. Rather than instilling mistrust based on often racialized lies about fraud, lawmakers should be telling the truth about our elections. The Department of Homeland Security called the 2020 General Election the most secure in American history. Even with historic voter turnout this year, voter participation in this country is not what it should be. Just two-thirds of eligible Americans cast batlets last year. Lawmakers should be making working to make it easier for Americans to vote freely and fairly, not relying on unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud to burden voters. Our democracy is more accountable and more representative when every eligible American participates. Thank you. Speaking for the negative, take it away hands. I guess you get an extra 60 seconds to speak for the negative. Well, it is nice to see people in person. It's been a while since I've been able to do that because of Zoom and everything else. So it's nice to have an audience here today. I do want to, before I start, just very quickly thank the Reason Foundation, thank Gene, thank the SOHO Forum, because one thing that we have seen, unfortunately in this country, is a steady erosion of the ability to have civil debates even about contentious issues. And I applaud the SOHO Forum for continuing what I think is a great American tradition that is in sad decline, especially on American campuses. Second, I want to emphasize something that I learned from my immigrant parents who experienced some of the worst dictatorships of the last century. And that is voting is the essential ingredient in maintaining and protecting our democratic republic and the liberty and freedom we enjoy as citizens. Our goal should be to ensure that every eligible citizen is able to vote, but we also have to safeguard that vote so that it is not voided or stolen through fraud, errors, mistakes, or other problems. We do have an obligation to ensure fair and secure elections, and that should be a bipartisan goal regardless of, actually with the Reason Foundation, should be a tripartisan goal, regardless of what political party you may support. The mistake that opponents of election reform make is that they believe you cannot guarantee both access and security, and that is wrong. You can have both, and if you talk to members of the public you will find they want both access and security. Now the claim that there's been a wave of voter suppression going on across the country for the past decade, that's when these claims first started. This first started in 2005, more than a decade ago, when states like Indiana and Georgia passed some of the first photo ID laws requirements for elections. It's false because the efforts to improve the integrity of the election process, whether it's requiring an ID, and keep in mind, every single state that has put in an ID requirement provides a free ID to anyone who doesn't already have one, and that one requirement is overwhelmingly supported by Americans. All the polling shows, whether it's liberal polls or conservative polls, Americans overwhelmingly support that. They think it's a common sense requirement, and it doesn't matter what party they support, it doesn't matter what their color or ethnic background is, and it's no doubt because they have to show an ID almost every day in everything they do, from boarding a plane to going to the pharmacy, to seeing a doctor, to cashing a check, to buying alcohol. Now, in states that have put in measures like voter ID, and keep in mind what I just said, the first voter ID laws in Georgia and Indiana were affecting the 2008 election, so we've got more than a decade's worth of data, turnout data from those states to show what it does. Not only did turnout not go down, including a minority of voters in those states, in fact, it went up. There's also been a steady decrease in enforcement actions by the U.S. Justice Department. I used to work there. I used to work in the Civil Rights Division whose responsibility is enforcing the Voting Rights Act. The most powerful tool in the Voting Rights Act is Section 2 of the Act. It's a permanent nationwide provision. It prohibits racial discrimination in voting, and you would think, obviously, that if there was voter suppression going on, that's the term created by opponents of election reform, the Justice Department would be busy filing suits because the whole point supposedly of voter suppression is to keep, for example, racial minorities from voting. The Obama Administration, I'm sure you would agree, would not exactly be shy about using the tools of the Justice Department, including the Voting Rights Act. Yet, in the entire eight years of the Obama Administration, they only filed four enforcement actions under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act claiming that a state or jurisdiction was engaging in racial discrimination. The Trump Administration in four years filed two. So, basically, it was the same rate. If there was this huge wave of voter suppression going on and there was actual evidence that measures like voter ID were keeping people from voting, lawsuits would have been filed about all of these. Let me make a quick point about Georgia to just give you an example of this. Georgia passed a voter ID law first effective in the 2008 election. A lawsuit was filed against it. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed with once after one slight change in the law. The judge in the case who was a Democratic nominee said that after two years of litigation, the plaintiffs in that case, including the ACLU, were unable to come up with a single witness who would be unable to vote because of the Georgia voter ID law. And it's been in place ever since. And they've seen record registration and turnout in the state. In fact, in the first election, this is the official turnout numbers. The turnout of black voters in the state of Georgia in 2008 compared to 2004 when there was no voter ID law in place had a percentage increase of 140%. Hispanic turnout went up 42%. White turnout went up 8%. In 2010, congressional elections, Barack Obama nod on the ballot compared to 2006 when there was no voter ID in place. Black turnout went up 66.5%. Hispanic turnout went up over 44%. White turnout went up 11%. Now, when I cite those figures for 2008, about the huge increase in turnout in Georgia. In fact, they had record turnout. People say, well, of course, Barack Obama was on the ballot. That's true. We had a big increase in turnout across the country. But in fact, the Democratic turnout in 2008 in the general election in Georgia was 6.1 percentage points, which was the fifth largest increase in the nation. Far above other states like New York, which has no voter ID law. The overall turnout in the general election in Georgia in the 2008 election, it went up 6.7 percentage points over the prior election, the