“In my 20 years, this was the best run election I’ve ever seen.”
Benjamin Hovland and Donald Palmer both serve on the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), each nominated by President Trump and confirmed by unanimous consent of the U.S. Senate. Their work includes securing funds for states’ election security and improving all levels of voting administration.
The Let America Vote Act, which included the creation of the EAC, was passed after issues related to the 2000 presidential election. Because of the decentralized nature of voting, much of EAC’s work is non-regulatory and is focused on helping to support states’ individual needs. COVID-related health concerns created a shortage of poll workers that the EAC helped shore up with a national poll worker recruitment campaign. Despite a notably successful election from an administrative perspective, voting systems came under attack from many who sought to cast doubt on the results. “The allegations that were made against the voting systems just were not accurate. I always have an open mind… but the evidence just wasn’t there to prove that.”
Many of those hurt by unfounded accusations have been the election officials themselves who year after year are tasked with a thankless job critical to a healthy democracy. The ongoing effort to delegitimize elections will have long-lasting, damaging effects. “When we’re talking about our democracy and how our elections run, we’ve got to have a baseline of facts and truth. When we get away from that, it really hurts the fabric of our nation.”
LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE
SPEAKERS
Benjamin Hovland
Commissioner
U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC)
Donald Palmer
Commissioner
U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC)
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
John Darsie: (00:07)
Hello everyone, and welcome back to SALT Talks. My name is John Darsie. I'm the managing director of SALT, which is a global thought leadership forum and networking platform at the intersection of finance, technology and public policy. SALT Talks are a digital interview series with leading investors, creators and thinkers. Our goal on these SALT Talks is the same as our goal at our SALT conferences, which is to provide a window into the mind of subject matter experts as well as provide a platform for what we think are big ideas that are shaping the future. And we're very excited today to welcome you to the second episode in our Elections Integrity series, focusing on lessons that we learned during the 2020 election as well as just setting the record straight about the facts of how elections operate, the security around elections, and again, things that we can take away from what was a very unique election in 2020 and how we can continue to hone and improve that process going forward.
John Darsie: (01:05)
And our guests today for this session are two members of the Election Assistance Commission, Benjamin Hovland as well as Donald Palmer. And I'll start with Ben in terms of reading his bio. Benjamin Hovland's 20 year career in elections has been shaped by his commitment to improving election administration and removing barriers to voting. Most recently, he served as acting chief counsel for the US Senate committee on rules and administration, where he was a driving force behind Congress appropriating $380 million in Help America Vote Act funds to enhance election security to the states in 2018. While at the Senate, he focused on the federal government's role in election administration and campaign finance regulation. He organized several hearings on election security preparations and improving election administration. He was integral to restoring a quorum at the EAC in 2015. Donald Palmer is a former bipartisan policy center fellow where he advanced the recommendations of the presidential commission on election administration.
John Darsie: (02:11)
Mr. Palmer is a former secretary of the Virginia State Board of Elections and served as the Commonwealth chief election official from 2011 to 2014. During his tenure, he implemented an online voter registration system and joined Virginia as a founding member of the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, which is a nonprofit organization with the sole mission of assisting states to improve the accuracy of America's voter roles and increase access to voter registration for all eligible citizens. He also served as Florida's director of elections, where he successfully transitioned the state from electronic voting machines to paper-based digital voting machines prior to the 2008 presidential election and expanded the Florida voting system state certification program. Hosting today's talk is Elliot Berke, the managing partner of Berke Farah. And I'm going to turn it over now to Elliot to conduct today's interview.
Elliot Berke: (03:09)
Great. Well, thank you, John. Don, Ben, thanks so much for joining us. As John talked about, this is the second in our series on election integrity. And by design, what we're really trying to do here is bust through some of the hyperbole, tone down the noise and talk about what actually happened with the election. Our first session was on election security. And today we're going to talk about overall election administration and lessons learned from this election, what went right and where do we need to go from here?
Elliot Berke: (03:39)
So, we have two experts that are joining us today. Don and Ben not only serve on the Election Administration Commission, but they are also they've had a significant amount of experience in the states. This session is really designed to talk about and educate our viewers about the election process. Let's start out with the EAC, and what it is and what it is not. It is obviously not the FEC. It's not the Federal Election Commission, which actually has nothing to do with administration of elections. Donald, I'll turn it over you to start. Tell our viewers, what is the EAC, why do we have it, what were its origins and how has it evolved over time?
