[Music]
hi everyone we're in the enviable
position of standing between you and the
reception so we'll try to make it worth
your while if we can I'm David Becker I
am the executive director and founder of
the Center for election innovation and
research I've worked in elections for
over 20 years now many of them serving
as an attorney in the Justice Department
and I founded Cir to help improve the
integrity security and accuracy of
elections mostly in the United States
but also worldwide you may have heard
there's an election coming up in the
United States in nineteen days to be
precise just curious how many in here
who are eligible vote plan to vote in in
this election okay that's a lot of hands
just remember if you don't vote you will
have lied to me because people lie about
voter voting all the time because they
know they're supposed to do it so what's
gonna happen starting now actually is
about a hundred million American
citizens are gonna go out and vote in
this election to choose their government
in fact over two million already have
voted and when you get that many people
doing something like that it's natural
to have problems in a major election and
so you probably recall stories from
previous elections where there are
exceptionally long lines where people
are confused or people don't getting the
right information going to the wrong
place not sure what's on their ballot
and fears back someone who's very high
up in government came to me and said um
you know I've got a great idea on how to
fix this he said let's make elections
like Jiffy Lube
go on I'm interested so he said no hear
me out
so oil changes used to be really really
tough they used to take a long time they
were a big hassle but then Jiffy Lube
came along with a model and people were
in and out in 15 minutes it was great I
looked him and I said that's a great
idea because elections are just like oil
changes if everyone got an oil change on
the very same day every two to four
years in a building that was never
designed for oil changes conducted by
someone who had never seen the underside
of a car
so that's a challenge as election
officials face in this country everyone
expects everything to go smoothly but
there's a lot going on during that
during that election time and so a few
years back I hosted a conference with
about 200 leaders in the election field
people work in campaigns election
officials from around the country
Republicans Democrats and ask several of
them there's one thing that we could
work on and try to fix what would it be
and it was pretty much unanimous they
all said voter registration the voter
lists and the reason why is because
almost all of the problems you see in
elections when you're watching the news
or you might personally experience are
because there was an inaccurate or not
up-to-date record in a voters file that
can lead to long lines it can affect
even people behind that person in line
and lead to longer lines so why do we
have such trouble keeping the voter
lists up to date there's one big answer
for that mobility we as Americans are
very very mobile society one in eight
Americans moves in any given year and
that rate is about double amongst young
Americans and one thing about voter
registration is people don't understand
how it works about a third of people
think voter records just magically and
automatically update I moved I told the
post office I told the Motor Vehicles I
maybe told nobody but why isn't
magically updating and about 50% of
people don't know they can update their
voter registration address at the DMV at
the same time they're doing that and
that's despite the fact that's been
federal law for a quarter of a century
then adding to that is the pace of voter
registration elections is a business
with a forty eight month cycle I don't
know of any other business like that
we're 46 months of that cycle things
move on at a pretty easy clip and then
for about one to two months they spiked
off the charts what this means is if
someone moved in January of 2017 the
election officials probably aren't going
to know about it until October of 2020
in the meantime they're not getting any
information about the elections that are
relevant to them where they're where
their polling place is and election
officials are sending mail out to
someone who's who doesn't need it
because they're not there anymore so we
did some research on this I let
research a few years back to look at try
to quantify exactly how out of date the
voter lists are here's what we found
about one at 1.8 million records of
deceased individuals of still on the
rolls I choose to call them having voted
or aged out of voting and then about 2.7
million people were registered in
multiple states now were these people
committing fraud no these people had
moved out of their state had gone to the
new state and done what they were
supposed to do which is register to vote
because they were good citizens but
there was no way that their old state
ever could find out about that there's
no method for that and in fact there are
people here in this room right now who
have more than one voter registration
record somewhere in the United States
and you have no intention of casting two
ballots it's not fraud it's just an
administrative and efficiency so all
told we did the math and came up with a
number about 24 million records that
were out of date at any given point in
time that's about one in eight voter
records in the United States this has
real consequences because when people
show up at the at the polls and they try
to vote and their records out of date
they can't be given a regular ballot and
some of these people leave without
voting and about 300,000 votes it was