second largest increase in the country. Indiana, the same thing happened. Remember, Indiana put in a voter ID law. It was in place for the first time in 2008. Democratic turnout in the state was up 8.32 percentage points over 2004 when there was no ID. That was the largest increase in Democratic turnout in the nation. The whole point of this is that the data actually shows that all these claims that voter ID is going to keep people from voting is just not true. Don't, if you doubt me, Google a study two years ago from the National Bureau of Economic Research. They looked at more than a decade's worth of turnout data in all 50 states in the District of Columbia. And their conclusion, which I quote is, voter ID had no negative effect on registration or turnout overall or for any specific group defined by race, gender, age, or party affiliation. Now, all the extraordinary claims you've seen about Georgia, Texas, doing all these terrible things to keep people out to vote. Let me give an example of what was in the Georgia reform that so outraged people in the media and elsewhere. As I said, Georgia's had a voter ID law in place for in-person voting for more than a decade. They've had no problems. They've had big increases in registration and turnout. So what happened in the election? They had a huge increase in absentee ballots. So they said, well, look, we really ought to extend the ID requirement to absentee ballots. It made it extraordinarily easy to comply. When you apply for an absentee ballot, you simply wrote in the serial number of your driver's license or the serial number of the free ID that they would provide for you. And if you had neither of those, you wrote in the last four digits of your social security number. And if you didn't have any of that, you could send in a photocopy of a utility bill, bank statement, paycheck, or any government document with your name and address on it. Now, if that language sounds familiar, it should be because that's a federal requirement first put in place in 2002 in the Help America Vote Act. Congress passed a law, 92 senators voted for it, including the current president, that said the first time you registered a vote, if you vote by mail, the first time you go vote, you have to provide either a picture ID or a copy of a utility bill, bank statement, paycheck, or government document. That is what supposedly is keeping people out of the polls, but we know from the numbers that's just simply not true. The other thing to keep in mind is that many of the other provisions that people are saying are somehow going to restrict people to vote, when you actually look at the content of the bills, it's just not the case. One of the things that Texas just did is they said that they are going to put in a requirement in large counties to put in video surveillance in the locations where votes are being counted and tabulated. Now, does anybody think there's actually something wrong with that? Transparency is the heart of having fair elections, right? We want transparency. That's why the U.S. State Department sends teams of American observers to fledgling democracies all over the world, and yet this is being criticized as somehow going to keep people from voting that there's going to be video surveillance to make sure that everything's being done the way it should. They're also criticizing the fact that Texas strengthened its laws on election observers. Now, let's make it clear. Election observers can do nothing other than observe. If they interfere with the voting process, they can be ejected from a polling place, and in fact, if they engage in any kind of intimidation or coercion or pressure, they can be criminally prosecuted. But you all saw in the last election, observers being ejected from polling places, not because they had engaged in bad behavior, but to apparently not allow them to see what was going on, or you saw them play so far back that they could not effectively see what was going on. So, Texas simply has strengthened its law. They've made it very clear. Observers cannot interfere with the election process. They can't interfere with voters. But election officials cannot simply decide to eject observers out because they don't want observers there seeing what they're doing. Again, why would anybody be against that? That is the kind of thing we want. We want observers of all of the parties, whether it's Democrats, Libertarians, Republicans, to be able to be in polling places and not allow election officials to throw them out. Another big claim that has been constantly made is that when Texas and other states, when they ban what people call vote harvesting, I call it vote trafficking, that that's somehow going to people from voting. What does that mean? Look, you can vote by absentee ballot in New York and other states, and you can mail your ballot back, depending on the postal service, to get it back for you. Or you can personally deliver it yourself. A member of your family can personally deliver it. A designated caregiver can personally deliver it. But in about half the states, they have a wise policy of banning third-party strangers from being able to come to your front door and pick up your ballot and deliver it. Why is that a good policy? Do you really think it's a good idea for candidates, campaign activists, party volunteers, and political guns for hire to be able to go to voters' homes and pick up their ballots? That does two things. One, it puts them in a position to pressure and coerce voters, which has been a problem in Texas. They've had numerous prosecutions there of that. But it also puts them in the, it gives them the ability to handle something very valuable to them. All of those individuals have a stake in the outcome of the election, and yet you're giving them ballots, which means that they could potentially alter or change them, which is what happened in the Ninth Congressional District in North Carolina in 2018. That's why more than half a dozen individuals there were arrested because they were collecting absentee ballots. They were, in some cases, filling them out, altering the choices made by voters, signing them, and the election was overturned because of that, fortunately. I'm not saying that there is massive voter fraud in the United States, but there's enough that we should be concerned about it. And that's not just me saying it, it's the U.S. Supreme Court saying that. In 2008, when they upheld Indiana's voter ID law, what the Supreme Court said is that there have been flagrant examples of such fraud throughout our history, documented by historians and journalists, and it could make the difference in a close election. And we have close elections all the time in this country, like the Compton case that was just mentioned, where half a dozen individuals have been indicted, criminally indicted, for using absentee ballots to