>> we'll leave this to take you live to georgia. >> secretary rafns perger's -- raffensperger's commitment -- it is my honor to introduce brad rafns perger, georgia's secretary of state, first elected in 2019 and then overwhelmingly re-elected in 2022. he was lexed@georgia house of representatives where he served for two terms an in 2018 he was elected secretary of state. the secretary's top priority is secure and accessible elections. as secretary of state, rafns perger delivered the largest implementation of voting

machines in this country on time and on budget. he's the first secretary of state to require photo inch d. for all forms of voting and first to hold counties accountable to voting by -- voters by expanding polling places. after his remarks, the secretary will take your questions. you can join in on social media. join me in welcoming to stage, moe leffy and georgia secretary of state brad raffensperger. >> good evening. thank you so much for that warm introduction and for your continued participation in what we do at g.u. politics.

thank all of you for coming tonight and spending part of your evening with us for what i expect will be a really interesting conversation. mr. secretary, thank you for coming up and visiting us here on campus. mr. raffensperger: i'm looking forward to it. moe: we -- mo: we met back in october, november, at a panel discussion i was moderating on the health of democracy. you were one of the panelists. but because it was a full panel we didn't get to dive too deep. maybe you were ok with that. but tonight we are going to dive a little bit deeper. part of our programming this election year, as we've been thinking about how we want to program leading up to this year's election, we're going to do a lot of stuff about the campaign. but i saw a poll about a month

ago that gallup did, that asked how satisfied you were with how democracy is working in this country. a record low 28% of americans said that they were satisfied with how democracy was working. that's 17% of republicans. 38% of democrats. and only 27% of independents. so we're going to do a lot of programming this year about that. about trust in democracy. and i really wanted to kick that series off with this conversation. with you. because the cornerstone of every democracy is the right to vote. following the last presidential election, we saw real stress test on america's trust in

elections. and you, this structural engineer who came to politics a little bit later from a nontraditional path, found yourself at the center of that national maelstrom. i want to start there. not spend too much time there. and then look forward. but everyone here is familiar with the infamous phone call. then-president of the united states calling you up, asking you to find him 11,780 votes. i guess i would just like to start, on a human level. what was it like getting that phone call and how did it -- how did you grapple with that? brad: well it's not something i looked forward to. for many reasons. because since the election of november, we had been pushing

back on all the misinformation, disinformation. but somewhere, you know, the hopeful part of me was hoping if i have this call with the president and i give him the information, the data, that he'll say oh, that's why i came up short. so that's what we did. we had a respectful conversation. and that's certainly -- i do want to emphasize, i want to let you know, i want to make sure i was respectful to his positional authority. because what i've seen sometimes, a lot of people right now in america, people just start shouting out at people, at city council meeting or a state senate meeting or wherever that is they just don't respect people's positional authority. i think that's important. that you respect your teachers. respect your elders. but also respect -- you may not respect who they are as a person but thsi that they hold deserves that respect. i want to make sure i was respectful of that. i really have thought, that would be honoring my parents.

that's how they brought us up. i know that's how they brought you up. we're all the same about that. i want to have a conversation, give him the information and hopefully then we can move forward. mo: you voted for him. twice. correct? you're a conservative, a true republican. and suddenly you were the face of this election conspiracy against the candidate of your own party. that had really taken off. and i've listened to the phone call. i suspect many people here have as we i heard you walk through that data. aye seen you since walk through the data of why he fell short. why do you think that conspiracy and that lie resonated so much? brad: i think for republicans in georgia, you have to understand that we had run the tables on the democrats since about 2002

when we changed the state from being a democrat governor to a republican governor, governor sonny perdue and then governor deal and governor kemp. all of a sudden we lose a race. that was a shock to our system. we ought thought we were going to win. it's like some pro teams, going to win every year. or u.g.a., didn't get three in a row this year. same shock to the system. same idea. then people didn't accept the results. they wouldn't realize, or would not just -- couldn't come to grips with this idea that they actually lost. to a guy that hid in the basement. mo: do you think it's that simple? there have been winners and losers in elections since elections were invented. what is it about sort of the moment we're in in our history right now, that is causing this type of distrust in the

electoral results to feel more, i don't know, pronounced than maybe it had in the past? brad: normally when there's these situations and you give people the data, they accept it and they walk off. they don't just double down. then you give them more data, and then they start, what about this. give them the answer. then they find something else. they kept doubling down, doubling down. all they really were doing was stirring up people and creating all this anger that somehow something had happened. and that's why we just continue to go out there and talk to people. let them know, this is what happened. is that there weren't 66,000 underage voters. there were zero. there weren't thousands of felons, there were less than four. every single allegation in their lawsuit we responded with facts. we did that calmly and respectfully with the people. in effect, they were grieving for that loss. they couldn't believe it

happened. mo: i want to talk, take it away from 2020, we can come back to it later, i suspect when we go to the audience questions, there may be some more. but the way i see it, correct me if you disagree, there are three main roles for those people in positions like yours, overseeing elections. three main responsibilities, election administration. vetter access. and election security. and when you hear people complain about their mistrust in elections, they kind of tend to focus on one or some combination of those three things. i would love to get your thoughts on each of them. i've got a couple of thoughts but would love to hear additional ones that you may have. let's start with election administration.

