- Hello, and thank you for joining us.

I'm Mark Baumgarten, Managing Editor for Crosscut and your host for this edition of Northwest Newsmakers.

Today, I'll be speaking with Washington secretary of state, Steve Hobbs about his role in assuring election security and access to the ballot, fighting misinformation in the run-up to this year's vote and the role of moderate Democrats in our current political landscape.

Before we begin, I wanted to let you know that there will be an audience Q&A near the end of our conversation.

You can submit a question in the chat section on the right hand side of your screen, right over there.

Okay, now onto the show.

Election security has been making a lot of headlines recently, just this past week, two major pieces of voting rights legislation have run into seemingly insurmountable obstacles in the Senate, but the integrity of the ballot has been an issue in the United States for over five years now.

And through it all, Washington state has been identified as an exemplar.

It's mail in voting system standing as a model during the 2020 election for states looking at ways to assure access and security for their voters.

Providing the state with some additional credibility on what has become a divisive partisan issue was the fact that an experienced Republican, Kim Wyman oversaw the process.

Actually Republicans have overseen Washington elections for more than 50 years, but when Wyman was tapped by the Biden administration to work on its election security efforts this past fall, that streak came to an end.

Governor Jay Inslee appointed our guest today, then a state Senator to the post.

When he did, the governor touted Hobbs's status as a moderate Democrat, whose record of bipartisanship, the governor said made him a good pick for an office accustomed to Republican occupants.

It's worth noting though, that as a state Senator, Hobbs served as a roadblock for some of the governor's top priorities.

So secretary Hobbs enters the office without the election experience of Wyman, and he faces an election landscape rife with mistrust and malevolent actors.

He's got a tough job.

Oh, and Hobbes is also going to have to find time to campaign for his new job.

He's running this year to finish out Wyman's term, which ends in 2024.

Secretary Hobbs, welcome to Northwest Newsmakers.

- Thank you Mark, thank you for having me on the show.

- So that's a lot to take on.

So tell me first, what are the threats that you see in Washington state when it comes to election security and integrity?

- Well, first of all, it's the cybersecurity that is under threat.

Kim Wyman did an excellent job of setting up the in office of cyber security, and we're gonna move forward and enhance that.

There are threats both inside and outside our state and the United States, and we have to be ready for those threats.

So I'll be expanding the office and increasing and enhancing our relationships with the National Guard.

Because here in Washington state, we are blessed to have a National Guard unit that is strong in cyber security.

The other threat that we have is combating misinformation and disinformation.

So what we will do is lean forward, we say, in the military, lean forward in the saddle.

And instead of sitting back and allowing a tweet to become a retweet, becoming a meme, and all of a sudden people believe in a false narrative of the elections.

We need to combat this right away, because as you can tell, and as the viewers have seen what happened in January six, people are starting to see our election system is not valid, at least a fraction of the population.

And so, for example, I always throw this example out to some of our members in the, in the legislature, let's say bad voter 29 tweets out that they saw a ballot box stuffing in some dropbox in Yakima County.

And we can go and check out Yakima County, ask the auditor there, ask the sheriff's department and see what the truth is.

And if we find out that it's false so we can immediately report it and stop it before it becomes a meme.

We even had an incident here in Washington state several years ago, where a county auditor simply wanted to have more ballot boxes dropboxes, and unfortunately he didn't have enough.

So he picked up ballot boxes in another county, got hungry as it used delivering the ballot boxes in his pickup truck (chuckles) at the Olympia Mall, and then went in and got a burger, and then all of a sudden people took pictures of his truck with these ballot boxes, right?

So.

- Mm-hmm.

- Can you imagine if you will, the tweet got out of hand and our outside competitors, nation states who are not our friends took that and ran with it.

That's why we have to be proactive in this.

- Hmm.

- The other thing we need to do is educate our public about, is that tweet real?

Maybe before you retweet it, you should see if that tweet is actually on the main new news channel.

