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With political tensions spilling over into security worries at election offices and against staff, the secretary of state's office is under the microscope as to keep elections safe and secure in the face of extremist threats, both foreign and domestic.

Tonight, we sit down with our secretary of state, who is already preparing for what promises to be one of the most consequential general elections of our lifetimes.

Our discussion with Steve Jobs is next on Northwest.

Now the 2024 election cycle is going to be big nationally, but not much of a nail biter here in Washington.

Washington will likely deliver its electoral delegates to President Biden.

And it looks like only the third congressional District will be competitive, possibly playing a key role in the balance of power in the US House.

The governor's race will be interesting since the Republicans are finally putting forth a credible candidate in Dave Reichert.

But chances are the Democrats will retain the so-called trifecta with the executive branch and the two houses of the legislature all under their control.

Statewide ballot issues are interesting this year.

Unless the legislature steps in to approve them, which isn't likely, voters will decide five big statewide ballot issues designed to largely unwind recent progressive wins on cap and trade, the capital gains tax police pursuits long term care, and several others overseeing it all.

As the secretary of State's office, a job currently held by National Guard Lieutenant Colonel and former 44th Legislative District Senator Steve Hobbs.

Secretary Hobbs, great to have you in for a conversation here at Northwest.

Now talking about the upcoming election process is going to be a very quiet year for you, I'm sure.

yeah.

In 2024, Trump got on the primary ballot here, but there are still a lot of court activity taking place and the state constitution is very clear about eligibility.

Eligibility.

If you've been convicted of a felony or charged with a wrongful act, it could still disqualify him in Washington.

And these things are going to probably be appealed up through the court system.

How late can you go down the road in the spring and summer and still pull something back like that?

Yo, yo, if there's a change or is there a certain point where you're committed, you can't fix it?

Well, obviously, I mean, once you print the ballot, see, that's pretty much the point of no return.

But we've got plenty of runway at this particular moment because the election's not till November.

We have an early presidential primary, which is coming up.

Your your your viewers probably have received a ballot already.

Yeah.

So we've got plenty of runway on it.

It's all rests upon the Supreme Court decision should happen soon.

And if you end up with court action on some of the other cases that go drags into May, June, July, can you still make changes there?

Or let me let me ask you this question.

Let's say there there was a problem with eligibility, but the voters pamphlets and the ballots and everything have been printed.

Is there a remedy for that?

Is there a how would how does the state and how do county auditor's address that, if that ever did that particular moment?

we'd have to see what the courts would say.

Yeah, we'd have to do what the courts ask us to do.

But again, we really don't have to worry about that till we get to the printing of the ballots.

The printing of the.

I guess I'm a worrywart, Steve.

I see that you are.

I try to take things one an election time.

What's just around the horizon?

Because there's just so much right now in elections.

Here's another big one.

This the initiative process really went pretty quiet for the past couple of years, past couple of cycles.

This year, though, we've got a big slate of six very important ballot initiatives being put forward, being put forth.

Let's go Washington.

That rollback, a lot of legislative action over the past couple of years.

You guys are in the process.

Talk a little bit about what the process is, what you have to do.

And when you get a pile of six, what does that mean for your office and how you very it's very nerve wracking when you get that many.

We have never had six initiatives to the legislature.

We certainly have certainly had multiple initiatives to the people.

But when you go straight to the legislature, that means there's a time crunch because we have to get these initiatives to the legislature so they can act upon them.

And usually it typically it takes about two weeks to process an initiative.

But we had our folks working double shift.

The permanent staff did some extra work.

And so we were able to get all of these initiatives out.

In fact, they're all out right now.

They're at the legislature.

And so they're going to have to act on these initiatives.

But it was really tough.

You know, they come in, you have to count.

You got to count them all.

Well, there's there's a I won't go into great detail with the the percentages that you look at because there's a lot of math involved.

But you got to get a statistically valid sample.

Exactly.

Of the signatures that have been gathered.

Yeah.

And that goes back to legislation back in the seventies.

And then those have to be verified.

