good afternoon and welcome to the committee on house of ministration subcommittee on elections and the hearing that we're having on election contingency plans i've learned is america prepared in the past several years natural and manmade disasters have resulted in more attention being drawn to the need for election contingency planning september eleventh two thousand and one disrupted the statewide primary in new york hurricane katrina caused delays in administering a new orleans local elections and more recently the february tornadoes which occurred on super tuesday posed a challenge all of these events have brought to light the necessity of taking precautions and making preparations to manage emergency situations affecting the election system there are states that have addressed to some extent election day emergencies generally these policies deal with communication to state level with the development of specific plans to be determined by counties in cities while the sixteen states that have taken the steps should be commended it's not enough what role the federal government should play in assisting states and localities in planning for emergencies and recovering from these emergencies needs to be defined in an attempt to help clarify the role of the federal government in the system states and localities the federal emergency management agency was invited to testified today but they declined stating that quote it does not have any statutory role in preparing for and carrying out a large and i disagree bhima does have a role under section four zero six of the stafford act to assist state and local governments with a replacement or repair of equipment and structures damaged by a major disaster for sex also includes wages and eligible work which fema defines as work necessary as a result of a disaster within the disaster area and the legal responsibility of the applicant this definition clearly would include election cause in fact thema has already acted in this capacity fema approved seven point nine million dollars to assist the new york board of elections to cover expenses associated with cancelling and rescheduling the statewide primary elections of september eleventh two thousand and one it also provided reimbursement for election expenses and orta incurred as a result of hurricane andrew in  former louisiana secretary of state ater was invited to testify about his experiences with elections over as a result of hurricanes katrina and rita and attempts made by louisiana and mississippi for reimbursement for election expenses and other issues but unfortunately had to cancel his appearance due to a scheduling conflict his testimony will be submitted for the record for these hurricanes fema took the position that it was not required under four zero six to provide reimbursement for election expenses related operating costs provided the minimal assistance for damage to equipment was the issue this has been a complete change of opinion as past position regarding requests for election  so i plan on pursuing this matter further with thema to make sure that federal emergency management agency does what it needs to do to assist states and localities just as as has done in the past i thank all the witnesses  accepted the invitation to testify before the subcommittee today i look forward to their testimony as we explore what state and local governments have done to prepare prepare for an emergency an election day and what role the federal government should play in preparing and responding to such an emergency and in since we will be having another series of votes in the in about an hour in the interest of time i'll ask other members to submit opening statements for the record and we will go directly to our witnesses i would like to introduce mr thomas wilkie he's the former executive director of the new york board of elections and since two thousand and five has served as the executive director of the elections assistance commission does work with the ac mr wilkie was also the founder and former president of the national association of state election directors and a member of the election center's board of directors next we have ms laurel bay this baby is a director of legislative affairs of the office of ohio secretary of state in this capacity a house legislative process and represents the secretary of state with the ohio general assembly assembly in eighty eight county boards of elections prior to her work with the secretary of state's office ms beatty worked as a litigation lawyer frost brown todd as well as  hill and ritter ms beatty received her b s from spelman college in her j d at vanderbilt university and we're pleased to have her here because her secretary of state is being receiving the profiles in courage award  division of elections as well as general counsel prior to her work with the department of state ms roberts was also a staff director of the florida house of representatives committee on election reform as well as florida's senate judiciary committee ms roberts received  college in her j d from florida state university we welcome all of you and thank you for your participation today without objection your full statements will be made part of the record and we would ask that you provide your all testimony in about five minutes when there's one minute to go the machine is working that there will be a yellow light telling you that you need to start wrapping up so if we could start with you mr wilkie thank you so much for being the polls opened at six a m i made my customary rounds of polling sites in midtown manhattan as executive director of the new york state board of elections i knew the importance of being prepared for anything on election day but this experience taught me even more about being prepared for the worst and how local government can act together to prepare and if need be a