And so it's a combination of things that we need to do to guarantee the security of our elections.

- So that's really a very different role from the secretary of state office than it was maybe 10, 20, certainly 20 years ago.

And you've said before that you wanna prioritize fighting misinformation.

And in his proposed budget, the governor is requesting $5 million for your office to fight misinformation and to quote, restore trust in elections and reach disengaged voters.

Is that enough money to get the job done?

- We believe it is.

And fortunately we have friends in the legislature and the governor's office that if it isn't, obviously we can try to ask for an increase.

But what we need to do again, is create a system in which we can actively go after this misinformation that happens on Facebook or a tweet.

But the other thing we need to do is educate the public.

I mean, how many of your viewers out there know of a, maybe a relative out there that sees a tweet or a Facebook post and take it at face value?

Well, part of the process is educating folks and many of them are seniors, so let them know that, look, that person may not even be real.

That tweet probably not real at all.

And so that's the second part of this that we need to do is a lot of education of our population.

- So the governor also announced earlier this month that he would like to make it illegal for politicians to lie about election fraud.

And I'm wondering, what do you think of that proposal?

- Well, our office is not gonna take a stance at this moment because we haven't really, I haven't really even seen the whole proposal and the fact that we need to, I mean, I don't even know if it's constitutional or unconstitutional, so we'll see what happens in the process, but you can see the frustration, right?

I mean, the governor was frustrated just like the population of the state and the United States of people poking holes at our democratic system, you know, our democracy (indistinct) elections, because, look, the governor was attacked in his own mansion.

So of course he he's concerned about it.

And many people across the United States are concerned about it.

- So, I mean, but it does speak to the fact that when it comes to misinformation, there are a couple of different things going on.

You mentioned the misinformation that's spread on social media.

You know, there also is, there were a number of efforts at challenges to results at the local level, in Washington state even following the 2020 election, they didn't get much attention because the results came back and the vote was very close, but there were certainly people in leadership positions who were calling into question the results in Washington state.

And so I wonder, you also have three of your former legislative colleagues who, it came out attended an event that spread misinformation about the 2020 election.

And I'm curious, have you spoken with any of them?

- I haven't spoken them about this particular issue, but I have dealt with them on different issues when I was a state Senator.

But what you're bringing up is the fact that here you actually have legislators that don't know what we do in this state and how secure our election system here is in this state.

We have logic tests, there are audits that goes on and perhaps they don't know that.

And the other thing that your viewers need to know is that a lot of this is done at the county level, and we will have Democrats and Republicans, in fact, they're required to be at the place when they're being counted at the auditors office when they're being counted.

Maybe they didn't know that.

I don't know, I'll have to bring them in and talk to them, but it is frustrating when you have elected officials trying to propose bills that do away with mail-in voting.

And somehow think that we can process millions of ballots in a single day.

You're gonna have the same situation that you've seen on the news of these long lines and voter suppression.

And that's what we don't wanna do.

This state has been great (chuckles) at allowing everyone to have a chance to vote if they're eligible and to think that it favors one side or the other is simply not true.

And I know this because I was in the minority when I was in the Senate, (chuckles) because the people of Washington state voted to flip the Senate.

So maybe it's something I need to do to reach out to those representatives and senators out there that don't understand what is going on in our state.

- So, I mean, do you view that as a responsibility of your office to actually, to use it as almost a bully pulpit (chuckles) to really bring in individual members who are falling out of line?

- Oh, absolutely.

And not just me, but I think it's you doing this show, it's our county auditors, it's our other citizens, and maybe a house member has a senator, the senator can talk to that house member.

We all got to communicate how important it is that our election system is secure, is safe, is transparent, otherwise we're gonna have outside actors continue to undermine our elections, and to think that perhaps that this isn't the democracy that we think it is.

- Okay, so in the interest of clarity, I just wanna clarify that that governor Inslee was not personally attacked last January 6th, but that his governor's mansion was attacked.