apparently steal a city council election this June, including a city council member who they wanted to make sure got elected who won by one vote. Thanks. Thank you, Hans, and five minutes for rebuttal Ellen. You can take the podium if you'd like. Thanks, and I absolutely agree that voting access and the security of our elections are not mutually exclusive. That's why we encourage policies like automatic voter registration, where voters automatically get registered when they interact with the DMV, for example, unless they opt out, that has been shown to increase registration numbers in the states that it has been implemented, and it simultaneously keeps our voter rolls accurate because people's addresses are updated when they interact with those voter registration and government agencies so that our voter rolls are accurate and clean. Those are not the kinds of policies that are being introduced and enacted this year. We heard a lot about voter ID, but we didn't hear a lot about all of the very many policies that make it harder to vote by mail and that make it harder to vote early. Those policies that increase voting methods and make voting more convenient that have been conclusively shown to increase turnout, those policies that voters took advantage of in unprecedented numbers last year, those are precisely the methods of voting that have been attacked by new laws this year, by shortening early voting periods, by making it harder to drop off ballots, by making it harder to obtain an absentee ballot, by prohibiting election officials from sending out applications. I think it's worth particularly touching on Texas and the example of the quote strengthening of laws on election observers. One of the other things that the Texas law did was criminally prohibit the removal of a poll watcher unless an election judge, which is in a local poll worker election official working in a polling place in Texas, personally observes that that watcher violated Texas law. That means that a dozen voters can report to an election judge working in the polling place that they have been intimidated by that by a particular watcher and that election judge still cannot remove that watcher without risking felony prosecution. I also want to note that we heard we heard a bit about vote harvesting and the risks there, but just like the risk of election fraud for voting in person, the risk of committing mail ballot fraud is still more rare than being struck by lightning. And turning again to voter ID, it's true that states typically provide those IDs for free. And I have a job, many of you may have jobs where you can run out on your lunch break and go to the DMV and get a new license if you've moved to a new state or get a license for the first time, but time isn't free. And for many Americans, they don't have the ability to do that. So if you don't have that time, if you don't have the accessibility to get to a DMV or another government agency, if you are an American with a disability, if you are a person with limited transportation access, actually obtaining that identification is difficult, even if financially it doesn't come at a cost to you. Likewise, we heard about the Georgia law, which requires somebody to submit a copy of a utility bill if they don't have an ID number. Of course, that requires somebody to have access to a photocopying machine and a printer. Many of us may have that. Many of us may have gained access to that as we've been working from home over the course of the last 18 months, but for many Georgians that may very well not be accessible. So these are policies that many of which have been policies like restricting mail voting, restricting early voting that have been shown to decrease turnout and to the extent that these policies don't decrease overall turnout, we've seen that they disproportionately burden certain voters who rely on methods like mail voting, if you're a voter with disabilities, who don't have access to be able to run over to a government agency. I've got the one minute. And who don't have access to a printer. What is clear is that states, even in instances where they are not successful at decreasing voter turnout or registration, are trying to make it harder for Americans to vote. And they have told us that time and time again. It's important that we push back on that and realize that these lawmakers should be trying to make it easier for eligible Americans to vote rather than trying to find ways to go after voting access in death by a thousand cuts, making small changes over the course of an election code that make it harder overall for voters to overcome those burdens. Burdens that Americans, eligible Americans, shouldn't have to overcome to exercise their fundamental right to vote. Thank you. Five minutes for you, for rebuttal, Hans? All right, I really need an hour for rebuttal, but I'll try to do it in five minutes. A couple things. First of all, there was a mention of the Heritage Election Fraud Database. It has an important copy out of it. Yeah, it's got over 1,300 proven cases of fraud. And by proven, I mean, someone who was convicted in a court of law or a judge or a state agency ordered into election like happened in North Carolina in 2018 because of the absentee ballot fraud there. It is just a sampling of cases. There's no central database for this. You want to find these often small cases. You got to go to every county courthouse in the country. We don't have the resources to do that. And we very carefully say it's just a sampling of cases. But you want to know how much bigger this problem potentially is? I'll give you a quick example of this. There's an organization called the Public Interest Legal Foundation. It's a nonprofit. And they did something that nobody else really has done. They obtained and bought, in some cases, the voter registration lists of 42 states and the voter histories from 42 states. Now, a lot of that information, unfortunately, in voter registration databases is pretty sparse. So they supplemented their database with commercial data, particularly from credit agencies. And you all would be scared if you knew how much information credit agencies have on you. The point of that was they used the credit agency data to obtain unique identifiers on each registered voter in each state. That way, when they compared the lists, they would know whether the John Smith born on March 11th in Georgia was the same or a different John Smith born on March 11th, born registered in Alabama. Then they compared the data. So they were not getting false positives as other people who have tried to done this. They released a report last year. It's called Critical Conditions. You can find it on their website. They found over 144,000 potential cases of fraud arising out of the 2016 and 2018 election. Let me give you a quick summary of some of these. They found 8,300 people