Mr Secretary, thank you for joining us in the fight against election fraud. Some of your colleagues have now pivoted to this fight over election fraud detection and I'm speaking about Eric, the electronic registration Information center, many states pool data about voter registration so that they can detect people who may be registered in multiple states or double voting, trying to catch and detect uh fraud. Your state is *** member of, er, we're *** founding member of, er, and that goes back to uh secretary Kim Wyman *** Republican and the reason why is the best tool to maintain your voter database uh to try to register new voters who are not registered. Uh There is no other comparable system that will do that for you. You're saying no other comparable system is that because for *** state that doesn't want to be part of, er, they have to do individual compacts, individual agreements with neighboring states and even those won't catch somebody if they move from Florida to Washington. For example, if you don't have an agreement with Florida. Oh yes. And, and on top of that, it's not just making these compacts, it's also the infrastructure involved and it's gonna take *** lot of money to get *** system like this in place that replicates Eric. Let's talk about another issue of concern. We're here at the National Association of Secretary of State's annual summer conference. I've been coming to this conference for five years. Misinformation and disinformation are *** perennial topic here. And so I want to talk about what may be *** new frontier of disinformation that is artificial intelligence. *** I deep fakes pretending that somebody said something that they did not. Are you worried about *** I and deep fakes, misleading voters in your state? I'm so worried that we introduced legislation just last session in my state. Uh Coming from my office that goes after the deep fakes, we saw what happened in the Ukraine when Russia invaded and there was *** deep fake of President Zelinsky telling his armed forces to lay down his arms. And I looked at that. I went, you know, that could be done. That could be *** campaign ad by an opposing campaign or for an overseas actor. So let's start the process of trying to ban that. And that's what we did in our state and you introduced legislation, but correct me if I'm wrong, it's been signed into law. It has been signed into law. Uh It was *** bipartisan effort. It wasn't easy. Uh We couldn't get the first year, but then the second year we were able to get through once we explained what it does because *** lot of people don't know. *** I is kind of the new thing and uh trying to educate our legislators to let them know that we have to get ahead of this threat. Very important briefly. What does the law do? Basically what it does is it has disclosure. So you have to disclose what you're doing. There is also *** private right of action that happens. I would like to take it *** bit further, but it's *** very good step on trying to curb this. Ok, let's talk about another issue of concern here. The Brennan Center for Justice in April released survey results that found one in five election workers 20% say they're planning to quit before next year's presidential election. That's equivalent 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 expecting higher than normal turnover of your election workers in your state? I am and it's happening right now and we look at the threat that's occurred in Washington State to the last Secretary of State, Kim Wyman. She received death threats. We also have threats going to our county, um, administrators actually administer the election. So in my state, the county *** all the way down to the election workers uh receiving these threats. And so I would love to see our nation's capital here pass *** bill that uh, puts larger penalties on these people that make the threats and my own state. Uh, we've been trying to pass *** bill to make it *** class c felony, unfortunately, didn't get through the senate. So next year we'll try again. Earlier today we interviewed your colleague from Minnesota, Steve Simon and that state did pass *** law increasing penalties for election threats, threats against election workers and election administrators. Well, I'm gonna have to let my legislators know. We can't let Minnesota be be finally, sir. What is your top priority for the next state wide election? It's gonna be again, uh getting doing the outreach and education. What's the best way of getting at misinformation? It's the truth. It's about letting people know how the ballot is being processed the life cycle of the ballot. We've been doing *** very good job of letting voters know about when to vote. So my state, you'll hear myself. County county s talk about, hey, don't forget to put your ballot in the mail or the drop box. But also, did you know the tabulation machines are not connected to the internet? Did you know you can come down to your county honor and witness the elections going on? We have to do more than just remind people to vote or getting out the vote. We have to let people know what happens to the ballot. We've taken it for granted and that's why you're having this misinformation. Just run free and, and cause all this drama that's happening in elections. And just to be clear, the last time you and I talked six months ago at the annual winter conference, I asked you if there was any widespread fraud that you had found that would have changed the result of any race in your state. The answer is still no, still, no Mr Secretary. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much.