Donald Palmer: (04:24)
Well, sure. The Election Assistance Commission really came out of the 2000 election, Bush v Gore. Well, the Congress came together and it came together with a bipartisan bill, and some of the issues they looked at was creating the EAC. They wanted to have a federal entity test and certify voting systems on a voluntary basis. They wanted to provide some monies to the states to transition to new voting systems. They also wanted to start collecting data and to provide best practices. And so the EAC started all the way back then. It's only been a couple of decades, but that is really the origin of the EAC. And since then, the budgets, there'd been some smaller budgets and higher budgets. We are just coming out of a couple of years where we almost didn't exist as an agency, that we are almost basically eliminated as an agency. But I think that as the security issues arose at a 16, there was a refocus on what purpose the EAC could serve and actually assisting local and state election officials. And I think there's a change in that thinking across the board in the election community.
Elliot Berke: (05:37)
Ben, John kicked things off, he mentioned the help America Vote Act. Talk to us a little bit about what that is and how you interface with the states to bolster what the states do.
Benjamin Hovland: (05:50)
Yeah. Great to be here, Elliot. Thanks for having me. The Help America Vote Act, as Don mentioned, that was passed after the Florida 2000 election. It created the EAC. It also did a number of things. It got rid of punch cards. Everybody remembers the hanging charts from the 2000 elections. It helped get rid of those and provided a lot of funding to do that at the states. But because our elections are decentralized, one of the roles that we really play the Don hit on was serving as that federal clearing house. In other words, we're largely non-regulatory, but we're able to have that 50 state view. We conduct something called the EAV survey or the Election Administration and Voting survey, which is the only national survey of its kind that looks at how Americans are getting registered, how they're participating in the process in the sense of are they getting registered at the DMV, are they getting registered by a third-party group, are they voting by mail, are they voting early, are they voting in person?
Benjamin Hovland: (06:50)
And so it really gives election administrators, policymakers, the ability to look at the data and make data driven decisions. And so we're proud to do that as well as assist state and local election officials around the country with best practices, helping to share those. We really have the benefit of seeing the different ways that states implement elections, how they solve this puzzle of helping Americans participate. And this year in particular, you were really able to see how that decentralized nature of elections, some of those best practices were able to be shared and help more Americans participate across the country, help election officials respond to the challenges they faced this year.
Elliot Berke: (07:35)
I think coming out of this election we just had, it's harder to make these arguments. But playing devil's advocate, since its inception, the EAC has been criticized from the right as being obsolete and also concerns about [inaudible 00:07:50] attempting to federalize elections. What do you say to the critics who make these arguments?
Benjamin Hovland: (07:57)
So first and foremost, again, we're largely a non-regulatory agency. And so again, if people are worried about federal overreach, we're not designed to work that way. But I think you can really embrace the decentralized nature of elections, and that's what we're structured to do. Again, as Don mentioned, there been historic resource challenges that make that harder. But when you think about what's involved with running elections, particularly after the foreign interference of 2016, election administration is harder than it's ever been. And so to have a non-regulatory, largely non-regulatory federal agency that's able to share best practices, that's able to assist with training, that's able to provide information, and resources, whether those are grants from Congress, certainly we've seen over $800 million in security money distributed since 2018, $400 million in CARES Act funding this year. Obviously that's made a big difference.
Benjamin Hovland: (09:01)
But there are also resources that are beyond just money. There's also the ability to use the national platform. One of the things that we did this year that I'm really proud of, we heard consistently from election officials about shortages recruiting poll workers. And we were able to launched the National Poll Worker Recruitment Day effort. Again, having a national platform, a national website in helpamericavote.gov, but when you went to that website, it got you to your local election official or to your state or local election official. The place that you ultimately needed to get to but we were able to amplify that at a national level, and it really made a difference in getting a new generation of poll workers to step up and help Americans vote this year.
Elliot Berke: (09:50)
Don, in the lead up to the election in November, what else did you see in terms of potential issues that were out there? Those who are in the election business, we know that elections are messy, vote fraud exists. This is my opinion, vote fraud exists, vote suppression exists. But, a lot of what we ultimately see is just cracks in the systems, which we can fix along the way. And so the lead up to 2020, what else beyond the poll worker issue did you see that brought you the most concern?
Donald Palmer: (10:24)
Well, in the lead up to 2020, the big issue that we faced all together was the pandemic. And just like every other institution in the country, that was a big challenge. How were we actually going to administer elections? And states and localities had the same concerns, how are we going to pull off the primaries, how are we going to do a general election in perhaps a totally different environment where people may be afraid to actually go and vote? And so a lot of states and localities had to make adjustments to how they vote. There was more vote by mail than ever before. When we did do in-person voting for early or election day, it was going to have to be in a sanitized manner. There was going to have to be social distancing, so there were going to be some additional lines.