who voted, who were registered and voted in two different states during the 2018 election. They found almost 8,000 deceased individuals who the state said voted in the 2016 election and almost 7,000 who voted in the 2018 election. They found over 43,000 individuals who are registered more than once at the same address in the same state and voted twice in the 2016 election. And 38,000 people registered more than once at the same address who cast two votes in the 2018 election. Now you might wonder how that can happen. That's because election officials aren't very good at realizing that somebody whose name is slightly, is spelled with a slight discrepancy is actually the same person. And these individuals were able to take advantage of that to vote twice. They found 5,500 individuals registered at two different addresses in the same state who voted twice in the 2018 election. And they found 34,000 individuals who voted in the 2018 election who were, remember, you're supposed to be registered where you live, right? And they found them registered at everything from commercial addresses such as gas stations, casinos. They found vacant lots. They found a mine in Nevada. It's just one thing after another like that. Now the point of this is that our system, unfortunately, is not very good in catching things like that. And election officials aren't very good at it either. This report's been out since last year, not a single election official in any of the 42 states contacted the Public Interest Legal Foundation and said, can you send us the data you've got on people in our state so that we can investigate this and see if this is valid? Not a single law enforcement official in any of those states contacted them to say, can you send us information so we can investigate it and see if this is correct? Which shows you something that I've encountered now for over 20 years, including when I was at the Justice Department, which is that, unfortunately, a lot of prosecutors is not a priority for them when they are working on murders and rapes and bank robberies. They just don't think this is very important. Time's up. Time's up, yeah. So. 30 seconds. Thanks. Okay. Well, we now get to the Q&A portion of the evening. We have a microphone just on that side for people to line up and ask questions. The format also includes the opportunity for each of you to ask the other question at any time. Eliza and Hans, would you pick up those mics and make sure that you speak clearly into them? And I want to ask you, Eliza, would you like to put a question to Hans at this point? I would love to hear first from the audience if folks have questions. All right. And Hans, would you like to put- Maybe our only agreement of the evening. I want to hear from the audience, too. Yeah, I'm going to start with a moderator's prerogative to ask a question. Eliza, I take it just to verify something in this case. I take it you believe that the idea of providing identification as with a driver's license or passport or whatever should not apply because it is discriminatory against people of limited means and time who cannot so provide. Do I have that correct in your case? Well, you should correct me if I'm misunderstanding the question. But I think voter ID laws are not created equally across the country. Some of them are in fact discriminatory and have been found to be discriminatory like the 2013 law that I mentioned out of North Carolina, like a law out of Texas that was challenged and the Fifth Circuit found to be discriminatory and the Texas legislature amended the law as a result. I see. Okay, so you're opposed to those particular voter ID laws but not necessarily. Is there a particular kind of voter ID law requiring proof of identification that you would accept and support? I think it really depends on the circumstances of that law, what the law provides, what it enables, what the communities in the state have access to. And that's not something that one can answer in hypothetical. Empirically, is there any voter ID law in any state in any area that you say is fine? Empirically, are any of them fine? I would have to take a look at the particular laws. Okay, all right. Can you comment on that, Hans? I'm not sure there's any voter ID law passed in any state hasn't been attacked by various groups claiming it's discriminatory. They have in the past claimed every voter ID law is discriminatory. What you all don't know because if you read the New York Times, you wouldn't realize this. But the overwhelming majority of lawsuits filed against state ID laws have lost, okay? There's been one or two wins, a handful of wins, but the overwhelming majority of them have lost because when it came to actually showing that there's somebody in the state that can't comply with it, they've been unable to do that. That was certainly the case in the Georgia lawsuit. That was the case in the Indiana lawsuit where the judges noted in their appendage, you can go find this, that the plaintiffs couldn't produce anyone who would be unable to vote because of the ID requirement. And if you think that's discriminatory, then obviously groups here need to be suing the state of New York and the city of New York because before I came up here, I checked the websites. And if you want to get a marriage license in New York state, you need to prove who you are with a driver's license passport, employment picture ID, or an immigration record, okay? That's the kind of ID requirement you need there. The New York Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, they have a question on the website says, what proof may I need to provide to get public assistance? Well, in order to prove who you are, they have the list three things. A photo ID, a driver's license, or a U.S. passport. So the idea that this is somehow a problem is just not the case. And in fact, I will say this, I think it is patronizingly racist to believe that minority voters cannot obtain a free ID. And if you want to see an extraordinary statement on this, look up the testimony of the Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson. First African American elected Lieutenant Governor of the state of North Carolina, who testified in April before the House Judiciary Committee and gave an extraordinary testimony about this and saying, I'll just give you one quote from it, the notion that people must be protected from a free ID to secure their votes is not just insane, it is insulting. Thank you, Hans. Okay, audience questions. Please no need to identify yourself and please state your question as a question and tell us to whom it's addressed. Take it away. I have a factual question for either one of you. When they have mail-in ballots or absentee ballots, I vote in person. Do they ever compare to see if they've been double voting under the same name? Yes, they do. That's what ePoll books are in polling