how confident should people be in the way elections are administered? brad: by and large we are very good at it. there are questions where we are. every county, every state probably has issues from time to time. but what they were is minor issues and generally won't affect the results. i don't believe there's widespread malicious efforts by county election officials. let people talk about, for example, in france they can vote a whole ballot. they can count it by hand and be done that night. well, when you go to these parliamentary systems, even the french presidential system, there's only one candidate on the race. in georgia we're going to have, for our primary coming up in may of 2024, probably 17,000, actually, because it's republican/democrat, we'll probably have 34,000 different ballot styles for the entire state. just imagine that. because we're not just talking about someone running for president.

we're also talking about congress. county commissioner. state senator. you just go down the list. even in our county of fulton county, we vote for the county surveyor. in glenn county, they vote for the water and sewer board. america is a very strong participatory constitutional republic. we have a lot of different races. all these precincts, 2,400 overlaid on that. it's very complicated because in spite of that we are very good at it. mo: one of the things we heard in 2020 in terms of how elections are administered, a lot of angst about from some people, was the move to mail-in ballots, how long it took to count those. how long it took to count election day ballots. wondering why it took so long in some places and not in others. let me hear your thoughts just on that, right? sort of the length of time it takes to count votes and how that might impact it. and what we can do to improve

upon that. brad: i think 2020 was a one-off because of covid. what we really saw, we had voted about a week -- we had three weeks of early voting for the presidential primary. the fact that the old laws we had in georgia, we had 16 days of early vote, we now have 17. people had voted for about a week and a half. then georgia shut down. the country shut down as we tried to figure out what are we going to do with covid? we pushed the whole primary, including the rest of the presidential primary, out to may or june of 2020. and began that process. there was a huge upswing of absentee voting. how are you going to vote absentee. many people started casting aspersions on it. they said with the ballot process in georgia and many other states, you use signature match to identify voters. how can i trust that? we actually were sued by, you know, the democrat party prior to that, saying that's

subjective prior to that republican party said it was subjective. we have begun to photo i.d. and modeled it after minnesota, a blue state, with drivers licenses. we think that's objective. that was the first aspersion cast on the absentee ballot process. that said, when your absentee ballots come in, they have to verify the signature. once you verify it, you take -- separate the eenvelope from the ballot, lay the ballot flat, and get it ready to go. that's all they did. they didn't do a lot of pre-processing from that level. we had them do that and start scanning it. you didn't tabulate but started scanning it so you could then press the cablation button after close of election. coming into the primary that we had in june, 2020, and other states, they were doing all of that after election day. that takes sometimes two ekes to do just because it's a very

labor intensive process that. creates a lot of doubt. and it's just a bleeding ground for conspiracy theories. so what we do now, i'll tell you what we do now. and i'll tell you also the thing about where we are. you go from 30% to 40% in 2020. now we're back down to 6%. and there's nothing we did, it's just that covid changed. people can vote any way they want in georgia they can vote with 17 days of early voting, absentee voting. some are going back to early voting. now we do prescanning of all that before election day so we get all those early ballots already done. but it's only 6% so we can get the results posted quickly. time is not your friend in the election space. the longer it takes, then all of a sudden the conspiracy of why is it taking so long. before 12:00 at night on

election night, we will know how many ballots haven't been counted yet, so there'll be 50,000, 10,000, 100,000, whatever the number is so there's no ballot drops or ballot dumps down the road. that helps also build trust. i believe that trust is the gold standard of what we're looking for. accessibility, security, building trust. i think that really pulls our social fabric back together and we have people trying to pull it apart. mo: one other thing that war res me in terms of election administration, we are seeing since 2020 an intense targeting of election workers. by conspiracy theorists. that's the most local level. just the volunteers. obviously your state had now the famous case of the two election workers who sued one of the most prominent election deniers. for damages.