estimated or lost due to registration
problems in 2016 2016 was an election in
which about a hundred thousand votes
decided the election in three states and
then we have another problem with voter
registration not enough people were on
the lists about one in three eligible
voters isn't on the list anywhere
that's 73 million people so this is a
very difficult problem we we were trying
to solve it it's a problem I'd love to
get my hands around and what I did is I
formed a working group of about 40
experts election officials people from
both parties researchers and it occurred
to me that this might not be just a
policy problem this might be a data
problem in that election officials will
tell you one of the things they have a
great deal of difficulty with is even
when they do get information they might
have a John Doe on their voter list and
a John Doe from some other data source
but there's no way to say with any
degree of certainty that they are the
same John
oh this actually goes to so much of the
private sector problems and government
taking - taking data from two different
sources and trying to reconcile it and
save matches to the same individual so I
started asking around I to find someone
who might know something about this and
I got the name Jeff Jonas and so I I
called him up and asked him if he would
take part out Jeff felt I'll let you
tell the rest of the story I was I was
sitting there minding my own business he
calls me and goes hey do you want to be
part of a working group we're gonna
write a report
he's lucky I have this Jim Carrey
yes-man problem if you've seen the movie
because I knew I shouldn't but as it
turned out they needed this thing called
record matching the term of art for it
these days though is called entity
resolution this is my definition it's
when it's recognizing when two things
are the same two identities are the same
despite having been described
differently but in fact the converse is
true is recognizing when two
observations relate to different
identities despite having been described
similarly here I've just edited jrnsr
there's only now one letter different
and you have experienced this yourself
in probably many different ways if your
if your contact list and your phone has
duplicates that's an entity resolution
problem when you get duplicate mailings
when I go to a hotel and check-in and I
say look up my loyalty Club number they
say which one of you are you in here of
these three in Vegas and I'm like
they're all me we see banks kicking
customers out in Hong Kong for doing
money laundering and then they just turn
right back up in India with a different
Passport that's an entity resolution
problem and when evil people try to
sneak into the country and all they do
is change one letter in their
immigration form and we are government
misses them well that's an entity
resolution problem so I've been building
systems like this built one for the
casinos it became known as no we're a
non-obvious relationship awareness
they're trying to keep clever bad people
out by beyond buys it for
in 2005 buys my company they call it
identity in sight and in 2009 I went to
an executive and IBM and said will you
give me fifty million dollars to build
something I'm on a code name at g2 and I
want to create an AI that will do entity
resolution not use AI to do any of the
resolution but I want to build an AI
that does it it's human smart but
doesn't need humans to train it or tune
it and they let me get started and I'm
obsessed with this because I could only
build one thing that's what I would want
to work on next and I'm obsessed with
entity resolution because it's so
fundamental to all forms of intelligence
not just machine intelligence but we're
walking around the conference and I see
you and recognize you from somewhere
that's entity resolution it's in biology
I don't know if any of you who've seen
this called a lion whisperer
the beginning of this videos like this
the guys standing there in Africa and
he's going oh it's been a while since
I've seen him but I was raised with them
here kitty-kitty-kitty if you're
thinking how's this gonna turn out so
kitty kitty a couple of them come
running at him and then give a big hug
nice entity resolution so before I show
you how entity resolution was applied to
voter registration I'm gonna take you
through something a little 101 class I
like to call slow motion entity
resolution I spent 30 hours on the next
few charts so I want you to really work
this look at these three records and
tell me or consider I should say is this
one person two or three yes how many
think it's one how many think is to
three people well let's take a look at
this record the first record and the
third record share the same name address
and cell phone the first record and the
second record share a name a cell phone
and the date of birth except it's only
month and date transposed it turns out
this is a pretty
safe bet to put these three records into
one now this one here is pretty easy
same person or different the point is
here you can't just take the same email
address and assume two people are the
same too many families share email
addresses so you have to keep this out
we would think of it as a discovered
relationship and while I'm on
relationships this is kind of a freebie
but you also learn disclosed
relationships this is the spouse maybe
on the employment application or the
bank loan now take a look at records 6
compare it to record 1 similar name same
date of birth would you be really sure
it's the same person
hmm not so much so you have to hold that
out you have to be pessimistic you've
just called a possible match it would
take some human or some more information