Just, I know that that wasn't what you were trying to say, but just in reference to previous comment from you.

- Right, right.

Well, I think we can agree, when your house is being broken into, it's gonna freak you out.

(laughing) - No, absolutely, absolutely.

But just wanted to be clear on that point.

- Right.

- Okay, so as I noted in the introduction, the two voting rights bills at the federal level appear to be stalled in the Senate, though, it looks like there will be some debate this week.

How would the failure of Democrats to get either of those pieces of legislation passed affect your job?

- Well, the great thing is, we're doing like 90% of it already.

So there's really not much of a failure.

I mean, the things in those bills that maybe we haven't done is we haven't made you know, election day a holiday.

But funny thing is, I actually introduced a bill probably the first couple of years when I was in the Senate to make the election a holiday.

So maybe we get to do that again.

Now, unfortunately we all have to work here in the secretary of state's office when that's going on, but I wouldn't be opposed to that.

But there's very few things in those federal bills that we need to do because we're doing most of it.

I don't think it's the failure of the Democrats, I think it's the failure of America if we don't pass these things, because we have to allow people the opportunity to vote and not be suppressed.

There are disenfranchised communities, underserved communities out there that are not having the opportunity to vote.

You saw the long lines out there.

I mean, how sad is that, you try to go to vote and because you're working a job to support your family, you didn't make it in time to get to the very end of the line.

That's not right.

It's a good thing here in Washington state that you can vote early.

So you don't have to worry about that.

You can put your ballot right in your mailbox, or you can drop it off at our many ballot boxes that we have across the state.

- So the long lines have been a part of elections for a while now, but the landscape is changing, you know, and I wondered what you make of the laws that are being passed by Republicans in other states to change the way that elections are run.

I think we're looking at 32 laws in 17 states that makes some changes at the local level in how elections are run.

Of course, Washington State is not one of those states, but I'm curious from your perch, what's your view on what Republicans are doing?

- Well, I wanna make this very clear because it's not all Republicans.

It's probably the most extreme of Republicans.

There's plenty of Republicans out there, Kim Wyman is one of them that would disagree with members of her own party out there.

So I would say the extremists and those that really hold on to the Trump ideology are the ones that are suppressing the voters and my feeling of that is well, that's sad, 'cause we're taking a step backwards, or walking all over the voter protections that were put in this country.

And unfortunately the Supreme Court shut it down.

And so the only way to get that back is through federal legislation.

And it saddens that it's sitting in DC right now and not passing.

So hopefully there will be some way, some compromise that will allow that bill to get through.

- I mean, do you play a role at all?

I just wonder if you, like, do you have conference with other secretaries of state in states that are impacted here?

You know, what is your personal role?

Do you have any, if you have any at all?

- Well, so there is an association, the National Association of Secretaries of State.

So I am part of that.

There's also, I guess, caucuses within that association.

There's so there's a Republican association secretaries of state, there's a democratic association secretaries of state.

So yes, we're a chatty bunch and others are, a lot of the secretaries kind of admire what we're doing here because we were basically following the federal legislation except for a few things that I just mentioned.

- Hmm.

So you mentioned Kim Wyman earlier, and I'm curious about your relationship with her.

Of course, she works in the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency now, have you spoken with her since taking office?

And if so, what, what's the nature of those conversations?

- Haven't spoken to her since I've taken office, we spoke a lot before I took office.

And hours of conversations actually helping me get in to the role and I commence former secretary Wyman for what she's done, because she created a cybersecurity cell and then we're building upon it.

Her request to the budget, the governor's budget before I got to pull it back was having a person that deals with misinformation, disinformation.

Luckily I was able to enhance that and expand upon it, and you see it in the governor's budget, but she started a lot of the programs that we are building upon in this office.

- Hmm.

And is there, I mean, is the work that she's doing at the federal level, is that going to impact Washington state at all?

I mean, do you see any future collaboration there?