for the way they had personal by been targeted. we're seeing this across the country. and a lot of experienced election workers and volunteers are walking away. it's just too much hassle. it's too much for them and their families to get those late-night phone calls. and in some states the estimates are that it's about 50% turnover or more. that's a huge brain drain of people who are well versed, well experienced, in the mechanics of running an election day operation. how worried should we be about that? brad: to varying degrees depending on what state it is. the one advantage we have in georgia, my governor, governor kemp, and i both ran for re-election in 2022. you want to get re-elected, you have to go out and talk to people. that was a good thing so we traveled all over the state and i talked to people all over the state, explaining what happened in the election. and i think for that, more

people got the information, i think there was more healing. as part of that process. so it's all good. so we're not seeing that huge tailoff of election workers. could we use more poll workers? yes, we could. whenever i'm talking to rotary, kiwanis, business chairman berke i'm always saying, please, who here has ever been a poll worker? see a show of hands, give them a round of applause if you haven't done that, please, it's the best thing you could ever do for everyone. i come out to vote. you come out to vote. there's no poll workers, we're going to have a real long day waiting. what do we do now? it's really important. that is very important. also i noticed that oklahoma, a very strong conservative, pollworker protection was just signed into law. don't harass those people. what they're doing is pure, you know, good citizenship. getting back to the communities. mo: let's talk about access. there are those, a lot of folks on the left, my party, who, um,

have very serious concerns about attempts to limit access. as they would see it. so i'd love just, again, starting with a general question, your thoughts on how accessible the vote is, and then, you know, maybe your thoughts on some of the concerns that people have raised about voter i.d. laws. about limiting the early vote in some states. i know you can only speak for yours. but in some states you do see a shrinking of the period for the early vote. or limiting the number of early vote sites. and thousand hu that feeds into mistrust of elections on the left. i'd love your thoughts on all of that. brad: well, what we've done is, in georgia we said we're going to give you three options. no excuse absentee voting.

voting early. voting on election day. you decide. and you decided. so georgia, 60% to 65% of people are voting early. about 30% are just vote on election day. 6% are voting no excuse absen teesm that's what our voters have told us. other states may be different. but i think it's good to have that. i've heard there are studies that say the perfect number for early voting is about 10 days. we have 17 days and i would say we have 159 counties. the second most number of counties after texas. we have a lot of counties. our smaller counties with 10,000, 15,000, they think two weeks is plenty. but we have to have the same for all of our counties and we landed on three weeks and two saturdays. the two saturdays, do you know wh votes on saturdays? hardworking georgians who can't get off monday through friday. it's been good for either party. doesn't favor anyone. just gives people that option. but by doing that, people get to

have that choice. we think that's the appropriate landing where we are. some states have 10 days, like president biden's state of delaware, 10 days. we're 17. we used to be a little bit longer we landed on here. i'm good with that. and i think most georgians are comfortable where we are. other states do a little bit more, a little bit less. what it really does also, it gives voters more options which we think is a good thing. but it also gives the county election offices, you know, a pressure relief valve. imagine if that 65% of all early voters show up on election day? now you're up to 94%, 95%. how are you going to run an election all of a sudden that swamp of people coming through there? we're not set up for that. what are we supposed to do? well this allows you to space it out so we can, you the, really manage the short lines on election days. it all works for us in georgia. that's why u.g.a., it's ok to mention the university here.

mo: it's allowed. they're not in the big east conference, so it's ok. brad: u.g.a. and m.i.t. did a study and over 90% of all georgiaians said we trust the results, we had a great voter experience. i think that's the sweet spot of where you want to be. mo: i have so many more questions on this. but we'll circle back. i want to get to audience questions soon. let's talk about security. how secure are elections? and sort of the three pieces of this that i'm most curious about, allegations of fraud. how much fraud is there really in our elections? concern over hacking. and foreign interference specifically. and then misinformation and disinformation. and the whole introduction of a.i. many people here have heard the robo call on the eve of the new hampshire primary that sounded a

whole heck of a lot like president biden telling democrats not to vote. that's going to change quite a bit of how we have to secure our elections. so i'd love your thoughts on fraud, foreign interference, hacking and misinformation, disinformation. brad: going back to the 2020 election in georgia, but other states have done the same thing. if you look, we don't have underage voters. we don't have nonregistered voters. but recently we just went back to the 2022 cycle and we're part of a multistate, you know, group of states that we share voter registration records. we found 17 double voters they voted in our state they voted in another state. didn't think we were going to find you, we found you. we sent that to our local d.a.'s. i don't know what happens in those other states, what they'll do with the 17 voters in their various states, but you're talking about 17 voters that

voted in two states. i believe that fraud is, in our state, really nationwide, is not as large as people think it is. we also have photo inch d. we identify -- we also are real inch d. compliant if you look at your georgia drivers license number, we're real i.d. compliant if you want to register to vote, department of drivers services does a robust citizenship check. we know if you're an american citizen or not if you're a lawful resident, you can get a drivers license in georgia but won't be registered to vote because you'll be flagged as a noncitizen. we know who the american citizens are. we've also done a robust citizenship check. we found 1,600 people that d.d.s. flagged as noncitizens but we wanted to verify were they truly noncitizen, had they become american citizens, what's their status? that's the numbers. it's not thousands or millions or things like that. and they weren't registered to vote. so we have appropriate guardrails in place.