Now, the thing that happens is you've got both sides who have very strong views about this, right?

So, you know, I'm getting harassed by legislators on both sides and advocates and opponents on both sides, like when are you going to get done?

What do you get done?

And did you really check everything?

And yeah, I assure you, we checked everything and they're all out there.

So now it's not in my hands.

It's in the legislature's hands at this particular moment until we have to deal with it on the ballot.

Right, Right.

I know your comment about being harassed was tongue in cheek when it comes to lawmakers, but it's deadly serious when it's coming to some of the threats that have been coming in from the mail and other places.

There are suspicious mailings.

There's been some baking soda, traces of fentanyl to several offices, county auditors around the state.

You've you've proposed the Election Protection Act, which I think is great as a Class C felony.

I guess my first question is why not A or B?

I mean, if you're in there trying to inhibit the democratic process and making people fear for their lives because you're a nut, I don't know about see why not be or.

Well, so, you know, it's it's politics.

You get you take what you can get.

That's what I can get.

But we need to have it.

And absolutely, you're absolutely right.

With all the threats out there, fed and all physical harm that has been talked about on our election workers, women was threatened with their life.

The auditor and Thurston County was threatened with her life.

So it's it's a real threat.

You had any threats?

I'm I there was a post talking about we need a news for Steve Hobbs.

So yes, the threats are out there and we do need to protect our election workers because we're talking about our democracy.

Yeah, that's what we're talking about.

So what's the process on your proposal?

How do where is it stand?

So right now it is in the Senate.

I'm hoping that we'll get a hearing soon and then we can pass it out.

When you have something that occurs like that, all of a sudden I see this jurisdictional and you're you're you're a military guy.

So you know what?

How different commands get involved.

Just about everything.

But now you've got maybe BATF and FBI and the county law enforcement and the state secretary of State Department.

I don't know if you guys actually have law enforcement people attached to you or not, but I mean, how how do you coordinate this?

Who's responsible for the response?

How have you managed through this?

Sure.

We're a well-oiled machine, actually.

We unfortunately.

Right?

That's right.

We communicate quite frequently with our federal partners and, of course, with our 39 county auditors.

It's almost on it's a daily basis on communication.

When the elections are out, the ballots are out.

So we're constantly talking to one another to make sure that we have a smooth operation.

When the federal happened, you know, immediately we were talking to our 39 county auditors.

We were sharing information what the the envelope looked like that was passed along the FBI and the U.S.

Postal Service.

And because of that, we were able to warn some other counties in different states that this piece of mail was coming their way and they were able to stop it before it before anyone opened it.

So that is great.

So the communication has been very smooth.

The other thing that we have is every couple of months we have classified briefings with Homeland security.

So I'm not just worried about the insider threat and domestic threat.

Right.

I'm very concerned about the outside threat.

That was my next question.

Yeah, So go go ahead, Talk a little bit how you manage the the international component to this.

That was a big factor last time.

And have things improved, do you think?

Well, we've made some incremental strategic moves to help thwart that a little bit.

How do you see that?

The moves that we have made is basically trying to fortify our systems through cyber, for instance, making sure that every 30, all 39 counties have an Albert sensor.

They don't.

There's three counties that don't.

And so we're trying to trying to convince them to do it.

And what is that so in Albert sensors basically detection device.

So if you have a bunch of data coming from a suspicious IP, it's kind of sends up a warning, a red flag.

And unfortunately, because of a misinformation campaign that happened in 2022, saying that the Albert Sensors tied to George Soros that looks at your metadata, all this is not true.

A county removed it.

Very county removed their Albert sensor.

Because of these lies, we had to convene a group of the FBI Homeland Security.

We had Kim Wyman came back to talk to these county owners and commissioners to please keep this Albert Spencer unfortunately, that those three counties have not put their their Albert sensor on.

And we're trying to do what we can through just persuasion them, having them talk to Homeland Security, but also providing funding that if they had the Albert Sensor on, we can give them the funding.