response to an emergency whether it be a terrorist act fortunately our management information systems department had a backup copy stored at your facility we were quickly able to read all the polls thousand of them and have them ready signed the emergency primary rescheduling act of two thousand and one which provided legal authority to schedule the primary less than two weeks later the board personnel in new york city move seventy seven hundred  closed in frozen zone below fourteenth street where the board general offices was located for the board public notices announcing the rescheduled primary times and polling place locations to make can be ready for anything this november thank you ma'am thank you very much mr wilkie would be pleased to hear from you miss loskarn and distinguished members of the house subcommittee on elections thank you for the opportunity to offer testimony on election day continued to the plan i am laurel bady director of legislative affairs and counsel to the voting rights institute for ohio secretary of state jennifer brunner the advent of electronic voting machines in the passage in the implementation of the help america vote act drastically changed the landscape of election administration how election administrator plan for emergency situations also change with the adjustment to these innovations ohio currently uses optical scan and direct electronic recording voting machine technology and has found that careful planning and quick adjustments have enabled our election administrators using the equipment to protect against potential disasters the march two thousand a primary election in ohio is an example of prudent planning and quick on the spot thinking which helped our state out the election process leading up to that election secretary bruner began making preparations by removing some of the impediments that plagued ohio in previous election and september of two thousand and seven secretary bru commissioned a risk assessment study of the three voting machines systems used in ohio known as project everest the purpose of the study was to provide a comprehensive independent balanced and objective assessment of the risk to elect integrity associated with ohio's voting systems this also in compas election related equipment testing standards and associated internal controls including the extent to which integrity violation possible preventable detectable and correctable the results were crucial to evaluate the integrity of ohio's election system before the march two thousand and eight primary election and for future election the every study contain scientific and industrial findings that ohio's voting systems had significant problems with these disturbing findings in hand before the march primary secretary bruner embarked on a campaign to implement several initiatives that would give boards of elections the tools necessary to deal with emergency situations should they arise and should funding not be available to replace voting machines secretary brunner required ohio county board of elections to provide our office with security plans that detailed chain of custody procedures for electronic voting machines county boards of elections used this mandate as an opportunity to assess the integrity of their processes and handling voting equipment secretary bruner also required all county boards of elections that utilize touch screen voting machines as their primary voting systems to print backup paper ballots in the amount of it least ten percent of the number of voters who voted in a similar previous election secretary brewer's directive effectively accomplish its intended purpose when machines were not working properly in several counties voters were able to ca their votes on paper ballots voters also used the paper ballots to vote during power outages in an ice storm in several ohio counties secretary bruner also increased the legal staff which paid off at the office was able to field calls from county boards of elections continuously throughout the day in a dress legal concerns in real time all counties were instructed by directed by directed me to notify their assigned attorney in the office of machine failures  ballot shortages communications between county boards of elections and the secretary of state's office were optimal we work with boards of elections developing contingency plans to use ballot on demand machines we also established a well devised partnership with the attorney general's office where several attorneys from that office were stationed in the field and were able to seamlessly obtain court orders when and where they were needed the sixteen regional liaison's in the office were also on site throughout the state boards of elections and in one case a regional liaison assisted in delivering provisional ballots to individual precincts when those ballots were and lo secretary bruner also alerted law enforcement throughout the state of the legal responsibilities in assisting election officials on election day and county sheriffs in several counties provided great aid to the local boards of election in assisting transportation  ballots during a level three weather emergency the november two thousand and eight general election is approaching with the every study in mind secretary bruner will do everything within her power to ensure that ohio is ready for staff to secretary kurt browning i've been asked to describe the contingency plans that were in place for the two thousand and four presidential election prior to the landfall of hurricane charley and what lessons we learned in florida i have also been asked to describe continues the plans that we have in place for our upcoming fall election we have had an elections emergency act on the books of florida nine hundred ninety two this act authorizes the governor to suspend or reschedule election the goals of the to