so we really feel comfortable about that. and that's the most important thing. we think by having photo i.d., it gives all of you confidence and so we can take that off. making sure that we're using photo i.d. for absent voting. by doing that, it builds trust. mo: talk about misinformation, disinformation and a.i. and how your office is thinking about that. brad: it's -- we have the national association of secretaries of state meeting starts, really, this evening, it started. tomorrow over this weekend. one of the top subjects we'll be talking about will be cyber security and now this new thing called artificial intelligence. in fact, mo and i were up in new york, there's a fellow from an organization talking about a.i., deepfakes. it's very -- almost -- i guess to use the word, i'll use

challenging. you can just -- you can use scary if you want to. mo: i'm scared. brad: what happens when it's so good you don't know you're being faked out. then it gets out there in social media and before you can say no, we've checked, it's all made up, there's this hull ba loo and people are marching in the streets, what about this, what about that? so that's the concern. it really creates more of the social stress and lack of trust in our recesses. mo: in a couple of minutes i want to include the audience in our conversation, there are mics in each aisle, feel free to begin lining up. while the audience begins to line up i want to come full circle. and look backwards a little bit. so in 2022, there was sort of a bad year for election deniers. you guys, you and governor kemp

survived your re-elections, actually, didn't survive, you won fairy comfortably. a lot of candidates for secretary of state or chief election administrator or whatever the role may be across the country who were espousing the big lie lost. but they're still around. donald trump is the likely -- is likely to be the republican nominee. overwhelming number of republican voters still believe he won. we saw that, see that in poll after poll. saw it in the exit polls in iowa and new hampshire. there's about to be a change at the republican national committee and the reported frontrunner to take over one of the two great political parties in this country is someone who espoused the conspiracies about the 2020 election. even in your own state a lot of those folks in your own

legislature are trying to tie your hands a little bit. removing you from the election board. and giving the board power to investigate you, sort of as retribution, some would argue. so considering that, and the very real chance that donald trump will win re-election, i'm not going to ask you to endorse. i know you won't endorse in an election you have to oversee. but if this crowd does take power, does take over, do you have concerns about the institutions holding? how do you feel about the impact of that and of the continued attacks on the institution and the people who work within it? brad: if they win, they'll win fair and square. and if they lose, they'll lose fair and square.

it's as simple as that. whether they accept the results or are dancing you know, in the streets with joy and glee, you know, that's how they'll respond to the win or loss. at the end of the day, you know, we're prepared and we will make sure we have fair and honest elections in georgia and i know the other states are working toward that. we're really making sure we have balanced accessibility with security. you'll have photo i.d. no matter how you vote we do robust citizenship checks. we're updating voter rolls objectively we don't just pull people off we make sure they have -- have they passed away? have they moved out of state? have they moved to a different precinct so we can update you, locate you? all those things we do, so we know the accuracy will never be closer. if they win, they win, fair and square. if they lose, they've lost fair and square. mo: that mistrust resulted in

violence last time. do you have concerns about that this next time? brad: i will continue to be the person that i've been and i'm going to continue to talk respectfully with the facts and i'm going to do what i need to do which is follow the law and follow the constitution. i really would encourage all of you to consider that. you know, sometimes -- we really maybe, sometimes doubt where we are as a country. but this is a great country. and if you hold elected office, you need to understand that you have -- you swear an oath to the constitution of your state and to the united states of america. but as to elections people have fought and died for our freedom. honor their sacrifice by just doing your job. that's all i can really say. that's what i pledge to do. and at the end of the day, the

beautiful thing is, when you do your job, you'll be able to look in the mirror at yourself for the rest of your life because you know you've done the right thing. you cut corners. and you somehow listen to the crowd. don't do the right thing. you're going to know in your heart you didn't do the right thing. how will you look at yourself in the mirror? how are you going to look at your spouse? how are you going to look at your kids? how about when your grandkids come along someday, what are you going to be able to tell them? i enjoy, because i did the right thing. i can enjoy a meal with my wife every night and don't have to worry about being someplace elsewhere i don't have the choice of what meal they serve in that serving line behind bars. i think it's really, it boils down to what it is. do the right thing. you're really honoring every person who has ever served, ever thought, and the founders that, you know, devised this constitution, that they say it's