Is she gonna do us any favors?

- Oh, I mean, absolutely, and this office already deals a lot with our federal partners in terms of cyber security.

In fact I've had meetings with them.

But yes, I mean, because it's a big deal, you're having attacks against election systems from all kinds of actors, 100s of them, 1000s of them.

And we need to be prepared for the worst case scenario.

- So former secretary Wyman has praised by you here right now and by many, many people, but I'm curious, if there are, is any criticism that you have of the office that you inherited?

And maybe not criticism, but what are the things that your office is going to do that maybe Kim Wyman's secretary of state office did not do?

- So, the things that Kim Wyman didn't do is mostly because of time.

And she knew that she was going to leave for the Biden administration before she made her announcement to the governor.

So some of the things that she didn't put into place that I've already done, I have the vaccine mandate, doing some minor decision-making on the new library that's coming up.

There was a, some rulemaking that needed to be done on protecting digital signatures, which by the way, we need to protect our digital signatures.

And so those are the things that she did.

Oh, and then on top of that, being able to enhance the budget request that Kim had.

So came out of budget requests, I came in a little late after the deadline, but luckily the governor in the Office of Fiscal Management was allowed me to resubmit a budget.

- Hmm.

- That could reflect the security needs and demands of this office.

- So just to clarify, was it your understanding that Kim Wyman would have instituted a vaccine mandate for the secretary of state's office if she had remained in office?

- That I don't know, I'm just telling you.

- Okay.

- That I decided to put the (chuckles) vaccine mandate on there.

- Right.

It just, to me having been activated in the National Guard for almost over a year and a half, being on the front line of it and my wife working in a nursing home, so in the healthcare, I just felt we had to do it.

I did not want to see any of my employees get hurt or die from this horrible disease that's been happening.

I felt really bad when the trooper, when I was the chair of the Transportation Committee, we had a trooper pass away, he was in his mid 30s, he had two boys.

He was not an anti-vaxxer, it was simply, apparently I heard he was just too busy.

And so can you, I just feel like I'm saving lives by doing this.

And I know there's a few folks that probably will disagree with me, but those are very few.

Those are very few people.

- So back to, you mentioned the governor's budget.

So one item in there is over $600,000 to expand access to the ballot in county jails.

Was that an addition by you or was that something you inherited from Wyman's office?

- No, actually that was a governor request in his budget.

- Oh, okay.

And so I wanna use that as a way to sort of just open up a conversation about access.

Are you putting a greater emphasis on access in your administration?

And if so, what are the efforts to expand access that are underway?

- Absolutely, one of the big deals, is just informing people (chuckles) that they have the ability to vote in this state.

We're gonna reach out to tribal communities, the underserved communities across the state.

A lot of the money, one thing we didn't talk about is outreach, outreaching to these communities that haven't been outreached.

And part of it has to do with the pandemic as well that's been happening, but we wanna go to every naturalization ceremony that we can go to, to register these new Americans, these new citizens to vote to be part of the process.

And so, yes, we're putting a lot of effort into that as well.

- So how do you identify the populations that you need to reach out to?

I mean, certainly, naturalization ceremony, that's a clear outreach opportunity, but how are you going about finding out who needs to get this message?

- Certainly, I mean, we obviously will have, we have demographics and data, and we already know that we need to go to the tribes and many have asked for that.

We'll try to do what we can to help the tribes, other underserved communities, obviously the naturalization ceremonies that we'll be at, and a lot of it has to do with language, right.

So we have to make sure that we have enough information out there and the proper language of their particular, where they came from, their home country, because they may not know English coming here and to assist these folks.

I wanna take part in the process of democracy in Washington state.

- Hmm.

All right, Kim Wyman talked about making the secretary of state's office, a nonpartisan office.

Do you support that idea?

- I mean, if the bill passed, I'm fine with that.

I mean, I would have no problem supporting a, I'm not Senator anymore, but I have no problem with that.