Donald Palmer: (11:08)
And so when we look back on 2020, that was a huge challenge. And really election officials stepped up to it because it was a success from a point of view that in many ways there could have been a total meltdown. And you're right. In every election, there's going to be flaws. There's going to be lines or maybe malfunctions of the voting systems. And I think that the EAC had ... I know the states, they're very proud of the work they put into let's make sure and test our voting systems, let's make sure they're secure and they're operational and they're not going to break down on election day. Sometimes these things happen and we record these things that we want to improve for the next election.
Donald Palmer: (11:47)
And so those were the two big issues I think that everybody was concerned, that look, we want to do we can to make sure that on election day and in a run up to election day, election workers are prepared to deal with the great turnout that voters will have when they show up. When you have 10%, 15% increase in turnout, it's going to stress the system. It's going to make everything a little bit more difficult than it would be let's say if turnout was half of that. But I think that one of the things we can take away from November is that we got through the election, and that we were able to overcome the pandemic in many ways and Americans were actually able to cast a vote and effectuate their intent. And the bottom line is that's the bottom line, is that we are able to do that.
Elliot Berke: (12:37)
And then compared to past elections, obviously we were dealing with things that we had never experienced before with the pandemic. And then the volume of mail in ballots that was unprecedented. We certainly have mailing ballots and we've dealt with this before, but just the volume is something we hadn't dealt with. How overall, what's your assessment at this point? I know the EAC is going to be having hearings and audit the actual results, but how comfortable are you at this point in terms of the overall result as compared to past elections?
Benjamin Hovland: (13:13)
Elliot, I think one of the stories that been lost in some of the post election day, I don't know, back and forth, or what some of the misinformation and disinformation has been the amazing job that election officials did this year. Again, as Don was saying, ramping up for the pandemic, unprecedented challenges. You had people who were running, as you said, the largest mail election that they'd ever run but also needing to keep polling places as safe as possible for in-person voters. And what you saw, I mentioned this earlier, the way that some of the election community came together, you had folks from Oregon and Washington and Colorado and Utah who'd been running full mail elections or who had done that transition, sharing the lessons learned with their colleagues across the country through vehicles like the EAC. We had a working group within the government coordinating council, which has federal state and local partners. We're able to share those best practices for jurisdictions that had maybe not experienced as much mail, who didn't have that luxury of time to ramp up.
Benjamin Hovland: (14:25)
We were also able to share information from partners with the CDC on how you make polling places as safe as possible. And then also what you saw was an amazing job getting the word out that voters were going to need to spread their vote out to help limit congestion. Again, that was in the CDC guidance. And so you did, you saw a record amount of mail and absentee voting. You saw a record amount of early in-person voting and you still had a significant election day turn-out, which is why we had nearly around 160 million Americans vote. But the mechanics, the election administration of 2020 was really done well. As Don mentioned earlier, there were hiccups. There always are. That's what happens when you have 160 million people involved in a process across over 9,000 jurisdictions across the country. There are going to be hiccups, but none of those were significant. None of those were out of the ordinary. And again, in my 20 years, this is the best run election I've ever seen.
Elliot Berke: (15:31)
Yeah. I appreciate those comments because I think that when we describe elections, sometimes the media forgets that this is a partnership. And even going back to Chris Krebs, who was at DHS and in charge of the cyber office and the comment that ultimately got the president's attention led to his firing. If I'm correct, that statement was actually part of a joint statement that, Ben, you were a part of, that talked about the overall success of the election. So on one hand, you have the underlying result. You also have criticism for the person saying it and whether or not that person's in the right position of expertise, I think [inaudible 00:16:14] lost in that entire situation was that that [inaudible 00:16:18] statement that reflected a federal state local, and to some extent, even private party partnership. And it was the assessment of all those components [inaudible 00:16:30].
Benjamin Hovland: (16:31)
That's right. And again, it was about the security of the election. And the reason that that statement was made and the people were able to say that with confidence was because we'd seen what had gone into it. The $800 million in federal grant money that had gone out for security, that had replaced paperless voting machines, that had hardened statewide voter registration databases. It had led to countless hours of training for state and local election officials around the country. You had seen over the last four years the amount of work that state and local election officials put in. Again, going through these trainings, going through tabletop exercises, replacing equipment, increasing audits.
Benjamin Hovland: (17:14)
And so all of those pieces contributed to a knowledge of how much had been done, contributed to having the visibility across the country. Again, as you know and as I mentioned earlier, there's nearly 9,000 jurisdictions around the country. But for the first time ever, you had network monitoring on all of those states. You have thousands of jurisdictions that now participate in an election information sharing and analysis center. Those things didn't exist before. And ultimately you had over 90% of Americans voting on a paper ballot or with a paper or on a system with a paper audit trail. And so all of those could be reviewed. Again, all of those factors just adding to the confidence we had in the security of the election.
