Mr Secretary. Thank you for your time today. Honor to be here. Appreciate it very much. Let's talk about the fight against election fraud. Some of your colleagues have now pivoted to making it the fight over election fraud detection. And I'm talking about Eric, the electronic registration Information center. Some states with conservative uh secretaries of state are pulling out of that organization because of various concerns. The group of state shares, voter registration data trying to detect double voting and people who may be registered in multiple states. Your state is not *** member. Why? Well, it's money, it's expensive. And so we created and actually it was bipartisan, it was Claire MCAST goal out of Missouri Paul paid out of Iowa Ron out of Kansas. I can't remember Nebraska, two Democrats, two Republicans created cross check. It became incredibly political and states started pulling out and you know, it comes around campaign season and so they attack the system. *** lot of it was my predecessor um attacking the system saying they're taking our information and I think we had three or four lawsuits. Florida had some lawsuits and it ended up ending the program and what cross check did is check to see if you were double registered in another state. And did you double vote? Because states like Kansas City, obviously, we have people with interest on both sides of the line. Well, eventually New York Vermont and Florida were apart because they have people that go up and down and they want to see if they double voted. And I think New Hampshire found 17 people who had in fact double voted. So, but that became political at the end of the program. So, and it was mostly the Democrats who really wanted Eric and Eric is *** very robust system. I'm not, but it became political to help Eric. And so many folks left cross check or that were left cross check. But Eric was very robust and then through rumors and I think *** lot of it's unfair, it's the same thing is happening to Eric as just partisan on the other side. And so it's very, it's hurting Eric but I think it's also hurting the security of our elections. California has never been *** member of Eric and I said, I think we can afford it if California is based on population. If they joined, we could get in because it's gonna be *** mandate on our counties to pay for that. But with Florida, Texas and other states getting out now, I'm not so sure California would be enough. We're, we're *** very rural state with very limited resources So, I don't know the numbers for your state. Kentucky was 40,000. They've got *** $14 billion budget. So, do you know how much it was? It doesn't sound like *** huge amount to *** state. Well, ours was more than that. Um, but here it's not the state that has to pay for it because of our state laws and constitutions, the counties that have to pay for it. And so if you have *** county of only *** few 1000 people and your county clerk is part time or maybe full time with no staff, that's *** lot of work. Mm. And, and the cost could add up to *** rural county. It would absolutely. Now, if, if, if Texas Florida and Virginia and California were all in together, obviously, you disperse the weight of that cost and it would lower the cost for us. It still would be *** mandate on our counties to do the work. But the first mailing is the big one. The first year is the big one. Then it gets time as you continue to clean things up. So I hear you talking about how both kind of became political. You still need to clean the rules, you still need to fraud. You do. So that those are nice tools, but there's other ways. So there was *** Supreme court ruling that changed, that said if somebody is, has not registered to vote and they tried to do, they haven't even done an election activity, like change an address, signed *** petition. Nothing that county election official can send *** notice to them. And if after another cycle they don't respond, they can remove them off the rolls. And so we defined an election like you've asked for an advanced ballot, but you never turned it in. Well, that's fine. We know you're there. You are *** legitimate elector and you live at that residence. But we have situations where people live in our college dormitories that have been registered to vote, vote there for 25 five years. We know they're not there, but we didn't have *** legal means to remove them because I can't just go in like, oh, I know them. They're not there. I can't do that. But now we have *** mechanism for us to remove those. And obviously we get, you know, from social security, we get those who have, have died and canceled their social security. We get it from the address change to the United States Postal Service. Um, folks can cancel theirs. We also get it with somebody. Get in our state if you're, if you've been apprehended and committed *** felony and you're incarcerated, you lose your rights until you, you've made your paid your debt to society. Those are the reasons why they would come off the rolls. But the biggest one was *** name that was there forever. There was *** Supreme Court decision that kind of opened the door that makes it even better. Let's talk about another concern that some secretaries have been talking about. Well, quite frankly, I think most of them misinformation and disinformation. And so I want to talk to you about the next frontier in disinformation, artificial intelligence. *** I deep fakes. Are you worried about *** I and deep fakes, misleading voters in your state? I don't know if I'm worried it's just gonna happen, it's just gonna happen. Um I do believe that there's gonna be *** vacuum of genuineness, not only in political debate but in things that are real and markets, the come in cycles just like the stock market. Well, there's cycles in politics and I think there's *** vacuum right now for people who want to know what's really going on and I don't know what's gonna fill that vacuum but it's gonna be filled because if the vacuum is *** hunger for things that are genuine, the line won't fill it. And so I don't know how we get there, but I didn't know how we got to *** I either and we got there so we'll get there. But it's, it's gonna take some time. Yes, I'm concerned because misinformation will go out there. Um But even when the internet came, there's *** lot of misinformation. We had Snopes and we had people who filled the space that you could verify data. I think there will be people who want to fill that out and if people start having ***, *** natural aversion to not trusting the internet, probably not *** bad thing. I mean, sure, there could be *** deep fake of you saying, you know, look, the election has been moved from Tuesday to Wednesday. Absolutely. Absolutely. They, you know, we are already seeing some political ads that are created by *** I. Um, there's *** great Wall Street Journal article where *** reporter created an avatar *** I of herself and it called her bank and got access to her account and called her daughter and the daughter really thought it was her. So this is very, real, very fast and like anything else, it could be very positive, it could be very negative. But we'll always encourage people don't trust everything you see on the internet and verify, verify, verify. All right, let's talk about another challenge that you're dealing with as if you needed more challenges to deal with the Brennan Center for Justice in April. Released survey results that found about one in five election workers. 20% said they plan to quit between the next presidential election. That's equivalent. They said to 1 to 2 election officials quitting every day since the 2020 presidential election which saw those unprecedented threats, disinformation, COVID, et cetera. Are you experiencing higher than normal turnover of election workers in your state? We are, but we're managing it. So it's one of those things. Sometimes you make *** good decision not knowing *** pandemic is coming. We decided in the state of Kansas you could be as young as 16 and be *** poll worker and it looks great if you wanna put your, if you want *** resume for *** scholarship or going to *** university that has qualified admissions or military, if you want to go to the academies, it's, it's *** civic duty. It's not necessarily *** political, it's civic. Well, we have some teenagers that want to serve with their grandparents. Well, as their grandparents fall, decide they don't want to do this anymore. We now have an army of young people as *** matter of fact, during the, and we call it student serve and it's on our website at, you know, S Os dot ca s dot gov. And, um, but it's being said is if we can get more youth because as we use more technology to secure elections, this is the generation that grew up in the digital age. It's so intuitive to them and it's nice to see *** teenager and somebody in their eighties working together, you know, you get the book ends of society and, and so we've been able to manage it because of that. But yes, we are losing *** lot of institutional knowledge and it's, but we've been losing it since 2020. Finally, sir. What is your top priority for the next statewide election? Don't screw it up. It really, it really is. Don't, don't overdo it. Our job is to say here's *** result and there's the proof, there's the audit, there's the election. Let's move forward. We had *** lot of controversy. We were the first state after the doss decision on abortion and it went down and many folks were surprised that Kansas voted it down, but it was the political climate. So an individual out of Wichita put 100 and $18,000 on his personal credit card to do recounts in counties. Nothing changed. $118,000 didn't change *** thing. So I, our phone stopped ringing after that and those people who thought maybe there's something suspect, it just kind of faded away. There's always *** segment out there that are loud. Um But there are few Mr Secretary and the incoming president of the National Association of Secretaries of State. Thank you for your time. Thank you.