But right now it is a partisan office.

- Is that something that you would push and promote though, rather than simply accepting?

- Well, the thing is, is that it has to do with the fact, you only have so many opportunities to pass your policies and that, if I felt like if I was gonna do that bill, then maybe I'd lose another bill because I have a bill, the trying to protect digital signatures.

I'm trying to pass my budget request and what I don't wanna do is have it all moneyed up and lose an opportunity.

Maybe it's something in the future, but right now, when I just got in here, I really wanna concentrate on the security of our election system.

So cybersecurity, combating misinformation, and disinformation, and doing voter outreach.

That's why I'm trying to focus on those areas.

- All right.

Okay, I'm gonna take a moment and just talk to the audience at home.

We do have a Q&A coming up in about 10 minutes.

So please get your questions in for secretary Hobbs.

And I wanted to take a step away from elections for a moment and talk politics if you don't mind.

So it's no secret that your departure from the state legislature removes an obstacle for the more progressive members of your party, including the governor.

And as a more moderate Democrat, what are your concerns when you look at the current legislative session?

- Well, you know, I've been there for 15 years and I don't see anything different.

It's the typical situation where you have, you know, party is in charge and they're trying to pass their policies.

It's no different when the Republicans were in charge.

We've got some really good moderates over there.

Mark Mullet, Annette Cleveland, Kevin Van De Wege, there are others on different issues.

So I think that the Senate and the House are gonna do fine on trying to pass bills that move our state forward.

Now, obviously there'll be some things that I disagree with, but that's the democratic process.

And the great thing is this all gets sorted out at the ballot box in November.

So if they go too far, that party could lose power.

- Hmm.

Are you a, do you miss it?

I mean, like you said, you've been doing it for 15 years.

Is it weird to have a January where you're not starting a new session?

- Well, you know, on the first day of session I was here, I'm in it.

So (chuckles) I get to still play in regards to my own bills and legislative priorities.

So I don't really leave it.

- Right, right.

So you have been an outspoken moderate.

What do you think about the debate within your party at the national level?

Do you think Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are being treated fairly?

- You know, as someone who represented a swing district and being a centrist Democrat, and still a centrist Democrat, it's tough.

No doubt about it.

What I like to do is understand where other people are coming from.

And I wish everyone would do that because here's the thing.

I don't bemoan my colleagues who represent Seattle districts, those are uber progressive.

And so of course they can't vote my way.

My hope is, is that everyone will understand the situation of where you live, right?

So for example, Joe Manchin was at West Virginia.

I mean, do you really expect him to vote with the Democrats every single time?

I think parties have got to take a step back and go, you know, what, if you're the Democrats and go, you know, we're not happy with Joe Manchin not voting our way, but thank God that he's there because we're in the majority.

And sometimes, well, actually it seems to happen almost all the time as the years go on, as parties hold on to power, whether you'll be a Republican or Democrat, you forget that.

And you go after the very moderates that put you there in the first place, because you want purity.

And unfortunately that happens on both sides of the aisle.

And I'm just hoping that maybe there'll be a day where we can (chuckles) all take a step back and go, you know, I wonder if that person is representing their district because at the end of the day, that's what a democracy is.

That's why you get elected, you're elected by the people and they expect you to represent them.

So, yeah, I know you're upset with Joe Manchin.

I'm upset with him on some of these issues, but guess what?

He represents West Virginia, (chuckles) it's a pretty conservative state that voted very heavily for Trump.

- Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Okay, so a final question from me before we move over to the audience questions.

And I wanna talk a little bit about the election that you're going to be actually in, in this coming November.

I know that you cannot talk about the particulars of that election, but I wanted to ask you about just sort of like a more sort of general question, and that is, how do you run a campaign likely against a Republican candidate while at the same time trying to build trust with the Republican electorate within your role as secretary of state?

- Certainly it's gonna be the same way I did it in the state senate, because in order to win my district, I had to have gained the trust to Republicans otherwise I was gonna lose (chuckles) the election.