Elliot Berke: (18:09)
Yeah. We'll get to the litigation, but some of these underlying issues, allegations, that have been raised, how do you feel about that given where you guys sit? You must have some reaction. I know we probably don't want to go state by state in the litigation, but you must have some reaction in terms of what's ultimately alleged in court and we'll talk about that, but the allegations that really that we saw that were unprecedented in terms of the the attack on the integrity of our system. Given this is not what just you deal with day to day, but you've built your career on it. How does that make you feel?
Donald Palmer: (18:52)
Well, I think that I had the opportunity to testify to the Senate, and we talked a little bit about the unprecedented attack on the voting systems and the accuracy of those systems. And frankly, that is something that both Ben and I and the commissioners that serve on the commission, that's our over reaching duty. And I've been involved at the state level and the testing of voting systems and now at the federal level. And so there's a whole mechanism for the testing. And it's not new. Look, going back since I started in this second career, I've heard criticism of the voting systems and the testing of it and how we could do better. And much of that is true, is that that's why I always have a sense of trying to improve what we do from an oversight perspective and testing and listening to experts.
Donald Palmer: (19:45)
But I think that at some point, as I was asked is do you have trust in our voting systems? And I think generally the evidence is there that our voting systems have been tested both at the federal and state level and at the local level for a multitude of elections. And so the allegations that were made against the voting systems just were not accurate. And I'm always having an open mind and I try not to cut people off, but the evidence just wasn't there to prove that.
Donald Palmer: (20:17)
And then the second part of that is, is again, there's other ways to try to or attempt to defraud a voting process on an election that may not involve voting systems. But again, that's outside our jurisdiction. And again, there were opportunities for candidates and campaigns and law enforcement to do investigations and prove that, and they never brought that evidence. And so the reality of it is, is that, that the evidence is simply not there to make allegations of fraud that would go to a point where, for example, 10 to 12,000 in Georgia, 20,000 in Wisconsin, the differentials in the races were to a point where the amount of fraud that may take place at a local level would not reach the level of changing results at the state level. And so we had the opportunity to talk about what we do at the EAC to protect those voting systems and how we work with locals. And that's what we did. And we just let the chips fall where they would fall.
Benjamin Hovland: (21:24)
And I'd add to that, Elliot, again, the folks who run elections across the country, the state and local election officials who do this, this isn't a job you get into because you want to get rich. These people care more about the integrity of our elections than anyone I know. They want to get it right. And that's bipartisan across the country. The parties not trusting each other isn't a new thing, and so the whole structure of the system has bi-partisan checks and balances throughout the process, whether that's bipartisan teams in polling places. Sometimes you got the back-end piece, but throughout you have all of these checks and balances built into the process to make sure it's accurate. Some of the time, frankly, that it took to get results was tied into security measures that are put in place.
Benjamin Hovland: (22:16)
I remember seeing, people were talking about getting results in Nevada. And the local official there, Joe Gloria, was giving a press conference and he was talking about how they were reconciling provisional ballots. Again, they were doing that checking with colleagues across the state, checking with the secretary of state, to make sure that no one had voted in more than one place, to make sure that people were eligible to vote in that jurisdiction. And again, those are safeguards and safety measures that are put in place to make sure that the election does have integrity. And again, what we ended up seeing was a lot of rhetoric that wasn't backed up with facts or evidence. Again, my experience has been if you present any of that to election officials, they want to get to the bottom of it. Again, they have all these procedures in place to ensure the integrity of the election. And at the end of the day, there was ample opportunities to present that in court and we never saw it.
Elliot Berke: (23:16)
Yeah. I think ultimately the Trump campaign went one in 62, something like that, in terms of the challenges. How closely were you following that along the way, were there times in certain states where you thought these allegations more serious than others, is there anything that really got your attention during that time?
Benjamin Hovland: (23:41)
[inaudible 00:23:41] following it, of course. That's the job. Obviously there was a lot. So, some days it was a little hard to keep all the different things straight, but I think what you'd kept focusing on was let's see the evidence, let's hear where there are valid claims. If there are valid claims, let's get to the bottom of it. Again, I think the point of running elections is to give the people a chance to make their voice heard and make sure that the outcome reflects the will of the voters. And so, again, I think where sometimes there were allegations made, obviously there were a lot of things around. And when you dug into that, there were answers. There were misunderstandings of the process. There were just rumors or conspiracy theories that frankly didn't make sense.
Benjamin Hovland: (24:38)
But again, it was certainly an effort to try to keep track of the volume and everything that was going around. It was important to try to educate people to the process where we could, certainly whether that intersected with things like our certification program or elections generally. One of the things that I don't think we anticipated how it would come into play but was an important effort this year that I know we were proud to participate in was the National Association of Secretaries of State drove an effort called #TrustedInfo2020, which was really about getting people to go to their state and local election officials for that to source information. And really, again, getting that from the source, how the process works. And I think once you got down to that, again, you saw so often, that there wasn't a real basis in this or it was a confusion about different processes.