not perfect. guess what, you can make it more perfect. you're here in georgetown, you'll figure it out. it takes a lot of work for these constitutional amendments. but just continue to be good people of integrity and it will all work out. mo: they're going to have better questions than mine so let's go to them, though i do reserve the right to jump back in. when i point to you, tell us your name, where you're from, what you're studying and ask your question in the form of a question. [laughter] >> hi, secretary, thank you for joining us today. my name is amar, i'm a senior from illinois, chicago suburbs, in the school of foreign service, studying business and global affairs. my question is on the same theme that mrveg o just brought up. consistently polls since 2020 all the way up to 2024 have shown that 60% to 70% of republicans still believe that the 2020 election was illegitimate and president joe biden did not win the election. which to me is a little bit unfathomable. i can't wrap my head around it.

so my question to you is, is that something we should be concerned about? assuming it is, what do we need to do to change that? brad: i think we have to keep in mind in 2020, that was just a once in a century event. and there's just a lot going on. a lot of different parts. more people voted absentee than ever did before. people are going to go back to their traditional ways of voting. i think they'll probably feel a lot -- a lot more comfortable. there's a lot of nervousness about absentee vote, mail-in voting in other states. i think you'll see people will go back to historical patterns like we have in georgia. we have shored up any questions that we may have had. things we wanted, i owls thought it made more sense to use drivers license with photo i.d. we take that off the table so we don't get sued by the democrats and republicans. take that off the table. we've elevated confidence in that process. i think that's a lot of it. we are back to a more normal

process. the campaigns will both be saying what they're saying. their job is to turn out people. and i'm going to make sure that i have even more data quicker because really what happened in georgia, the simple answer is that 33,000 people that voted in the republican primary in june 2020, did not come out to vote in the fall race. and that's on the campaigns. you know who votes in political party's campaigns, that's public data. the campaigns had that. every day they could have said who voted early already? who requested an absentee ballot? have they turned their absentee ballot in? you can see there's 33,000 people that haven't voted yet. you can call them, you send someone to pick them up, say, hey, bob, do you need ride to the holl polying location. they could have worked those people but they didn't, left them stranded. but the people that skip the top

of the ticket, 27,900 people skipped the top of the ticket and voted down ballot we know that because a republican congressman in georgia got 27,554 more votes and that tailoff at the top and the republican congressman do better, that happened in many other states. people need to get the facts out, talk to people. say this is about the campaigns. the election directors, election officials, will be ready for you. but you need to make sure if you want to win this race, get your people out. that goes for both sides. their job are to turn people out. our job is to make sure we have fair, honest, accurate elections. thank you. mo: over here. >> good evening, secretary. my name is kai, i'm from idaho, i'm here studying international politics. as a republican i have a lot of respect for you. a while ago i read an article about how some republican-led states have been pulling out of, i believe it's called the eric voting registration system.

and i was wondering, do you think that some of our party's efforts to -- that are advertised as making our elections more secure are actually make thepg less secure? brad: the electron i think registration information center was formed by the state. georgia was one of the founding states. it was to come together with a multistate consortium to share confidential voting florid a secure protocol. they were doing that. and then all of a sudden, this social media operation came out and disparaged what was happening. the people that funded eric were actually the members of eric and states pulled out. i said we're not pulling out. we're still members of eric. but the states that did pull out, like alabama, now i've done a bilateral with alabama. i'm doing one with virginia. we have three other states. we'll do bilaterals. every state that's not a member. but some states already weren't

members just because of the cost, things like that. for example, nebraska, we're looking at doing a bilateral with them. but also we now have gotten the data from department of drivers services. they're protective of the information they have. but we have the information driving when people get a drivers license and all other 49 states plus the district of columbia. so you go ahead and get a driers license in texas, nebraska, illinois, we're going to find out about that. and then we're going to say, why would they have a drivers license in illinois? we'll reach out to you to find out, have you moved to illinois? and we're also getting death records and other forms. so we actually right now, georgia, because we're part of this multistate organization, we get those records, plus we have department of drivers services, plus bilaterals. we actually have the best records in the entire country. in fact, heritage which is a conservative funnation, so if you're on the left side, you don't care about heritage. but heritage is on the right

side of the aisle. we were ranked number one for election integrity. go figure. that must blow some people's minds. because we struck the proper balance of accessibility with security. and also the bipartisan policy institute gave us very high marks as well as colorado tied for number one. >> hi, secretary. my name is robbie, i'm a junior studying computer science and government at georgetown. i'm from marietta, georgia. i've lived in georgia my entire life. brad: awesome. >> as a georgia voter i'm heavily reliant upon the absentee ballot system. i just ordered one a few days ago. brad: awesome was it easy? >> pretty easy actually. brad: there you go. >> got to hand it to you. brad: you're welcome. [laughter] >> it was very easy.

