>> President Donald Trump is re-upping his unfounded claims over voter fraud maintaining the 2020 election was stolen from him in a new escalation.

Trump is calling for Republicans to take over voting in at least 15 yet to be identified.

States and the FBI recently seized election ballots from a center in Fulton County, Georgia, as well as voting machines in Puerto Rico.

This has a new version of a voter ID bill is being considered in the U.S.

House.

Joining us to talk about all of that and more.

Our University of Illinois Chicago law professor Hugh Monday.

And Jacob, Ron executive director of the Cyber Policy Initiative at the University of Chicago.

He's also the former acting principal cyber director under the Biden administration.

Gentlemen, thank you both for joining are so starting with these election fraud concerns, Jake, when it come to you first, is there reason to doubt the validity of the 2020 election?

Absolutely not.

Very simple question.

There's a you know, no reason to doubt it.

Was there and was talk of this country called Russia that did somehow managed to infiltrate our elections.

Remind us what we know about what happened there.

So in 2016, we know that the Russian government scanned multiple voter registration databases throughout the country, including Illinois Cook County was actually one of the first ones to be discovered.

>> We don't have any evidence that they changed any records of votes or deleted people from the files or anything, just that they scanned the files and then stole the data so axle treated the data send it back to Russia and no evidence of them doing anything similar in 2020?

there's no evidence of foreign interference to election infrastructure since 2020 2016 domestic.

correct.

Okay.

>> Hugh, the Constitution specifies that elections are governed by the states that Congress has the right to set laws around the let the elections, is what the president calling for federalizing the elections.

Is that even legally possible?

>> The short answer is is no.

I think this is another attempt by the president to eye sort of undermine public trust in the integrity of elections.

also.

To sort of justify what's going on in Fulton County.

To the extent the search warrant has been as has been within the last few days, should people be concerned or how should we perceive it that the country's director of National intelligence?

>> Is overseeing what's happening in Georgia.

I think we should be concerned.

I think this is an attempt by the president to justify things like the save act, which are less integrity of elections.

Then disenfranchising voters and by making kind of proposals about federalizing elections.

I think he's making more palatable.

The idea of something like the save Act, which which again problematic, even though as you said, Congress does have the ability to pass around state elections.

>> Jake, what is the security benefit to having states administer and govern elections?

There's a series of them.

One of which may be the most important is that.

>> We have multiple.

Jurisdictions is about 8,000 jurisdictions in the country.

Both parties.

Are in office and different states and so on.

And so it's really hard to claim that one party stolen election if both parties are administering elections and 1000 jurisdictions across the country separately, it's really hard for one entity to come in and wholly hack the entire and of election infrastructure for one candidate.

When you get 8,000 little jurisdictions around the country that are administering these elections, Hugh, the Trump administration so far, we know they've sued 20 states and the District of Columbia in a bid to to see those voter rolls.

>> Why are states resistant to him that information over?

Well, again, because this if the Constitution says this is a highly decentralized process and I think states should resist.

I think what we're seeing in terms of the search warrant is an escalation of these attempts because the other >> attempts were civil in nature.

now that the that the FBI's executed a search warrant, any judge has determined that there's probable cause for a violation of federal laws.

It it makes it at point difficult to resist those those those efforts.

And so that's why I think we're seeing that sort of law enforcement piece this process.

>> There's been reporting from Reuters that on the Trump administration investigated Puerto Rico's voting machines citing research as reason for the seizure.

The government's probe did not find evidence of foreign interference.

Jake, why?

Why an investigation at all?

>> Well, it's interesting.

Some of the research they cited was research that we conducted Def Con the world's largest and longest-running hacker conference where we but voting machines and and identified vulnerabilities in those machines.

The vulnerabilities are not new in any way.

These again, we disclose these over a decade ago.

So why they're pointing the specifically right now.

is unclear again, there's vulnerabilities and any mechanical device that exist.

Whether be your toaster, your iPad or a nuclear weapon for that matter.

And so highlighting existence of these vulnerabilities doesn't really suggest to you that there's anything new to to really address.

What does your research show about those vulnerabilities?

What are they woods?

You know, with specifics voting machines so first voting machines are hackable like anything else.

You know, when when the election officials asked the vendors to make voting machines.

They asked him to do 2 things may come cheap and make them able to count votes, not make him able to withstand hacks from, you know, the Chinese government, a ransomware attackers.

And so they are what we paid for.

We pay for cheap devices that can count votes.

But the not very secure.

And so you can get at them remotely.

You can get at them physically and change things but also the software that ties it all together.

It is not secure and that can be accessed the at the Web sites of local election officials.

And so on and can get into the voter registration databases as well as the software, the program's the machine.

So there's a lot of vulnerabilities all throughout the equipment, which is why we've been calling from the beginning too.

Have folks smoke vote on hand marked paper ballots.

That's the number one most secure thing you can do for any voter front elections or 6 in the country.

Have voters spoke on the phone on him, mark paper, ballots secure.

But we also remember hanging chad and other situations from the year 2000, which I think was the catalyst that sort of led to some of the voting systems that we have today.

>> Our paper ballots as reliable when it comes to the villa validity of vote.

Sure.

So there there's been a lot of progress has been made from pregnant chads and dangling chads and dimples and all those things.

>> This can transit exist right now to come to count the paper ballots are our are pretty accurate and certainly as good as anything we had back in the 2000 send and what we sold with tooth out with the Help America Vote Act in 2000 in many ways introduced a whole host of new new vulnerabilities and problems that we're still fixing today.

>> 2, if 50 states.

And I I think Jake mentioned voting districts are voting areas in the country.

Does that not leave room for a lack of equity or fairness, right?

in Illinois, a bunch of us can vote early or not often.

But Illinois, I excuse me.

But in Mississippi, for example, early voting almost does not exist without a very special circumstances.

Is that fair to have this patchwork of of voting systems across the country?

Well, again, I think something like the save act, which is at least reportedly an attempt to standardize some of these pieces is going to result in disenfranchising voters just by putting requirement on that.

Some people simply.

>> Can't beat perhaps by virtue of not having a driver's again, the Constitution is very specific in terms of decentralizing elections and a to the extent that something like early voting exist, I think it it increases access to at the very end of the most local levels that is there is there not room for the federal government to implement something that everyone across the country would have access to?

For example, everybody gets early voting and mail-in ballot and absolutely the federal government could do that if it if it chose.

I think this this notion of this kind of federal takeover.

>> Or or nationalizing elections, whatever that means is far different from Congress coming in creating laws to standardize these processees briefly reporting.

And it found that 58% of Democrats voted by mail in 2020 compared to 29% of Republicans.

The president is also calling to abolish mail-in ballots.

to come back to you.

Security concerns around mail-in voting.

No, fact, it's one of the most secure ways because you're to hand marked paper ballot and you know, those ballots have to get to and to to usually the county, the counts, the ballots one way or another on Election Day.

Somebody takes the polling that box that the ballots are in drives them over the the county to count them.

And with absentees, the Post office So there's not really any infrastructure.

reason why a mail-in voting is any any less secure than voting Mark paper ballot on Election Day.

Can't hack a mail truck, right?

Okay.

You have to go out of