Benjamin Hovland: (25:37)
And so I'd like to see us do more to help people understand the process. Obviously a lot of folks got a pretty big civics lesson this year. But I think we can continue to talk about the work that happens after election day. I think most people are used to tuning into the news on election night, seeing the result, and then forgetting about the election, not knowing that there are weeks worth of work still to go in processing those ballots and confirming whether or not people were eligible and recording voter history, all of those checks and balances that we mentioned that go into the canvas and certification process. And so I think, again, one of the things that we can do as an agency is look for more ways to help educate Americans on the process and make that more accessible.
Donald Palmer: (26:26)
Elliot, I was following a lot of it but I started to focus on those issues that involve the EAC like the voting systems and that sort of thing. And I think that one of the things I found is that oftentimes an election worker error or some other error would be confused with some sort of vulnerability in a voting system. And so a little bit of investigation into that would reveal that. What I found frustrating at the EAC is that we're a small agency and some of these facts were easily obtainable, but we weren't always asked to provide commentary. I think that from a perspective of oversight, I think the EAC could try to play more of a role as a independent third party for testing.
Donald Palmer: (27:13)
You saw some of that, for example, with one of our accredited labs in Georgia, was there were some issues regarding allegations of voting systems in Georgia. And I believe it was like eight to 10 counties basically sent the software to an accredited lab and they did a review of the software to make sure it was still the same software. There hadn't been any changes. And after review, that was what that lab found. But as I think about what the EAC could do in the future is that we could do more of that in the assistance of localities and states that perhaps there's a level of distrust that they may not believe each other of political parties, for example, but the EAC may be able to play a more beneficial role in the future looking at the forensics of some of these things after the election. That's just a thought.
Elliot Berke: (28:08)
Yeah. And I think that you touched on this a little bit, but part of this I think whole ordeal has been a good education for the American people, and to some extent, even some of the councils involved. Talk a little bit about this over voting, under voting issue, which to me was one of the most flavoring examples of people talking about a concept that happens in elections, every election. It is not unusual. It was not statistically different than we'd seen in the past, but talk a little bit about that and maybe then how the media helped drive this apparent controversy.
Donald Palmer: (28:52)
So I can talk a little bit about it. Overs and unders actually, the overs and undervotes, this first really came into play from my perspective after 2000, when there was a lot of debate of why there was a certain number of undervotes, which is members or candidates on down the ballot aren't having a ballot cast for them while there's other members on the ballot or candidates that are. And over votes were when there may be more ballots cast for two or two ballots cast for a candidate.
Donald Palmer: (29:23)
And so these are basically mistakes on the part of the voter or they intentionally decide not to vote for a certain candidate, they decide to vote for others. But it became such an issue after 2000 that the Florida legislature required the reporting of that. So these are the types of things that though can spawn conspiracies, and why didn't my candidate get this many votes when this candidate did? And I think that explaining what they are and why they're split votes or there's undervotes is really an issue that I find myself playing political scientist occasionally, explaining that Americans still do divide their votes. Sometimes they decide to undervote, and so not every candidate is going to have the same amount of votes. Ben, you want to weigh in on this one.
Benjamin Hovland: (30:13)
Yeah. I'll just add too, you saw a number of Americans voting in different ways this year. We know from the EAV survey that I mentioned earlier, that historically about 25% of Americans vote by mail or absentee ballot. That number is probably going to be closer to 50% this year depending on a state's cure process. If you're in a polling place in person and you accidentally vote for two candidates for the same race, for example, an over vote, and you put that in a scanner, it's going to kick back and tell you that you may have spoiled that ballot. If you're doing that on a mail ballot and your state doesn't have a cure opportunity, that vote's just canceled out in that race.
Benjamin Hovland: (30:59)
And so again, that's a small thing, but those are the details that's the nuance that goes into election administration. And that's the type of thing that you could see this year. And as Don mentioned, of course there's oftentimes people that are going out for a particular candidate. If anyone's lived in some of the states with longer ballots, you definitely see drop-off. And so there's an array of reasons that you do see these variables out there. And again, it's just part of election administration.
Elliot Berke: (31:38)
What about this allegation about votes being changed, that there was some sort of hack or some sort of systemic software manipulation. Talk a little bit about not just the allegation, but also the nature of how these machines work and how difficult, if not impossible, something like that could be.