places and that will indicate when somebody has already voted by mail or has requested a mail ballot on the polling book. So when you check in to vote in person, the polling, the election workers will know that and if they see that, in many states, if they see that you have in fact voted already by mail or you requested a mail ballot, they will ask you to vote provisionally, which means you get to submit a ballot, but it won't count if you've already voted. Comment from you, Hans. Just keep in mind, the effectiveness of that, catching somebody who's trying to vote twice like that, depends on the efficiency of election officials. And in fact, I think it was last year the Secretary of State of Georgia actually forwarded the names of a thousand individuals to the Attorney General's office there because they discovered after the election that those individuals had voted twice. They had voted with an absentee ballot from the primary election, not the general election. They had voted twice in person and with the absentee ballot and the only way that could have happened was because the election officials in the polling place didn't catch the fact that an absentee ballot had already been submitted. Next question. I grew up partly in Europe and I am struck by the fact that there are 47 countries in Europe and as of this month, every single one requires an ID at the polls. I'm just wondering why. And I also note that in Canada, in two weeks, they're all going to vote nationally. And even if you file a mail-in ballot or you vote anywhere in Canada, you're going to have to prove your identity. Is that a question? And Canada, well, I'm just asking, since Canada is ranking much higher than the United States by the UN human rights records, why in the world are the Canadians so obnoxious about these issues of voting? To whom is that question addressed, Mr. Fund? To both. I think you want to take it. Well, I also point out that Mexico, which is a country with a much greater rate of poverty than we do, actually, I think of the 1990s, put in a requirement for people to have a photo ID when they go vote. And a lot of people credit their implementation of that ID with the fact that the opposition party won for the first time in decades. And we are just kind of an outlier in the fact that we don't require ID. And I will just tell you one quick story if I may about this. Every election, you all probably know, the European Union sends election observers actually to the United States to observe our elections. And for the past more than a decade, I've been one of the individuals asked to brief the observers on how the election process works in the U.S., et cetera. And I'm usually on a panel with folks like from the ACLU and others who are seeing there talking about voter ID and how terrible it is. And the reaction of the observers is always like they don't really understand why that's an issue, because in every single one of their countries, they have to show an ID to vote. Comments for you, Liza? Yes, well, certainly I'm not going to comment on the character of Canadians. But one thing I will note again is that voter ID has not been shown to be correlated with preventing fraud or the lack of voter ID requirements has not been correlated or shown to have any relationship to the existence or presence of fraud. And we live in a country where we don't automatically provide national IDs to people. So there is a big difference in terms of the international context that we're operating. And I think given those things, you have to wonder why are states trying to put voter ID laws in place if we don't have data showing that it's helping our election integrity and people have to go out and affirmatively get ID. And in another example of somebody saying the quiet part out loud, and this is, you know, back in 2011, Pennsylvania's then Republican House Leader said that the state's new ID law, which was in fact struck down by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, was going to, quote, allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania. So these are provisions that are being put in place specifically to make it harder to vote without the data to show that they actually improve our elections. Maybe you'll respond. I see Hans shaking his head, so I'll give him a chance to shake his head verbally, and then you can respond. Go ahead, yes. I wrote a paper 10 years ago that urged y'all to read it. It's called Stolen Identities, Stolen Votes, a Case Study and Voter Impersonation. Y'all remember Elizabeth Holtzman, former Democratic Congresswoman, right, and she became the district attorney in Kings County when she came back, right? In the mid-1980s, she convened a state grand jury, and she released the report of the grand jury. Most of you know grand jury usually operate in secret, so it was extraordinary that she released this public report of the grand jury. Let me tell you what the grand jury found in Kings County, Brooklyn. She found that for 14 years a voter fraud conspiracy had occurred in Kings County successfully without detection in which the practices included the forgery of voter registration cards with the names of fictitious persons, the filing of those cards with the Board of Elections, the recruitment of people to cast multiple votes on behalf of specified candidates using those forged names as well as the registrations of deceased and other persons. And you have no point, Hans, is that voter ID could have dealt with that? Is that what you're saying? The grand jury recommended at the end of it that the state should consider putting in an ID requirement because that could have potentially prevented this from. I'm sure you've read that paper, Liza, and I'm sure you know what the problem is with it. Could you tell us? Yeah. I concede that I have not read that paper recently, but again, I would say that the data is not there to back up the efficacy of voter ID with respect to voter fraud. The data is there to show that these instances are extraordinarily rare. And again, I would urge you to do a cost-benefit analysis of the costs and burdens on voters when you impose restrictions and the benefit that you get out of them. And I also want to make sure folks are thinking not just about voter ID, that's not the only kind of restriction that states are putting in place this year. Once again, they are making it harder to vote by mail, making it harder to drop off your mail ballot, shortening early voting periods, making it harder to throw out intimidating poll watchers from a polling place. There is a wide range of restrictions that states are enacting this year, and it's quite clear what the overall trend shows. Next question. I got something I've been wondering about that maybe you can help me with. Either or both of you. There's a large number of people in this country, remarkably large, again, the