to become sure about this now this has
been a tricky one over the years in
entity resolution where would you put
this record who is it if you're not
careful
it just gets randomly assigned to record
1 or 4 which would be really bad because
if record 7 said like shoot on sight
then you're like 50/50 got the wrong
person
and then the next recommendation would
be send the family flowers ok and so in
this case if that entity e1 in the
center didn't exist you could be pretty
confident that record 7 was part of e 2
in record 4 and vice versa if record 4
didn't exist you could be pretty sure
was part of e1 but because they both
exist it really could be either and so
you just really to be pessimistic yep to
keep it out now take a close look at
this record here and compare it to
record 2 name address cell phone good
it's gonna become part of e 1 but does
anybody want to bark out what they think
might else happen yeah so what you learn
when when record 8 becomes part of e 1
you learn an email address
and because of that record six now is
not just name and date of birth record
six is name date of birth and email
address not excuse me not date of birth
but it now a conjoins now this one here
is actually really hard to do at scale
record number nine shows up and compare
it to record three the names the same
except it's got seen here it's got the
same driver's license number but the
date of birth is not like one and two
the moment this record shows up it it
reveals to you that record three is
really the senior and you've had a
false-positive you've put two people
together when you shouldn't have and so
when nine shows up you have to pull
three out two more I spend a lot of time
on that part okay record ten think about
where that goes what you'll notice is
that it shares an address with one and
three but nothing else it shares the
name with record six the aka
it shares a phone with record to most
entity resolution systems are trying to
compare it to records like that but if
you think about it inside of that record
II won he won with all those records in
it has been learning the name and the
aka both phone numbers all the addresses
and so record ten doesn't match any
single record but it matches that hold
identity
this by the way turns out to be really
important to catch clever bad people
because clever bad people don't use the
same name address phone driver's license
on every record only the idiots do that
and they run out of gas on the way to
the operation they take wet matches to
the bomb okay and finally their EP Irish
is what if you are obligated by law to
delete record eight or it expires when
you lose eight you have to remember you
have to unlearn why six was a member so
the moment you delete 8 you have to be
able to pull six out and you're not sure
about ten anymore either
so that's entity resolution kind of 101
I've not had a room I've surveyed people
and it's really difficult for a human
being to just keep this in their head
and get those different moves correct
and so here's how it applies now to
voter registration here you have two
voter records and now that I've turned
you onto entity resolution experts those
two records you they're in two different
states two different addresses Maryland
Virginia they share a name that's
similar in a date of birth but that's
not enough each state has its own
driver's license number
but election offices have access to DMV
data and this DMV record finds its home
here because of the name the address and
the date of birth and the driver's
license and that left side has just
learned a Social Security number and the
Virginia office has access to DMV and
this record shares the name date of
birth and Virginia driver's license and
it connects this way and now both sides
have the same name date of birth and
social so the moment that final record
shows up in the lower right it does that
so the architecture of the system is
like this these records are arriving
from these different election offices
their voter and DMV data and then it
allows this central database to produce
recommendations for example ask Marilyn
let them know that maybe their voter has
moved so they can contact the voter and
that's where this thing G 2 is entity
resolving these records now we did one
more thing it's a privacy by design
feature in you know name and address or
public record but driver's license
social security number and date of birth
or not and so what we did is we
anonymize these kind of watch this close
I didn't know how to show you it's gonna
jiggle and then go to hashed values so
it's hashed with the secret key there
and then when it arrives in the at this
in the center where the indexes
it's hashed again and this helps reduce
the risk of unintended disclosure if
Sundy was listening into the piper
steals the database and so this is what
you know I helped with designing in this
working group and then what happens next
is the hard part so now fast forward to
2012 well before that I should sexually
say we're sitting when Jeff first kind
of roughly sketches out the architecture
for this a room of about thirty-five
forty hardened cynical election souls
who had been struggling with this
problem for decades and he puts it out
and they're this hush fell over the room
for a second and then one of them a
secretary of state of a big state
she literally gasped and we all kind of
crap cracked up for a second but it was
because all of them saw for the first
time there was a path forward to fixing
this really insoluble problem and that
was ultimately to create something we
call the Electronic Registration
information center or to make it a
little more manageable we call it Eric