And that is no different.

I'm not gonna change who I am.

I'm a moderate, I'm a centrist.

And I'm going to try to reach out to Republicans as well as my own party as Democrats and independence.

And I get along, I think right now we have Senator Wagner who's the senator who filed against me and we're friends.

In fact, when I was on National Guard duty, running his food bank in his district, I met him many times to introduce him to my soldiers that were helping his community.

So I don't think that's gonna change for me and to me, that's not a problem 'cause I've done it so many times.

- And an additional question on here is just, I mean, as I noted, your office has been held by a Republican for over 50 years, statewide office in Washington state.

Do you feel like there's particular challenges just because the state is accustomed to voting for Republicans for this office that you face?

- I think there are definitely folks, and I'd say mostly on the Republican side, not all of them, right?

There's a few, it's like the feel that this needs to remain in Republican controlled hands, but I don't, like it doesn't weigh on me that often, simply because look, the circumstances, the way they were is the reason why you had Republicans here because Kim Wyman was a good (chuckles) secretary of state.

Right?

And she knew what she was doing, and she was right for the job, same with Sam Reed, same with Ralph Monroe.

And so now we're at an age where we are worried about cybersecurity and misinformation.

There's a different skill set that's needed for this office.

And so that's why, well, some say that the governor picks somebody and I believe this, that understood the need and the nexus of protecting our election system and national security.

And so that's why I was picked for this job.

- All right.

So that's it for me, but let's move to the audience.

These are the tough questions.

So I hope you're ready.

So from Sue, do you deal with misinformation from China and Russia I think in a different way than you do domestic threats?

And so I guess, what's the balance there, as far as looking at actors from out of state?.

- It'd be the same for any, like any tweet or Facebook posts will be treated the same.

So we have to validate, you know, is a true or not true?

Is this person real or not real?

And that's how it we'll approach it.

But.

- So it's really about engagement at the point of sort of impact rather than.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, okay.

- Yes, because it doesn't matter where it comes from, the threat will be the same.

And quite frankly, those outside actors are gonna disguise themselves as locals anyway.

- Right, right.

Okay, from Bruce, do you think about reaching out to voters in eastern Washington differently than western Washington?

Certainly, you talked about tribal communities, but what about in general, what's your answer to that?

- No, absolutely, there's different needs.

It's a lot more rural (chuckles) in eastern Washington, and there's different concerns in there.

And obviously, there's probably more distrust just because there's more Republicans in eastern Washington, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't service them because we should.

And so I look forward to talking to those communities about the security of our election system.

Maybe bring out some of the folks, some of the Republicans that actually are there counting the balance in the auditors office, and the Democrats, they're there.

So, no, I look forward to going across the state.

- From Carol, how do you deal with candidates that just won't concede after they've clearly lost an election?

So we're seeing more of this, I think, across the country, and yes, even in our own state, I believe we have a Republican candidate for governor who has yet to concede a year after the election.

What, yeah, is there anything that the secretary of state's office should be doing about this?

Is there a danger in this?

What's your take on?

- No, there's really nothing that we can do about it.

I mean, the nature of elections kind of fix themselves.

I mean, you don't have to concede at an election.

A lot of people don't, it's not just who I think the viewer was thinking about, it happens all the time because the election is certified and the right person that won the election will be sworn in.

So what it is, is it's unfortunate, especially at that level, because they're just feeding into the false narrative that our election systems aren't secure.

It's also sad that you can't get your message across, so in a way to say that you have the right message is you try to say (chuckles) that the election was false and that's a dangerous road to follow.

- So I've got a question here from Ellen, which I think everybody who casts a ballot is curious about as well, many people say that they find the advisory votes confusing.

Their first on their ballot and voters often don't know a lot about them.

Do you support either abolishing advisory votes or moving them to the end of the ballot?

- Yes, those are annoying.