maximize participation in the electoral process at the same time to ensure the safety and welfare of our voters and our poll workers it is to protect the integrity of the election and to provide for a safe and orderly procedure election have to be rescheduled in response to the passage of that act the division of elections promulgated by rule in one thousand nine hundred four a comprehensive emergency pension plan this plan covers six broad areas with respect to election administration notification procedures through p s a conduct of a rescheduled election with a focus on assessing polling places temporary polling site consolidation of precinct absentee voting allowing for temporary absentee voting sites to be established voting and tabulating equipment ensuring that the supervisors of elections have the flexibility to borrow and lease of quitman should their been damaged during the the event and also safety of the polling places should at portman have already been deployed or ballot material there needs to be procedures in place to secure those sites to protect the integrity of the election and lastly what do you do with the release and certification of results especially if you've got races across in two thousand and four florida experienced four storms and six weeks the first storm hurricane charley hit florida just two weeks before our primary it was it could not have been without the extraordinary efforts of both the state and local level that we were able to actually to our election schedule and hold an august thirty first primary what we learned is really what we summarized as the three p poll workers polling places and power restoration through our emergency operations center in tallahassee we were able to get together with those supervisors that were impacted by hurricane charley and develop a contingency plan to go forward with the election as scheduled some of the lessons we learned you have to think outside the box your first reaction may be to reschedule election but until you've done an assessment of your polling places your poll workers work with their supervisors of elections you don't know for certain whether or not a rescheduling is absolutely necessary we learned quickly that you have to have communication with the department of justice especially if you're pre clearance state as we are in florida we've got five counties subject to preclearance so whenever you change policy consolidate change any of the rules of the game that has to be pre cleared through the department of justice and they were very cooperative with us trying not to duplicate their efforts and what works in one emergency may not work the same in another for example in hurricane charley what worked did not work with hurricane ivan that hit the panhandle with hurricane ivan they had more time to prepare and so they were they were actually able to handle a lot of their issues from the local level but we in our zeal to help them fortunately stepped over some lines with respect to who was doing what with the best in the polling places having up to date phone trees cannot be understated and if you don't have a continuity of operations plan at the local level and you take it off the shelf once in a while and look at it and update it there's nothing the state is going to really be able to do for you  we have established a regional response plan with our supervisors of elections to approach election contingency from a regional perspective we also developed for the division of elections particularly their own started looking at what we would do if there was a pandemic situation with an election i'll be happy to answer the question thank you very much and i think we'll have a few questions i would turn first to mr davis for his whatever questions he may have thank you madam chairwoman thank you all for being here one of the things that the panel or the committee rather is obviously trying to assess is the feasibility of the advisability of any federal law regarding election day disaster i want to get some sense from all of you first of all under the statutory provisions in florida and new york i take it ohio has not have a provision for suspending an it's been since i've been an election which is nearly four years there was no provision for cancelling an election in our law there is provisions in the law for rerunning a primary or an election our primary particularly the fact finding on what happened that day so two things really happened in the city of new york a judge had already been assigned by the administrative judge of the court system in new york to oversee any problems that came up on election from the judge canceling that election and that water went out immediately those individuals can request that there be a delay but only the governor can make that decision and is the governor somehow recused or precluded at the governor happens to be on the ballot is that a problem to be honest i had not thought about that before that potentially let me just try to get some input from you with respect to what we might do as far as federal law goes there was some idea of the president of united states having that authority it's not necessarily feasible for congress to have it because there is the obvious conflict the issue of members of congress or themselves on the ballot second of all congress may not be in session of congress is not in session you would have time to assemble people to make a decision in real time can the three of you just first of all me just ask you do any of the three of you think that there should be a federal law that in any way entails a suspension of a federal election for president or congress needs it if i may the one possibility i mean i'm not necessarily proposing this but it where states of adopted the statutory scheme they are ahead of the game florida has some other states have california i don't