brad: we have a great team. >> my big question is relating to a lot of the changes that happened in 2021. and a lot of that was through the legislature, to my knowledge, not necessarily the executive branch. but one of the big changes was, it shortened the window that people could request ballots and also the window that counties could mail out ballots by about half, approximately half. and i was just curious because that makes it more challenging for students like me because we have shorter windows, i was curious if you could maybe speak on the rationale mind that and maybe the pros ancones behind that. brad: it was designed for two reasons. one is we found voters were requesting it out so early in the seekle before that they actually sometimes would misremember and then they would send in another application. it was gumming up the works for could by election operations. so that was that issue there. but we also found out is that

you could request your ballot, you know, so late in the cycle, that you would never get it. what we found out, that's why we ended up on that 10-day window that you had to get your ballot back and that request in 10 days before. if you got the request in 10 days before, we process the application, get you your ballot and get it back we found that after -- before 10 days, it was like a 92% acceptance rate but after the 10 days it was only 50%, 54% i believe was the number. so in effect, you were disenfranchising voters. it was almost, you know, unfair what you did to a voter. he was going to request it three days before. hey, i'm sorry champ but you're not going to get it in time because the post office. there's nothing that you've done wrong. it's just, it's so late. it really made sure we didn't disenfranchise voters to improve the process. that's why we did that. >> thank you so much. >> hi, secretary. thank you for coming to speak with us today.

my name is ben, i'm a senior in the college from new york majoring in physics and classics. and my question to you is, how does your education and background in engineering influence your development of as a politician and the way you approach policy making? particularly involving issues related to large-scale systems such as election integrity and expanding voting access. brad: that's a great question. one thing about elections, you just have to know how to add. that's what it's all about. i don't have to use any analysis, i don't have to use moment distribution and all these other engineering theorems. i don't need to know what a stress block is like we do for concrete design. it's adding up numbers. it's not even about subtracting, just addition. but i'm good with numbers. and i guess i'm really logical.

and i just try and think through things. how do we improve the possess? how do we make incremental improvements. i think that's one thing engineers do, they're always looking at how do you build a better bridge? how do you build a better building? in fact we were walking but washington, d.c., i saw there's a big frame holding up part of the structure, the center was all taken down. i'm thinking what they're doing there. i'm thinking about the process at all times. that's how we think. i think that's really good for someone in this area. as secretary of state we had corporation professional licensing. i'm a licensed structural engineer, civil engineer and contractor. i have important professional -- i know how important professional licensing is and how important corporations are. we have securities and charities. if you have a charity in georgia i want it to be a real charity, 50% or more, hopefully 80%, 90%, is going back out to the mission field, not in your back pocket. and you're making $3 million a year and the charity is getting nothing. so it really just kind of fit my

wheelhouse. so i think it's a great place. would be a great place for a guy with a physics degree, computer science that computer science, don't do a.i., please. do good thing, not bad things so direct your energies toward the positive things in life. >> thank you. >> hi. my name is allie, i'm a sophomore in the college of arts and sciences double majoring in government and pa peace studies i'm also from marietta, crazily, that doesn't happen a lot here. my question is about the 2022 mid terms. there were about 1,000 absentee ballots that weren't mailed out. i'm sure you know about that. my question is how do you interact with county level elections offices? how are they being supported, what -- like how does that look like i guess? how do you make sure that all of them are working and doing the

things they're supposed to do? brad: that's interesting. this is a georgia issue. but throughout georgia we have 159 election directors and in cobb county, you actually have one of the best. jeannine evler was fantastic. someone on her team, you know, didn't have the experience and that's really where, there's no substitute for experience. didn't have the experience. but she didn't throw that person under the bus she didn't try and push it off on us. she took full responsibility. and that really is a testament to her character. this is what happened with our group. then she went ahead and said where are all these people and they're sending this stuff out. federal express, next day air. how do we make, how do we get that back to them? tremendous, you know, recouping of what had happened. really spoke highly of her character because yes, their office had this mistake. but she had been there for many years and was an outstanding person. she's since retired but i want to commend her for her years

dedicated, principled various from the people of georgia and for her county. >> hi. thank you for being here. my name is jordan park, i'm a freshman in the college of arts and sciences from seattle, washington. my question has to do with, it kind of comes back to the issue of faith in elections. my question is if you think the way districting is handled for electoral votes has any impact on faith in elections? brad: i think that redistricting is one of those issues that we now have a lot of districts that once you win your pray mare, then you're going to probably be the nominee. we have very few, you know, hinge districts. not a lot of movement in that. some people said should we have nonpartisan redistricting commission? trust me if it has something to do with elections it's not going to be nonpartisan for long. if they put mo on that redistricting commission, he said i'm not partisan. he's in the. neither am i.