(chuckles) But, and remember how you asked me that question, well, would you support that making the office non-partisan if there's a bill?

That is another example, it's like, well, yeah, but I've got to get the security issue first and combating misinformation and disinformation.

I think there are a couple of bills out there that do address that there, and maybe they'll come across.

We'll see what happens in the end.

But yes, your viewer out there was spot on, on some of that.

- So annoying, but not a top priority?

So.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

(chuckles) - Okay, a question from another viewer named Sue, you keep mentioning Twitter and Facebook, where else is your office looking for misinformation?

We've heard about misinformation spreading in other places like Reddit.

- Hmm.

- You know, what's being done?

So where are you looking and how are you making sure that you've got all your bases covered?

There's a lot of new social media ventures popping up where misinformation might be even more of an issue.

So how are you keeping track of these things?

- Yes, thank you, Sue.

Yes, that is absolutely right.

There are more, I just tend to go to those two, 'cause everyone knows them, but you're right, I could spend probably five minutes naming them all.

I mean, there's a lot out there.

And we will be looking at all of them.

No doubt about it because people who are trying to attack us use all the forms of social media.

- But is there, I mean, is there a, like, is there a particular person in the office or, I mean, how do you identify new, yeah, exactly, like walk us into the details a little bit about how exactly the cybersecurity effort works here.

- So I can't go into too much detail (chuckles) about the cyber security for obvious reasons.

- Right, right.

- And you gotta remember, cybersecurity deals with direct, we'll call them, I'm just trying to make it simplistic, direct electronic attacks to our systems, right.

- Right.

- So our servers, our computers, et cetera, et cetera.

Misinformation and disinformation is a separate thing.

- Right, thank you.

- And so what we will do is I'm gonna bring in experts, experts that have actually did this overseas, combating terrorists groups and other nation states.

And so we're gonna have to take that approach when dealing with the misinformation and disinformation here.

- Okay.

All right, from Mark, are there areas that Dems and Republicans can agree on when it comes to election security?

We're seeing a lot of divisiveness on this issue.

Where can people come together?

What are you finding?

- Oh yeah, absolutely.

Cybersecurity is number one.

I talked to Senator Braun, the minority leader in the Senate and I've got a good relationship with him.

And the great thing about Senator Braun is he is just like me, he's in the military.

I think he might've just retired, but he understands the importance of cybersecurity and combating misinformation and disinformation.

So yes, there are a lot of agreements that we can have with Republicans and Democrats.

- And then a question from Carol, oh, no, I'm sorry, not from Carol, we already asked Carol's question, from Jeff.

(chuckles) Sorry.

How worried should we be that people just won't trust elections anymore?

And I guess in this question is really about kind of how you approach a portion of the electorate that seems that it has given up on elections for a number of different reasons.

You know, how much of an effort do you put into it and then how do you talk to those potential voters.

- Very carefully and consistently and with respect and, you know, yes, Jeff, you're absolutely right.

I mean, at some point you just get frustrated because you can't get through to them and I'm sure some of your viewers probably have a relative, right, that when you see their name pop up on your cell phone and you're just like, oh man, I gotta talk to this person again.

No I get it.

But we just gotta be consistent about that.

But the other thing about this is that we need to educate the young people too, so that we create a generational trust in our election system that we have lost.

And so finding ways to reach out to young people is something that I would like to do in this office.

- So just zeroing in though, maybe on a particular part of the electorate, maybe people who, who think that January 6th was a rightful act in some way.

Are those people beyond reach, or is there an effort to try to bring them back into the fold?

- You know, I'm a man of redemption.

So I like to think that we could reach out to them.

And I think as a community, as a whole, as a society, that hopefully we can bring those folks around that.

At least that's my hope anyway.

- All right, Secretary Hobbs, that's it for questions from the audience.

So thank you so much for talking with us today.

- Thank you Mark, thank you for inviting me.

- All right, before we go, a reminder that while these events are free, they aren't free to produce.

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