millions who are completely mentally incapable of voting. And I'm talking about people with Alzheimer's and people with what's called developmental disabilities, used to be called mentally retarded. But the two of them together, it's in the millions. First of all, as far as I know, they're entitled to vote if they're over 21, maybe you can answer that for me. And my second question is, if you take like the people with Alzheimer's or tend to be in nursing homes, and they're probably registered to vote because they were once capable of voting, what's to keep the person who runs the nursing home or their friendly political operative from rounding up ballots from all those people, filling them out, having them sign up, dropping them back off? Is there any control on that whatsoever? You get to... I'm sorry. Go ahead, please. Look, unless a court declares you legally incompetent, you have a right to vote. But an example of someone trying to take advantage of this is that last summer, a woman who works in a state-supported home for the developmentally challenged in Texas was indicted because the individuals who were there had all been declared legally incompetent. That's why they were in this particular home. She was indicted because she was filling out and completing voter registration forms for all of them. I think the number was like 140 of them that she had submitted, basically filling it out, signing their names, and it clearly she was going to then request absentee ballots and vote them in their case. The problem in nursing homes is an acute problem. You all may not recall this, but there was a congressman from Pennsylvania who about 20 years ago was in fact criminally charged for doing exactly that, going into nursing homes to obtain and vote absentee ballots from individuals there. But you're not opposed to people with Alzheimer's voting as long as their ideas vote them. If they are, unless they've been declared legally incompetent, they have a right to vote. What needs to happen though is local election officials and the local parties need to do a better job of, for example, what ought to happen is they ought to set up a polling day, like an early voting day in a nursing home where people will be able to vote. There'll be election officials there to supervise it, and there'll be observers there from the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, Libertarian Party, Green Party, to make sure that it's the residents by themselves making the decision on who to vote for, and you don't have staff at other people basically filling out the ballot, signing their name, and submitting it. But you need better supervision of the... Any comment for you, Liza, better? Yeah, I mean, I think the answer to your question is in what Hans just described, which is that woman was indicted in Texas. And what the anecdote reveals is that there was fraud being committed against Americans, not fraud being committed by the voters themselves. There are criminal prohibitions against that kind of misconduct. They are working, they are resulting in criminal prosecutions. The kinds of restrictions that we are seeing enacted this year, banning curbside voting, shortening early voting periods, those kinds of restrictions don't solve that problem. They just make it harder for eligible Americans to cast their ballots in a convenient method. Next question. For those laws that have either been presented or passed since the 2020 election, do you have the breakdown on the states, or I guess the sponsors of those bills, whether which side of the aisle they fell on? The laws that are being enacted, the Brennan Center characterizes as making it harder for Americans to vote, are being introduced predominantly by Republican sponsors, and are being enacted in large part virtually on party lines. Comment, bad hand, hands? No comment. Next question. My name is Chloe. I have two questions, but I only ask one. My question is for the gentlemen. So I read the Supreme Court decision regarding Arizona, and the minority opinion specifically brought up the issue of Native American communities, having a precedent with having a member of their tribe deliver mail-in ballots to officials, and that is no longer allowed in Arizona. And I'm just wondering if you had any thoughts on that because you brought up the potential of fraud with third party, third parties collecting votes, but there is no evidence of fraud happening, particularly in this community. And there's also precedent for this community being allowed to do this kind of delivery of voting just because of the way their communities are set up. So just curious to know your thoughts. Just so you all know what we're talking about, the Arizona case was called Bronovitch versus DNC. And the issue in that case, there were two issues. One is the state, like more than half of the states across the country, banned what I call vote trafficking, third, unrelated third parties being able to pick up and deliver it ballots because of the potential danger from that. California actually, for a long time, banned it. They only legalized it a couple of years ago. The second issue in Arizona was the fact that for decades, they've had the same rule that is the rule in almost every other state, which is you have to vote in the precinct to which you're assigned. Okay, there's two important reasons for that. One, if you don't vote, if you vote in your precinct, they're going to be able to vote for all the offices for which you're qualified. Not just president and U.S. Senator, but local city council and county commission races, state legislative races. If the state says, well, you can go vote anywhere, then you may end up in a precinct where you may be able to vote for the top of the ticket, but you can't vote for all the rest. So in effect, you're going to be disenfranchising, folks. Hans, are you specifically addressing the young ladies' question? And on the vote harvesting thing, one of the reasons the court said the state can do this is because Arizona actually has one of the most expansive ways to vote there. They have a long period of early voting. They have a long period of absentee balloting. And this one restriction, in fact, the DNC was unable to produce any evidence that it was going to keep anyone from being able to vote. Fine. Comment on that. I think that particularly that example reflects what we see all over the country, which is that voting restrictions can burden certain communities more than others. And that's why it's so important to look beyond the top line voter turnout numbers and see who is affected by these kinds of laws. This Arizona case, the Bernovich decision, is the one in which the Arizona State Republican Party lawyer said the reason why we need these laws on the books is because we want to win elections, that there was really a partisan interest, that this had