so that's the challenge. i believe that the general assembly should do the best that they can. because if they overstep their bounds, it will all of a sudden get before a court. and then the court will say no, no. we can't -- we're not buying that. so they looked at georgia. we had to tweak some lines. they looked at alabama. so i think general assembly, by and large, know their p's and q's and they mind what they should be doing. so i think that's the best way forward. other states have different things. that's really a legislative decision because they'll determine, you know, how that ends up happening. i think at the end of the day, you know, no matter what district it is, if you have a candidate that doesn't behave himself they won't be re-elected. mo: along with another reform, electoral reform people talk about that proponents argue would increase trust in elections is ranked choice voting.

your legislate -- your legislature voted against ranked choice voting. and you personally were not in favor of ranked choice voting. brad: i haven't take on a position on it. i said -- what i've said is in georgia we have runoffs. we have runoffs for everything. i'm the runoff champion of america. i've been in four of them. city council. state house. two for secretary of state. with one for the primary, one for the fall. i know how they work. but they create a tremendous burden because we have a full-week runoff in november. because we have one in november 20, 24, guess what it butts up to? thanksgiving. at the end of the race for the -- race in thov, we'll have ballots come in by friday by noon. or 1:00. then we have to go ahead and every thing like that. then we have to do audits before we can certify.

not just one race like in 2020. it'll be other races like state house, state senator, county commissioner, all that takes time. then you have a runoff and the county said we want to get rid of runoffs. we don't care how you do it. your job is to legislate. that's what i told the general assembly. your job is to legislate. come up with a solution. they've refused to do so that's their decision. it's on them. >> hi. thank you once again, mr. secretary, for coming out. my name is ethan. i'm majoring in international politics, i'm a junior, not quite from georgia but from north carolina, just down the road. my question is, in rep praition -- in preparation for this talk i went back and listened to the very famous perfect phone call if you will. i know. and obviously there's a lot of things that were shocking about that interaction. i was wondering if you could tell us more about the lead up to that interaction and the lead up to that, you know, fateful

day in january, or late december, whenever exactly it was. what the buildup was like. how he reached out. what the communication was like prior. everything that led up to that moment. brad: i know they wanted to talk to us for a little bit. someone sent me a text. they said, it came from the mail, nccongressman@gmail.com, but texted it to me. it said hey, i'm mark meadows, your voice mail is full. give me a call. didn't give me a phone number so i didn't call him. i didn't primarily because we were running elections. and when i was on city council, what we were -- what was beaten into our heads, whenever you're doing the investigation, if you have any question, city

councilmembers do not get involved in that investigation. if you have any questions, you get to the city manager. and in effect we have 20, 25 plus certified investigators. we had a lot of investigations going on about these allegations. i didn't want to enter into conversation with a lot of people as we -- i didn't want them or me interfering with an investigation. let our investigators do their work. so i didn't have the number. so i didn't call. i got another one later. gave me the call for the white house switchboard. still didn't really know if it was them based on that email address. i thought maybe it's a deepfake, you know. maybe it's borat. i just -- [laughter] brad: i'm going to assume it's borat and i'm not calling. i didn't know what good would come out of it. finally, neil cavuto asked me some questions on fox news and i shared those data points. apparently president trump didn't like hearing that. so mark meadows insisted to my

deputy that we have a call that day. said if we're going to do that i want my general counsell on the call, the white house had their people on the call. i don't know how many people they had on we had my general counsel, jordan, and myself. we had that conversation for about one hour and eight minutes. >> just about right. >> hi, secretary raffensperger. i'm a government and computer science major in the college and i'm from south jersey. so you said time is not your friend. to me this screams kind of further digitalization of election process. i think a robust voting system that's digital could do the work faster and take the burden off poll workers. so let's say, not now, but 10 years from now, we have a voting system that works. on your personal devices.