think has i remember the loma prieta earthquake there was a elections here in cisco and it was you know not really possible they have the election so it seems to me that one opportunity would be to have some statutory scheme but that if the state has adopted its own that you would not preempt that least there is some statutory authority not for the whole country but for federal elections where it's impossible to actually hold the election because buildings have fallen down or whatever so that you know there's an earthquake in southern california to disrupt the election and now obama but there needs to be some ability to respond to the fact that people can't drive down the road  freeways of collapse for example just a thought that occurred to me the gentleman's time is expired i have my five minutes so i'll be very noble you entire five minutes but one of the questions had i understand mr wilkie that you had backup voter registration information in a different location and it seems to me that that is a very smart thing to have a hot site that is our backup for from the state perspective but we have also allowed when we designed our system that our sixty seven counties still were able to maintain their own voter registration and interfaces with the state system so we do have we do have multiple backup ohio also has multiple backups the counties keep the voter registration information on a county level and transfer it to the secretary of state office and the secretary of state also backs that up to the state of ohio computer center final question i wanted to ask marcy to the  as we saw with hurricane katrina and in some cases the these terrible hurricanes that have tornadoes that have occurred disasters can result in displacement for residents that last for a long time how do you approach displaced residents are still have an intent to reside they're still registered to vote how do you maintain your contact with your citizens who have been displaced but intend to rebuild  their lives after a disaster has as voters in florida in two thousand and four when hurricane charley hit it was a it was a concentrated impact  didn't have large displacement of our citizens and we were able to maintain contact and provide them with information with public service announcement we actually  chartered a plane and flew a banner across that region with the one eight hundred phone number we passed out called cards in areas where they were passing out ice and water and so forth giving the voters information but but certainly i mean you're you're you're very correct that if you have a large population as with hurricane katrina then that's going to require a whole different assessment a set of circumstances congresswoman i would hurt ms roberts sentiment the weather emergencies that took place in ohio did not displace any wind however it did spur a lot of interest in the possibility of a vote emergency management or reimbursing states and localities have you successfully obtained reimbursement for your emergency expenses related to the elections efforts you have to have engaged in because of emergencies i can speak for two thousand and four that indeed we had a great deal of cooperation and we every time we had to put something in the tracking system we had an accounting afterwards and very helpful to us and they needed we needed to be able to get in our office building which was virtually inaccessible in lower manhattan and we were able to get on the list to get the power that we needed and get up and running and so we were very they were ver testimony we will keep the record open for five legislative days if there are additional questions we will for them to you and if that happens we ask that you responded as quickly as possible so as to be made part of the  forward as the next panel is coming forward i will introduce them since i believe we will have vote in about ten minutes commissioner rosemary rodriguez currently serves as chair of the election assistance commission she was appointed in two thousand and seven and served as vice chair  commission during her first term partner work with the rodriguez was president of the denver city council director boards and commissions for the mayor's office and a clerk in recorder of denver for five years and we also have mr kevin kennedy he is the director of the wisconsin government accountability board which is ministers and forces state laws relating to election campaign finance ethics and lobbying mr kennedy's worked in election administration for over twenty five years serving as counselor executive director of the wisconsin state board of elections is a former president of the national association of state election directors and a member of that yes the standards board mr kennedy received his b a n j d from the university of wisconsin at madison we welcome you both and as you know your f assistance commission to be here today what have we learned in the lections in the united states that anything can happen on election day and that we have to be prepared you also asked is america prepared and  we have the election assistance commission are hopeful that they are prepared and we have issued guidance and i'll discuss that a little bit my testimony but what we know already is that contingency planning in two thousand and eight is more important than ever we've seen record registration and interest in this election and turnout in the primary in most cases election officials were ready when tornadoes hit tennessee and heavy rain came through ohio election officials  to nature's fury we have to be ready for power outages phone system failures and most likely in november and in addition number about another troublesome scenario is when poll workers failed to show up the point is we've already seen each and every one of these occur so we know what to expect and we should accordingly