nothing to do with election integrity. But, and I should note that with respect to out of precinct voting, many states do allow you to vote out of precinct, but they only allow you to vote a provisional ballot, and you only get to vote, your votes only count for the races for which you're qualified. So only for Senate and President, not for city council if you're in the wrong place. Next question. Thank you. First I'd just like to say I couldn't agree with you more on the importance of civil debate, and I'd like to thank you both for being here in that spirit. To take us back to the resolution, which is that legislators are actively working to suppress voter, suppress voters. I'd like to, my question is for the gentleman, I was hoping that he could address directly the other voter restrictions that the lady mentioned, not including voter ID, which I think we've covered pretty thoroughly, specifically fewer ballot boxes, fewer drop-offs, drive-in voting, cutting down on early voting days, and A, how those are not making it harder to vote, and B, even if they're not making it harder to vote, in what way are they justified? Sure. What Texas did is they actually said, curbside voting can only be used by somebody who is disabled and can't make it into a polling place. That's the rule in the vast majority of states. So I don't think it's somehow keeping people from voting if you ban curbside voting for anyone unless they're disabled. If you're disabled, you can drive up in your car, the election official will come out, that's the standard rule in many states. So I don't think it's a problem given the fact that if you're able to get into a polling place, particularly early voting day with early voting, and election day, I don't think that's a problem. Look, the problem with drop boxes is what they have said is, if you're going to have a drop box, it's got to be a drop box that is secured under surveillance. It can't just be a drop box out on the street that anyone can access. Here's the way to look at that. Okay. Does anybody in here think it would be a good idea if you go and you vote in a precinct, you drop your paper ballot into the ballot box, you leave. At the end of the day, what happens in states that use paper ballots like that is the election official seals the box. He puts it in his car with the assistant manager and they drive the box of sealed ballots downtown to the election headquarters, where it's then open and counted. Anybody in here think it would be a good idea to take that ballot box, which is filled with something valuable, ballots. And the precinct manager simply went and put it out on the street and left it unattended and said, well, somebody will be by here in a while to pick it up. I don't think anybody would agree with that. That would be a good idea. Well, that's what drop boxes are. And the problems with them could be everything from people stealing the box to what happened last year you may have seen prior to the election when some mailboxes were set on fire that contained apparently absentee ballots like in Richmond. And the Postal Service had to send out a notice saying if you dropped an absentee ballot in this mailbox, you'd need to check on it because it may have been destroyed. That's the problem with drop boxes. As long as they're under surveillance, they're guarded, so that kind of thing can't happen, it's not a problem. And that's what Texas has said. Okay, can you comment? Yes. I think context is key. So while it is true that in Texas if you have a disability, you can still vote curbside. This law was enacted after counties in Texas allowed drive-through voting last year because of the risks of gathering during the pandemic. And voters turned out in record numbers in Harris County where that policy was implemented. And then, lo and behold, we see a policy that bans drive-through and curbside voting for all voters. And again, you have to ask why. Just because it's still allowed for voters with disabilities, why should it not be allowed for other voters if there has been no proven problem with that method of voting? Likewise, context is key when considering drop boxes. Drop boxes have been used largely without incident in states across the country for many, many years. This is the first year where we are seeing laws limit the availability of drop boxes. And that's because lots of voters used them last year. And just as you can drop your mail ballot off in any blue mailbox on the corner, which is not monitored, which is not staffed, that's the way that drop boxes have largely operated in states across the country very successfully. And again, that's the kind of convenience measure that makes it easier for people to vote and therefore increases turnout because that convenience, the proximity to where you vote actually has been shown to increase turnout and increasing that distance from where you vote has been shown to decrease turnout. So there's lots of data on this showing that these are successful policies. Question. Okay, so this is primarily for Ms. Swearn Becker. So you said on a few occasions that we don't have data about the connection between these measures or the lack of them and fraud. Are there cases where even in the absence of data, even in uncertainty, we should still act one way because the consequences of not doing this, though we don't know that they will happen, they could, and that there might be a low cost so that we should still take such measures? Thank you, and thank you for daining to pronounce my last name, which I know is a mouthful, so I appreciate that. I think that the data that we do have shows that the risks are very low, and we're dealing with one of, if not the most precious, right in a free society. And I think we both agree on the value of that right to vote. And so when you're talking about measures that make it harder to exercise that most fundamental right, you need a really good reason to make that more difficult. And I don't think we have the data to show that. What we do have the data to show is that these risks are infinitesimally small, and don't justify taking those measures that haven't been shown to be helpful in the first place. Thank you. Comments, hands? Oh, you wait. Well, I'll just say I just don't agree with it. The U.S. has a long history of election fraud, especially, unfortunately, in New York City. And to just tell you quickly how easy it is to cheat in this city, I suggest all of you Google and find a report put out by the New York Department of Investigations after the 2013 de Blasio election. They did an investigation of the election department because they got two complaints, one that everyone in the board elections was hiring, they were hiring their family, which we're not supposed to do. But second, that they weren't doing anything to maintain the accuracy of the voter list. And to test this, on election