Benjamin Hovland: (31:58)
Well, one thing I'd point to there, first and foremost, I mentioned earlier that you probably had about 95% of Americans vote on a paper ballot or with a paper audit trail this year, which is way more than we've seen in recent elections. And you saw that probably the best example to point to on talking about the audit process or whatever is, you look at Georgia. Georgia was one of the closest races across the country. They reviewed their ballots a number of times electronically. It was part of an audit process, but they essentially did a hand check of every single ballot in the state. And those were all largely identical. And again, that is a check that paper audit trail is a check on the computer system.
Benjamin Hovland: (32:50)
And so even if you were somehow manipulating coding, you've got to then be manipulating a paper audit trail [crosstalk 00:33:00] that voters don't detect that or see that. And so again, if you think about a presidential race, many times that's the primary reason somebody is going to go vote. And so do you really think that tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people aren't going to notice? There's some research papers on it that I won't go into to bore you, but the point is that you have this check, you have this ability to audit that was done electronically, that was done by hand. And time and again, it reinforced the results and showed that the systems were accurate. And that was in Georgia, but that was around the rest of the country. And again, that's part of the checks and balances that are built in the system to ensure the integrity of the election.
Elliot Berke: (33:49)
Another interesting development we've seen over the past few weeks is the litigation [inaudible 00:33:57] has been filing and the threats of litigation against media outlets. We've seen retractions from Fox, Newsmax, the [inaudible 00:34:06]. This is something we've never really seen at this level in all candor. Do you think this in and of itself will help self police things moving forward that maybe the media is realizing they have to be ... That's behavior and actually report the news based on facts? [inaudible 00:34:32] about that.
Benjamin Hovland: (34:35)
I want to say something that my dad used to say to me, but it's probably not appropriate for this forum. The more polite version is probably the Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "You're entitled to your opinion, but not your own facts." And I think when we're talking about our democracy and we're talking about how our elections run, we have got to have a baseline of facts and truth there. And I think when we get away from that, it really hurts the fabric of our nation. It hurts our democracy. The rules of the game get set. You run by that, you win and you lose. And foundationally, that's got to matter. And we've got to respect the will of the people. That's how this whole experiment got kicked off a few hundred years ago.
Elliot Berke: (35:23)
Right. That's right. So we're just past 2020. 2022 is on the horizon. What do you see as next steps in terms of improving what it is we do, the things that you think the EAC can help [inaudible 00:35:40] as we get ready for the next one?
Donald Palmer: (35:44)
Well, one of the things that I see is, on election day, one of the major issues that we kept hearing about was electronic poll books were having some issues breaking down or having issues connecting with voter registration systems. And one of the allegations out of Georgia was one of their electronic poll books was hacked remotely. This gets to a point where non-voting systems don't really have the same regulatory scheme that we've talked about, where there's testing and certification, but they are connected to the internet and they're vital to election services. And so many states will do some testing. Obviously they buy this equipment, they need it.
Donald Palmer: (36:29)
One of the things we've looked at the EAC is how can we provide assistance to the states in testing of that equipment, how can we provide some recommendations and how can we provide the information that we find to localities on that equipment? Because non-voting system is becoming more vulnerable yet it's vital to how we do elections in this country. And so it's one thing the EAC is going to be looking at because we frankly want to have our non-voting systems as secure as we believe our voting systems are. And we've got some work ahead of us and we're going to do that.
Elliot Berke: (37:07)
Yeah. From a security perspective, that seems to me, I agree, is one of the most vulnerable areas. And moving forward, I think that that's ... And some secretary [inaudible 00:37:19] spoke in our last session about. We haven't really seen, it's been remarkable how little success has been by third parties in terms of hacking our election infrastructure as opposed to other critical infrastructure of the United States. And so on one hand, I think we've been very fortunate and we've been prepared, but moving forward, we have to recognize that as a huge vulnerability.
Donald Palmer: (37:46)
Well, I think that the whole SolarWinds scenario has really awakened some eyes because it's like we can believe that we're doing a good job protecting ourselves and securing our systems but in some ways we may not know the extent of our vulnerability until after the fact. And so from my perspective, I think that this tells us a lot that we can never let our guard down, frankly. From a substantive point of view is you may already be hacked and simply don't know it.
Donald Palmer: (38:19)
And then this goes back into some aspect of what happened in 2016. There was some allegations, and the truth of the matter is it's a little bit unknown, but what we believe what happened is there was a number of counties in Florida, probably two or three, that there were some vulnerabilities there, where there were infiltrated. No voter registration data was captured. But what that tells us is that sometimes these things occur without us really knowing about it. And we may not know about it for national security reasons for years. And so as we sit here today, we may not know the full extent of SolarWinds and what foreign countries have tried to do with our critical infrastructure.