my mom uses her mac to vote, something like that. and let's say it's secure from foreign interference. easier said than done but let's say. you know a lot about public trust in elections. would this ever work? brad: it's interesting you said that. because we've been sued 10 times by the stacey abrams camp, 10 times by the trump camp. during one of those lawsuits i met a professor from western pennsylvania, i think out of pitt cyber, one of those schools. we were talking about the next generation of what elections could look like. and he says, you know, brad, you know, this next generation is going to want to vote by their phones. that's how they've grown up. but we're not there yet for security. but that's really where we're going to be headed. once we figure out the security element, that's where we'll go. but to your point, he was throwing about 2035. so 10 years down the road. that is your -- i'm going to assign you that right now.

you'll probably make a billion dollars with this idea. you'll do a great job. but he says once you establish the security in that, he said it's actually it could be very powerful. it puts the voter back in charge from the standpoint, up until closing at 7:00 p.m., you can go ahead and you can vote at 7:00 a.m. go into the office. and the boss man, the union boss or boss that owns the company, owns the whole town, you never know. "it's a wonderful life," it was a great movie. so the boss says, how did you vote? y voted for mary or you voted for bob. so you change it up until 7:00 p.m. then just at 7:00 p.m. you change to what you want, press the send button. i had never thought about that from that standpoint. he said brad, we're not there yet. so we're waiting for you to

develop that and get it secure to keep out any kind of deep fakes. any kind of outside threats we could possibly have. we'll probably get there at some point when people have 100% confidence in that device. mo: it's interest, i remember the 2000 election. and the debacle down in florida with the hanging chads and all of that. and the response to make sure that never happened again was to move toward electron i think voting and touch screen machines went up all over the country. i was managing a campaign in florida in 2022. the first statewide election after 2000. and the election administrators hadn't thought about simple things, they used all the same locations but hadn't thought about, were there enough outlets. so the polls had to open late. but we moved toward electron i think voting because of an erosion of trust in the old system. now there's a rapid move toward

making sure there's a paper trail. right? because people have last -- so i think it's a fascinating question and a fascinating idea but will we always kind of teeter back and forth when it comes to which system we trust? is there a way to sort of alleviate those concerns that people just tend to have about the process? brad: perhaps. because if we ever reach the day when we can trust 100% of all politician, i don't know if you can trust 100% of all the campaigning mores. that's be the next thing. i trust all these people. but i don't know about -- there's too much to lose if you don't win a race. but we're not there yet. so today we're just going to make sure we have a verifiable pain every ballot. we can do 100% audit of any race in the state of georgia and in over 90% of all the states in america. there's a paper pal lot in this upcoming election. you'll be able to audit

anything. pull up the stacks. one for this candidate, one for candidate b, one for candidate c, add them up. verify that with the machine down on election night. you'll have the number of pieces of paper. you'll then know this was a fair, accurate election. this person won. this person lost. mo: thanks for the question. we're almost out of time, we've got two people left in line. brad: i'll be quick. >> good evening. thank you for being here once again. my name is ashwat, i'm a freshman in the school of health studying health care management and policy. i'm also from georgia, i'm from duluth, georgia, we spoke earlier with a bunch of other georgia students. you spoke then and spoke a little bit now about your journey into politics, first as an engineer and then city council, state house and now as secretary of state. i was kind of intrigued, why did you wan to run for secretary of state? out of all positions.

why not governor. what was special about secretary of state? brad: secretary -- we had electron i think voting and we needed, i thought, i wanted to move us toward that. in fact all the republicans did. i think all all the democratic candidates knew we needed a new system in place. i wanted a verifiable paper ballot. wanted to gin a multistate organization to have accurate voter rolls. and i wanted to make sure only american citizens would vote in our elections. the number one concern we have right now in spite of the open borders going on nationwide, both political, you know, people on both sides of the aisle want to make sure only american citizens are voting in our elections. i think that's important. so we've ensured that. i wanted to improve professional licensing, improve corporations, you can renew your corporations for up to three years in georgia. we give people choice in georgia. not just in elections but also for their corporations or licensing. it's a great place for a business owner

for your fellow diligent. >> thank you. >> class one. >> my name is joe. i am with emory undergrad. knowing there are a number of republicans that review donald trump's lies regarding the election in 2020, deeply the split in the community causes weakness in the party? >> a house divided against itself cannot stand. it is not helpful for the republican party to be where they are. but we are standing on integrity so what are we supposed to do is to mark i will continue to do

so. >> you have a book, integrity cans, i have not read it because you just handed to me. i have only heard great things from those who have read it. public service is a good thing, politics can be as well. it is tested quit often whether or not that is true. we are all men and women for others. we do agree on everything mr. secretary but i do believe you bring that spirit of service to your job each and every day so thank you so much for sharing some of that with us tonight. thank you. >> joining us, please keep your

eye on the schedule for more. the former congressman william moderating a composition about whether or not gen z is ready to take the reins of power. thank you so much.