the e c has provided election management material we have copies at the door we advise election officials to obtain a copy of their state emergency operation who is authorized to act during an emergency situation representative david scott right to who is in charge who can extend poll hours who can reschedul some of the questions election officials should consider include our records backed up regularly and stored in secure site which sounds like they are how do we educate and inform poll workers to change how do we inform the public when there's an emergency and how do displaced voters participate hopefully many have the opportunity to do absentee ballot but some states are stricter about that they must implement a continuity of operations plan that reflects their contingency plan a stablish a line of succession of four election staff who's in charge of the office of the coordinate with law enforcement and she from you thank you very much madam chair congressman davis is truly an honor to be here and i appreciate that it's also been an honor and a privilege to be wisconsin's chief election official for twenty five years and i'd like to just make a few points rather than go through the testimony of the suspended for the record and i think this is a great forum to do this because it serves a purpose for the public as well as for for you preparedness is not a new election administration it's been something that dedicated election officials have been approaching for years it's always been more what are we going to do under this circumstance no i think what's happened as a result of the two thousand election two thousand and one nine and my testimony and i think that's important i was asked to talk about wisconsin and i think that's why i said preparedness just isn't a new thing in wisconsin or other places but we've really incorporated into all aspects of our election administration and quite frankly in our administration of the state government you know our training we have detailed information we have to certify the chief election inspectors in the state of wisconsin my agency does that a thousand local election officials in two thousand of them around the state of wisconsin i have eight hundred fifty one towns cities and villages that the ground people running the election my seventy two county clerks are involved but what a registration and absentee voting in polling places poll workers in the hands of those dedicated people many of whom are part time but we incorporate that into the training and we try to put some responsibility on everyone now i don't have a copy of a plan from eight hundred fifty one municipalities in seventy two counties but they've been hearing about this for a long time from us as i said we've moved from the what do you going to do to let's see a plan let's have that and that's incorporated in the training that's incorporated in our election preparation  i find it ironic that it's become part of our culture for election ministration as we move into two thousand and eight wisconsin's been a battleground state for the last two presidential elections we don't expect it to change two thousand and eight and so the day that i got a call from the staff here i was actually speaking to the state bar and they had been asked to speak on election disaster avoiding your worst nightmare was the title of the talk that they gave to me so even the attorneys that advise my local elected officials they're wanting to be prepared and so it's you know i think that's the benefit and i think this is where this hearing adds to this because the fact that we've made it part of our the other thing that i want to mention though is one good example that we used and that is in the two thousand and six election which are statewide election for governor attorney general as well as our legislative elections and congressional elections we had a bomb threat at a polling place at a high school in the city of madison and that that bomb threat was exactly she showed how well the parents had paid all those preaching that we had done and the sample plans we had set out the city of madison as well prepared they call our office and they said what do we do or this is what we're doing is that ok do you have any suggestions is really the approach that they took the city attorney saying do you have a model  form for going to court to extend voting hours was it ok for us to set up across from the building so that voting could continue and it all worked together well we got a court extension for an extra hour but we really never really disrupted the voting other than moving equipment out of the polling place and we had people in there because it was well communicated to the public that's why we went to court it wasn't that we broke the chain of voting but the fact that  the media was covering this in new bought it the public said gee there's a disruption what's going to happen we've got that extension so that there was time for them to be comfortable with the change let me just finish with with  one comment about federal rules in this and that is i think with wisconsin is a well developed emergency planning program and i think the feds have really stepped in to be set up through homeland security and i think that creates a real synergy where we can use that information and clearly our infrastructure is stronger now than it was eight years ago and i think that's a result i think that's a role that the federal government plays very well on that and what we really need to do is i think the chair mentioned get election management as a component if it's on the radar screen and they know that's part of what we do to keep our country running thank you very much thank you very much thanks to both of you tom clancy kind of scenario one of the things that we believe regarding nine eleven is that ocado mistakenly thought that hitting