for short so we launched Eric in 2012
it's a 501 C 3 it states voluntarily can
choose to join and the states that
participate run eric eric is not run by
me it's not run by the government it's
run by at least the federal governments
run by a Board of the states that that
participate and the first seven states
that joined in 2012 are Washington
Nevada Utah Colorado Maryland Delaware
and Virginia and then fast forward to
today we now have 24 states plus DC in
Eric states that range from as blue as
Connecticut Delaware and Oregon to as
red as Louisiana Utah and Alabama I
challenge you to find any voluntary
organization that has those states in it
doing the same thing in the same way and
you'll see in light blue they're kind of
aqua Florida and Massachusetts of both
passed bills to join as of next year
that will take the membership and Eric
over about the 50% of the American
population threshold what's really
remarkable is the success Eric has had
and enabling these states in a very
non political nonpartisan way to keep
their lists more up to date and I'm
gonna give you a little a little insight
into that first one of the things Eric
is found in just six years it's
identified over 7.2 million records of
voters who have moved in their same
state now think about this for a second
these voters the way Eric discovered it
because they told DMV that they had
moved elections never heard of it
so this citizen did exactly what they
were supposed to do and government
didn't have his act to have its act
together to share that information with
other agencies because of this these 7.2
million voters we're able to get their
addresses up to date meaning they're
getting information on elections that
are relevant to them not elections at
their old address they know where to
vote they know when an election happens
then an edition Eric has identified over
2.2 million registered voters who moved
out of the state there was no way for
States to do this before so person moves
from Colorado to Utah Colorado learns
they've moved out they confirmed that
information consistent with federal law
Utah then can actually invite them to
register and I'll talk about that in
just a second Eric also identified
220,000 people who've aged out of vote
aged out of voting and that's very very
helpful because one of the things that
people are very worried about is the
potential for fraud and although this
happens extremely rarely it's really
good when election officials can
demonstrate that they've done what they
needed to keep the voter lists up to
date even as people are dying and and
remove them from the list and then
lastly Eric does something really
interesting
Eric identifies in all of the states
that participate people who are eligible
but are who are not yet on the voter
list and the states agree that they're
gonna contact every single one of those
people and invite them to register
usually by secure and efficient online
voter registration as a result millions
of new registered voters I estimate that
somewhere between five and six million
in just six years
by definition new because they weren't
on the list before are now on the voter
lists in the Eric states this is the
single most effective voter registration
drive in the history of the United
States as far as I know it wasn't
conducted by candidates
it wasn't conducted by political power
it wasn't conducted by ideologues it was
done by government in a equal basis on a
nonpartisan basis all across the country
and all of that information is accurate
and up-to-date and none of this would
have been possible but for the
technology that Jeff gave to Eric and
tell them how many people in the IT
department of this Eric organization
that has almost 300 million records
probably 80 different files and running
half the states how many people in their
IT department in total and the states
are finding the data to being of
incredibly high quality to enabling them
to serve their voters better and while
this might all seem very esoteric to
people who don't work like I do in
elections all the time when you go vote
in a state that's participating in Eric
you're gonna see the benefits because
they're gonna be shorter lines there's
gonna be less of a possibility you're
gonna have to cast a provisional ballot
or be told you have to go somewhere else
there's gonna be more likelihood that
you get your stuff in your mailbox on
time and can vote early if you want to
or by mail and this is all thanks to
both the technology that that the Jeff
provided but also the privacy features
because one of the things that's very
important as we're dealing with voter
data although a lot of voter data is
public information as Jeff pointed out
date of birth social driver's license is
not and it's protected in every state
that I know of and so it was very
important that we made sure that
although we wanted the utility from
being able to use that information to
connect the dots to fit the puzzle
pieces together that we could protect
that data at the same time and Eric
wouldn't become a privacy problem so I'm
really glad we got a chance to meet and
work on this map I think it was really
his policy work the end of the
resolution part really isn't that hard
it's not magic so I was watching David
leave the policy work to make all of
this happen and it's been a project that
the team and I are really most proud of
about what entity resolutions done so
it's super exciting and then I actually
sponge you two out and one of a kind of
spin out into the sensing company and
we're still helping on the fraud
I'm still helping David as as his
aspirations to help roll this out across
more states anyway thanks thanks for
having us
[Applause]