Mr Secretary. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you. Let's talk about the fight against election fraud, which with some of your colleagues has turned into this fight over election fraud detection. I'm talking about Eric electronic Registration Information Center. It's this group of states, they share voter registration data trying to catch fraud, catch double voting people who may be registered in multiple states. They may not know it or they may have deliberately done it. Um Your state is not part of it, why not? So I'm new to the role but Idaho hasn't ever participated in Eric up to this point. I think my predecessor had made the decision not to participate. Uh Part of that was Idaho had participated in the Kansas Cross check program. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that, but it was an Eric alternative years ago. It didn't go smoothly as I always like to say, we still have some of the scars from that experience. And so I think our state's been hesitant in terms of just making sure that whatever we participate in that we're doing it wisely and protecting Idahoan's information. And so I right now with all the conversations going on. I'm kind of an outsider looking in trying to see where is this going to land in terms of this conversation. Uh but very interested in it because I do think it's an important thing as we continue to evolve in the election space. Uh Sharing data between states seems important, right? Every state needs to catch voter fraud, right? If it exists and, and just to be clear, it's very little, very few cases. Yeah, in my experience, so as an election official and as county clerk, we've definitely been involved in voter fraud cases where people voted, for example, in California, as well as in Idaho. Again, to your point, the numbers are small but that, but it highlights why the importance of sharing information, especially as more and more people are moving around the country. You know, I think one of the biggest challenges with this conversation as I'm talking to other officials is we all focus on our neighboring states or what I like to refer to as our feed feeder states. So for Idaho, it happens to be California, Arizona, Washington, Oregon. And when I talk to other secretaries, they name off their surrounding states. And if you're back east, it's Florida, for example. And so one of the biggest challenges is trying to get that collective action problem. How do we all come together to find *** way to do this successfully? Let's talk about another issue that has come up here at, at NAS every time I'm coming to one of these National Association of Secretary of State conferences. It's about disinformation, misinformation, the challenges. And so I want to talk to you about the new frontier when it comes to disinformation, artificial intelligence *** I deep fakes when you don't know if somebody speaking is actually real. Are you worried about artificial intelligence and deep fakes, misleading voters in your state? I think right now we're all trying to just wrap our heads around. It. Probably like you, I've experimented with chat GP T and trying to understand what it can and can't do. Um I've seen it do things that are really impressive in terms of what it's come up with. But similarly, I had to write *** bio of me and provided information that was written very persuasively but was in fact inaccurate uh going to the very core of your question, right? And so I think we're all trying to wrap our heads around. What does this look like now in practice, especially in, you know, political cycles, campaigns and others. But at this point, it's all novel and I don't think it's just the election space that's trying to grapple with this. I think you could go to academia, I'm sure in the media and everywhere else trying to understand how are we going to be able to define fact from fiction here in the future. So you're worried about it being used Yeah, I'm interested to learn more. I think, you know, *** conversation that we've already had here is just the question of it has great utility, right? And so not losing the sense of utility, but also understanding the risks that come along with that. Another issue has been about election workers. And so I want to read you this stat, the Brennan Center for Justice in April released survey results that found about one in five election workers. So 20% say they're thinking about quitting before next year's presidential election. That's the equivalent to 1 to 2 election officials quitting every day since the 2020 presidential election which saw unprecedented threats, disinformation COVID. So are you seeing higher than expected turnover of election workers in your state? I think we have previously. So I don't know that we're seeing it presently as much as we were right in midst the 2020 cycle, 2020 cycle wasn't just difficult because of kind of what has played after the fact, which is obviously where much of the narrative today. But remember this was the era of COVID and various restrictions and people feeling safe in polling places, whether that's safe for their health because of the spread of COVID or whether that was safe for their physical safety because of protesters or poll watchers or other conversations. So honestly, right now, when we look at our state, it's feeling better than where we were during the 2020 cycle. Hopefully, we can maintain that momentum and have people returning to the polling locations to serve. That said, I do know from election officials, the people in the counties doing it. It's been *** lot more strain, just dealing with the questions, the level of intensity. We've seen more retirements of long time county clerks in Idaho. And I think that's indicative across the country. Finally. What is your top priority as you prepare for the next statewide election? Honestly, the 2024 election I think is the top thing on everyone's mind is gearing up and making sure everything is in place for us in the secretary's office. It's making sure the counties have the resources and tools that includes making sure all the equipment is up to date um that we have the systems and standards in place to give the public confidence as we head in to vote in the 2024 cycle. Um So that's where *** lot of our intention will be, is just getting those counties prepared for what's going to come, Mr Secretary. Thank you for your time. Yeah, thank you.