day, they sent their undercover agents into New York precincts all over the city and got their undercover agents to ask for the ballots of individuals who were dead, had moved away or otherwise ineligible to vote because they were still on the voter list, and they tried to make it as obvious as possible. The best example I recall was one of the undercover agents, a young African American woman in her 20s. She went in and asked for the ballot of a woman who was still registered to vote, who was in her 80s, Caucasian and was dead. In every single case, they were handed the ballot without question, so they could have voted the ballot, and there was only one person who was caught. And that person was caught because they went in and asked for the ballot of an individual who is currently in the state penitentiary and therefore can't vote. And it so happened that the woman working at the registration desk was the prisoner's mother and realized that was not her son. We now move to the summation portion of the evening. Eliza, your summation, your five-minute summation, take the podium, Eliza. Oh, I was not aware that we had a five-minute summation. Well, I'm sure that you've got a lot to say anyway. So far. As I mentioned, off mic, I was not aware that we had a five-minute summation, so I have nothing particularly prepared. But I think I would just refer all of you back to the resolution, which is that state lawmakers across the country are actively working to make it harder for Americans to vote. I haven't heard anything today that disproves that. What we have seen are policies enacted, dozens of policies enacted just this year that cut back on early voting, that cut back on male voting, that cut back on disability access, and these policies have been proven time and time again to make it harder to vote. These are precisely the policies that states, many states adopted for the first time last year or that voters took advantage of in record numbers last year in order to vote safely during the pandemic. And now those policies are the target of these state lawmakers because we've seen so many people turn out. And nothing I've heard today shows that state lawmakers or that many state lawmakers are not making it, trying to make it harder for eligible voters to cast their ballots. And again, I would urge you all to look behind the overall turnout numbers from the 2020 election and see what lawmakers are actually trying to do because it matters what their motivation is. It matters that there are efforts being undertaken by state lawmakers to undermine our democracy, to undermine Americans' participation, to undermine our faith in the electoral system without being based on particular data to substantiate those laws. Five minutes. Just one quick thing. I keep hearing early voting days cut back. That was actually a claim made about the Georgia reform bill. You even heard Joe Biden make it. That is absolutely false. You can look at the bill. You can see that they did not reduce the number of early voting days. And in fact, they have about the same average number that other states do. In fact, Texas was one of the first states in the entire United States to put in early voting. They still have more early voting than the state of New York. They have more early voting than the state of Delaware, which currently has no early voting. And yet I don't seem to hear anyone saying, we're going to have to sue New York and Delaware because they have less early voting days and Delaware has none. They have passed a law. They're going to start having it in 2022, but it still will be fewer days than Texas and Georgia. It is important that we maintain the security of our elections. It can be done and it's been shown to be done by now 13 years' worth of data. You know, everybody's talking as if the only election forms ever passed were in this past legislative session. No. As I said, the first voter ID laws were passed in 2005 in Georgia and Indiana. Other states have been putting them in over the years everywhere from North Carolina to Arizona to other states. And in that entire time, turnout has just been going up and registration has been going up. And if you doubt me on that issue, here's something else for you to Google. Pull up the U.S. Census Report on the 2020 election. We had the biggest turnout in last year's election in this century and it was the second highest turnout according to the Census Bureau since the 92 election. So this entire time where people have been doing things like putting in ID laws to try to prevent fraud, registration and turnout have been going up. And the attitudes about this show this, like I said, this extraordinarily patronizing attitude towards the American public. As if, for example, they can't deal with a free, getting a free ID. I want to stand by quoting former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker. In 2005, they issued a report. This was after the Florida election. They formed a commission on federal election reform. And they said this, which I think is extraordinarily correct. And by the way, one of the things that both Jimmy Carter and James Baker, the report, recommended was voter ID. Elections are the heart of democracy. They are the instrument for the people to choose leaders and hold them accountable. At the same time, elections are a core public function upon which all other government responsibilities depend. If elections are defective, the entire democratic system is at risk. I agree with that and I don't think we should put it at risk by having a system that makes it easy for people to vote without authenticating their identity, without authenticating their citizenship, that makes it easy for them to register in two different states and not get caught because states don't do a good job of comparing their voter lists. And while in some cases, it might just be one person cheating. Like the student, we just added to our database who was prosecuted. He's a resident of Massachusetts. He's going to the University of New Hampshire and he voted in both states illegally. Or if it's a group of individuals who have acted together to steal an election like the half-dozen individuals who were criminally charged in North Carolina in a congressional race that was overturned because of their fraud, we should be concerned about it. And we can do things to make sure that doesn't happen at the same time that we allow and make it possible for eligible Americans to vote. Access does not prevent security and security does not prevent access. Thank you very much. Well, it was an interesting heat. The yes votes began with a little over 31% and ended with 44% took up and gained and gained more than 13 points. And that's the number to beat. The no votes gained 18 points. So beat that by five points. The Tucci roll therefore goes to the negative. Congratulations to you both.