Benjamin Hovland: (39:04)
And one thing I'd add to that, Elliot, I think a couple things. So first of all, at the EAC, we're on the verge of adopting a new set of voluntary voting system standards. That's a big deal. And it will include things like software independence and offering additional support for audits. That's a big piece of what we're talking about. To Don's point, computers are hackable, that's the reality. So do you have systems in place, safeguards in place, to ensure that you're able to detect that, you're able to pick that up. That goes into the point I was making earlier about the amount of paper that we saw this year. The fact that more and more states and jurisdictions are implementing audits. And so to the degree that we can help enhance that, increase that, I think that's an important piece.
Benjamin Hovland: (39:50)
But we also know that the lowest hanging fruit in many ways is disinformation and misinformation. And so as I look at how we can play a role, as we look at the things that can be done, I think a lot of it is helping people to get that trusted source information. Some of that is a resourcing issue. Don mentioned earlier, our budget, it's increased a little bit in the last couple of years thankfully. But even this year, we just got our largest budget in over a decade at $15 million. That is well below the Federal Election Commission that does come in finances around 70, and that's nothing compared to the agencies that most people are familiar with. And so there is a need to invest in our democracy, whether that's the EAC, whether that's with state and local governments. Again, the Congress has provided through the EAC a lot of grant money, but we consistently hear from state and local election officials about the need for an ongoing funding stream.
Benjamin Hovland: (40:56)
I think about obviously our democracy is core to our identity as a nation, core of what we do and what we believe in. And when you talk about election administration, that's the infrastructure of our democracy. And so investing in that, making sure that the systems are working the way that they're supposed to, investing in that in a way that can educate people. One of the things I'd love to see us do is, again, knowing that elections are decentralized, have a one-stop shop where we can get people to the right place, to their secretary of state, to their state board of elections, to their local election official, or get them that information from that trusted source so that we can help people understand the process, better understand how they participate in the process, help people fact-check things more quickly to try to combat this misinformation that you see in this space.
Elliot Berke: (41:52)
I know we're getting close to our time here, but I did want to ask a couple more questions. One is on voter roll accuracy. That seemed to be a really big issue on this election [inaudible 00:42:05] but I think this time around it got a little bit more attention. What can you guys do to help states clean up their voter rolls? Because I think that is a strong way that we can bolster our integrity in our system.
Benjamin Hovland: (42:20)
Well, certainly National Voter Registration Act governs a lot of that. And Don [inaudible 00:42:26] mentions his role in getting Virginia involved in the Electronic Registration Information Center, ERIC, so I'll let him hit that. That's obviously an important effort and step. But again, I think their list maintenance is a challenge, but voter rolls being clean is good for everybody. It saves jurisdictions money, it prevents accusations being made about this or that. But the reality is it's a real challenge. You have Americans that turn 18 every day. You have Americans that die every day. You have Americans that move every day, and that requires a constant effort to maintain election rolls. And it is a real challenge, certainly one that I think to the degree that we can help with best practices. I think that's a great effort.
Benjamin Hovland: (43:21)
Again, I'll let Don talk about ERIC, but efforts like that I think are hugely important to ensuring that the rolls are as accurate as possible, that Americans are engaged. And to the degree, I mentioned some of the voter education piece. Helping Americans know that they need to update their address is a big piece of that. People move. They maybe go on and update their address with the post office and they think that takes care of it. But it doesn't. And so it's important for people to know they need to update their registration, whether that's moving across state lines or down the street. Because you may be in a different jurisdiction or it may save you time on election day to make sure you've got that right address. So those are important things to be able to emphasize.
Donald Palmer: (44:09)
So, Elliot, I think that the twin voting systems was one of the major parts that came out of HAVA, and the upgraded that. One of the things that get misremembered or not remembered is voter registration systems at the state level was the other factor there. And I really think that across the country, we really need a revolution in technology and upgrading those systems, both at the state and local level. And this is where Congress can really help, because again, this is a major part of the Help America Vote Act, was to allow the states to have these databases. And so the more technology and the more we upgrade those systems, the more accurate our voter registration systems are going to be.
Donald Palmer: (44:52)
So there's a substantive part of that and there's also the perception. And the perception is that why do we have people that shouldn't be on the rolls on the rolls. And I think that the Congress or the states really need to dedicate funding to that purpose. There's a lot of priorities and local election officials often just don't have the resources to do list maintenance the amount that they should be doing, in every quarter, for example. Usually they're going to need additional resources to do that. I think that if the EAC can provide best practices or helping jurisdictions find what's the best address for individuals, that's the type of thing that I think that localities would be helpful to localities. And so those are some of the things that I think the Congress or policymakers can look at, is how can we improve those voter registration systems?