the pentagon hitting the capitol and hitting the world trade center would have put the capitated effect on our government that was a misunderstanding of something as basic as the fact that members of congress are now sitting around the floor in the morning on tuesday and as fundamental as the fact that our economic and military command structure is much more dispersed and i think they appreciate it remember the fact that they got it wrong doesn't mean that the intent was not there so it is plausible it is conceivable that somebody lection in the in a limited physical location you could have a run of suicide bombings for example which would have the effect of paralyzing those it isn't causing widespread fear in other places so i don't view this as a tom clancy scenario but what i struggle with is the question of decision making power obviously the one thing the federal government lacks is an election board we don't have the equivalent of mr candidate your organization the federal level and obviously that is certainly not the federal margin of a board or registrars that can make a reprimand these decisions vesting the power to suspend an election and the president of united states jars us for all kinds of reasons we don't look approvingly at mr lincoln's actions in retrospect and frankly mr roosevelt's actions were appalled by so giving the power to the executive worries us giving the power to the congress is implausible congress is not in session on election day in november you can't exactly do a phone and on something like this so that was certainly in our system so is there any conceivable statutory authority that you could suggest mr drake is or any conceivable decision making process that would work management authority for our governor is very strong and there's a clear requirement for our agency to work with them and our position has been that the governor does have the authority to act in this and i think what could be done at the federal level is something similar to the wisconsin level recognizing the role of the three branches of government i think that congress can authorize the president to act under certain circumstances with a very immediate review by the supreme court that gets congress allows is allowed to set the parameters on this and i think the comments that people have made about generally very dispersed i mean i think about this in wisconsin about snowstorms  we close a polling place in green bay how does that affect the southwest corner of the state what if the president were on the ballot i think you know we elect governors and presidents to be our leaders and they are going to be held accountable they may be on the ballot they may make that decision but ultimately we have courts to keep them in check i think that is something to recognize and that's why when congress goes this route set the parameters but i think our three branch of government allows us to  of the same lines i know mr davis mentioned about people gets concerned when it goes the courts but personal truth in advertising it was al gore who requested to go to the supreme court but the checks and balances that we do have example of how to do it right so there's a way of getting there but you do need the checks and balances you do need to be able to look at it both ways before i progress i do want to ask unanimous consent to enter these two documents into the record the written testimony for  m allen county ohio elections director and the maki police report without objection i'll be made a part of the record i have a couple different questions one from mr kennedy knowing in hearing the end of your testimony and reading some of it there i know you have the backups to paper prepared for how often have you used that in wisconsin wisconsin it's been a paper ballot state for years in fact we had nine hundred polling places we either ran out of ballots and were we had a provision for substitute ballots and so there could be read by the machine part of our culture that doesn't happen significant number of times but i would say in any general election we'll have a number of hand counted bal where it's primarily an optical scan two thousand and six the first time we had we have twenty municipalities of have just touch screen paper for their absentee voting or for the backup so we haven't had an experience there and they're all relatively small municipalities ready prepared you did that on your own ability is one of the reasons the times you may have to go to back up is because you have is never caused by same day registration where you have people coming in that you've never been able to gauge that this was going to happen because they weren't registered prior no election day registration a lot of it is address changes we peaked at about eighteen percent in the two point two million people who voted not to betray election eighteen percent registered at the polling place and part of that was because as part of hava we put a statewide what registration system in place we had fifteen hundred minas apologies that were like north dakota no voter registration normally so one fifth of everyone who voted you'd had no idea was coming well actually if you were doing and election officials doing their job has a very good idea they're coming because they can gauge the voter turnout we quite frankly nailed the turnout for two thousand and six when we did our predictions right now most of the number in terms of how many people were going to vote so if it happens it's because the election official hasn't reflect people's convenience or this how much of the eighteen percent is address change but that one we were just starting to get a handle on now i couldn't give you an answer now but i would say easily half of that is what safeguards because in the report i was reading this the police department they were citing some double voting some others because the same day registration how do you protect from that with any double voting you protect with that after the election you protect after the project because once one out of every five people are totally new so i'm registering putting it in i vote and then my ballot goes into that box correct or gets counted is that that's correct so how do you know which ballot is which if you haven't almost twenty percent of the people registering that day and they're double voting when people register vote on election day they're required to provide identifying information so we know who the people are  registered any time you have a ballot box stuffing situation and i can tell you that in wisconsin the number of people who double voted is very small we prosecuted two or three people because we've been able to identify them through the statewide voter registration system they always vote in different locations because that's how is their names going to be on the poll is somewhere else they bring their identification to vote in a new location we've had successful prosecutions that's how we stop that process the milwaukee police report  is very speculative it is actually a political document that has more to do with the internal politics of the milwaukee police department than it does with the conduct of the election in two thousand so you disagree with this special investigation unit think it's political asked possible would you agree that it would be more helpful to election officials maybe if you cut off registration two weeks prior to that way people you still have the election going on the excitement people can register but you know how many people there you would have one every five person coming in and from your words dealing with it after the election then you'd probably make sure they could double vote and have that ballot inside that box already count d i would not agree with that i think that wisconsin and minnesota have demonstrated very minimal electoral fraud and it's probably less than you've seen with places that close registration thirty days before the election  election day registration is generally not the source of the problems walkies problems in two thousand and four were generally poll worker related problems for failing to balance the voters against the ballot they really didn't much fraud is acceptable i don't think any fraud is acceptable but realistically recognize there are always people going to try and game the system and that's why we have prosecutors that's why we build tools into our system to catch people publicly prosecute them so that that's the best deterrent  i'm just going to ask a couple of questions i know we are going to be called away to vote soon in a few minutes chairwoman rodriguez it's my understanding that the former chairman sent a letter in two thousand and four to the department of homeland security expressing his concern about the lack of plans to deal with disruption of elections due either to a catastrophe  of whatever nature and that he never got any answers letter which i guess it's good to know i'm not the only one that never gets an answer from the department of homeland security that the question is have they even though they never answered the letter have they provided ok i just want to follow up a little bit more on the whole issue of in the case of a disaster that disrupts voting how we deal with that which is really the purpose of this hearing  the i think i agree with senator feinstein that if there's a disruption in one place i mean you know you don't cancel the election i mean we're america we hold elections we choose our leaders ourselves and that should be our plan having said that you know having been through the loma prieta earthquake and some other disasters there are some things where you just you can't proceed at the moment in a particular area and  mr davis is right it's difficult to decide who makes that decision in a way that a political that that isn't biased towards a party or candidate and it strikes me that if we were to set some standards at least for federal elections put a statute in place that would only be viable to stay didn't have a system in place i mean the states that do would be fine  that involve really the judiciary which is the least political of the three branches of government that that that might be at least a useful thing to do do you have a reaction either one of you to that concept like the concept because it would go to the state first does the state have something but when in an event that the state didn't certainly in my opinion i mean a good position to set some parameters on how the authorities exercise and that's one way of approaching it i think anytime you had an election that involved federal candidates even under wisconsin situation we'd be consulting with our u s attorneys for example  with election day emergencies is what should congress or the commission do between now and october to help or encourage states who have not prepare themselves as wisconsin and florida and others have to do so because you know i think the likelihood is what you know natural disasters can happen anywhere and  used for contingency planning but it doesn't look to me from the reporting data that any other states have used hobbit funding to put contingency planning in place so what's your suggestion for us to get states who have not each of you for your testimony note as i said earlier that we will keep the legislative record open for five legislative days if there are additional questions that members have we will for them to you and ask that you respond as promptly as possible we thank the the witnesses all of all all of you a lot of people don't realize the witnesses are volunteers here to help our country do the best job possible so we appreciate the expert advice we've gotten today thank you very much in th