Elliot Berke: (45:46)
What about on ballot harvesting and chain of custody issues? I'm an advocate for in-person voting but after this last election, I think we all have to be prepared for just increased mail voting moving forward. We may not see what we saw in 2020, but I think it's going to be there. What more can the states do to address this issue about harvesting and make sure that the chain of custody for mail and voting is as clear, and then again, from a public confidence standpoint, we're in the best position we can be in?
Donald Palmer: (46:21)
Well, I think without getting into the policy debate over it, I think that technology can really help us mitigate the problem that may have come with certain policies. I think that if we use technology to track where ballots are when it's in the possession of an election office or through the mail system, that gives everybody a warm and fuzzy that we know where the ballots are. We're keeping track of them. Sometimes these things cost money to implement existing technologies.
Donald Palmer: (46:56)
And so, once again, I encourage ... When I was at the state level, I spend most of my time trying to sell new technologies to localities and why it will help them do their job. And I think that it really sells itself. A lack of a chain of custody may actually come to burn a local election official very much so. Even the largest jurisdictions sometimes have difficulty maintaining a chain of custody. That's why it's so important. Failure to do so can get you on the six o'clock news or even on the national news. And that's where we don't want to be. And so transparency and using technology to improve chain of custody helps local [inaudible 00:47:43] officials do their job, helps us all do our job better and avoid what could become a political or partisan issue down the road.
Benjamin Hovland: (47:52)
And just to build off that technological point, I think you saw more jurisdictions during doing ballot tracking this year. That has been an innovation that has been spreading. And I think it goes a long way to solving a number of problems. Number one, I think it helps with voter confidence. People know where their ballot is in the system. They know when it's been received, if it's with the post office. It helps election officials to be able to catch problems before they really start. Maybe they get a call and they investigate and then they see, "Oh, there's a pallet still sitting in a warehouse at the post office." And they're able to solve that. It helps with staffing issues to know how many ballots are coming in a particular day, you can adjust for temps.
Benjamin Hovland: (48:39)
And I had heard that there was a ... The Federal Voting Assistance Program did a pilot. They specialized with military and overseas voters. They did a pilot with the USPS on full end-to-end tracking and checking on how that impacted voter confidence. And one of the things that I heard out of that was that they could do that for all military and overseas voters for between six and $8 million. And if you scaled up to that, it would be applicable or it would work for voters across the country. And so in the scope of things, that for probably $8 million, we could have end-to-end ballot tracking for all of the ballots across the country. That is a relatively minor investment, but one that needs to be made if you want that kind of service, if you want that kind of confidence. But I think that would be a great service for the voters both in giving individual Americans confidence in their process, but also helping election officials as well.
Elliot Berke: (49:41)
Great. Well, Ben, Don, thank you so much for your time. We greatly appreciate it and thank you for your service-
Benjamin Hovland: (49:47)
Good to be here. Thank you.
Elliot Berke: (49:49)
We're proud of you. John, back over to you.
John Darsie: (49:51)
Thank you everybody who tuned in to today's SALT Talk. I think it was a fantastic conversation. Thanks again Elliot for leading this series on election integrity and election operations. That last bit gave me a lot of hope that we can continue to build on the system that we have, which I think is fantastic. And people don't give the election workers around the country enough credit for what they've done for many years, but especially what they did this year in the midst of a raging pandemic to ensure that we had a secure and fair election. I think it's just amazing what they were able to pull off, and hopefully we can continue to build on our technological base that we have for our elections and restore integrity that has been called into question, I think, unfairly by some people in this country. We won't name names.
John Darsie: (50:37)
Anyways, thank you everybody for tuning into today's SALT Talk. By tuning in, hopefully you're able to learn some things that you didn't know before about election operations and can continue to spread the word about the facts of the matter in terms of our election processes here in the United States. But this was the second episode in our three episode series on election operations and elections integrity. We have one more coming up in a couple of weeks with the secretaries of state of Michigan and Georgia. That's Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson in Michigan, a Democrat, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in Georgia, a Republican. It's been very important to us that we make this a nonpartisan, and in some cases, a bipartisan conversation around the facts of election operations and elections integrity. So we're very excited about that episode of this series.
John Darsie: (51:25)
And just a reminder, if you missed our previous episode of our Elections Integrity series with former secretary, Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, you can see that at salt.org\talks. And if you miss any part of this episode, you can watch it again on our website at salt.org\talks or at our YouTube channel. And please, I always say this after every episode, but please spread the word about SALT Talks and about this SALT Talk in particular. I think it's so important that as a society, we get the facts straight and we spread the word about the truth about the way our elections operates. So please spread the word. We're also on social media, please follow us. We're on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. And on behalf of the entire SALT team, this is John Darsie signing off for today. I will see you back here in a couple of weeks for the last episode of our Elections Integrity series with secretaries Brad Raffensperger and Jocelyn Benson. Thank you.