Unfortunately, I might have to take it to a next the next level which is requiring them to do that.

Yeah.

Do you have any budget for or to do public messaging at all.

Can you can you put a message from Secretary of State Steve Hobbs into those counties and say, you've heard this, this isn't true, Please talk to your people in the county to get this.

I mean, can you do that?

So what we have been doing is working with our county auditors because some counties, they're not going to trust, they're not going to trust me because I'm a Democrat.

Right.

So you have the county auditor can see my eyes just roll.

Well, yeah.

I mean, that's that's the situation we're in right now.

But that's good because we're working.

Are there county otters?

Yeah.

The thing now, messages can't simply be about, hey, don't forget to vote.

It has to be about the ballot process, letting people know, Hey, did you know that the tabulation machines are not connected to the internet so you can hack into them?

Did you know this state is part of Erik the Electronic Registration Information Center, so that if someone moves to another state and registers there, we'll know about it.

If someone tries to vote twice in the same election, we know about it when dead people vote.

How many dead people vote?

Yeah, yeah, we will know about it.

But the thing is, a lot of people don't know about that.

And that's the problem.

Here's one that I found kind of jaw dropping, as I'm sure you did.

Apparently, there are mailboxes around that people are putting their ballots in and those mailboxes are dead.

They're no longer tended to by the post office.

They're just a piece of hardware sitting out on the street and of trapping people in to put into their ballots.

And that's just crazy.

We talked a little bit about the progress you've made on this.

So that was that was a stressful moment for me.

Yes.

The people were dropping these ballots and these, you know, the the tradition.

We've all seen them, these blue federal boxes that you drop off.

And unfortunately, they could not access them because some of them were new or a malfunctioning lock.

And so we have worked with the US Postal Service.

I, I definitely talked to them because I was very concerned about it.

And they have assured us that they will make sure that those things are cleared out and checked out before ballots.

So if they're present, they're operational.

If they're not operational, get them out of there.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

And that's what they want to do is like, if it doesn't, they if the mail carrier does not have access, just remove the box.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it's not just the ballots, right?

Somebody could be somebody's bill or something or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

One thing I would talk to you about too, is fake news.

It's interesting, you know, that you interface with so many of these different areas that are in our society right now through the secretary of state's office, because they all impinge on the democracy to some degree to in the voting process.

So you're you started this security and response division.

You've said democracy can be fragile, which unfortunately proven to be very true around here.

One of the big problems that you're trying to deal with that is fake news.

So how did you go about talk a little bit about the contract you let and what the what is happening there to try to keep bad information out of the public sphere?

Sure.

The best way to combat misinformation is with the truth and letting people know how the ballot process is being done.

But as a as an office, we need to know what are the what's trending out there on social media.

And so we contract with logically, logically scans.

The social media brings us the messages, the top line messages that are happening that are that are hot.

So, for example, if we see a message that says it looks like elections can be hacked because the tabulation machines can can be can be hacked, well, we can work with the media and we can put our on social media saying, hey, they're not connected the Internet.

Right.

Those are the things that we can do to push back on.

Also, we might notice a trend of some misinformation that might be coming from a foreign actor.

You know, one of the things that I'm concerned about because of the advent of A.I.

is this misinformation that comes in that that we saw from, for example, New Hampshire.

There was a Biden robo call, but it was not Biden.

Right.

My fear is that there might be a robo call from somebody like me or there are elections, elections official in their local county telling them, hey, you don't have to put in that ballot now.

Wait til next week or something or we've experienced a major problem.

Please hold your ballots.

We'll have more information.

Something very credible sounding.

Exactly.

Yeah.

You could have a tell a town hall with because most of the federal electeds do it right?

Yeah.

I've been to a Susan DelBene tele town hall and they'll call it call your phone and you give up.

You have options to listen and you listen in.

Well, guess what?

Now, with AI, this could happen and it's not.

Susan DelBene Right.

It's a, it's another actor.

And you know, that is my concern.

Yeah.

With with the current A.I.

situation, as you well know, when you start talking about hiring a British company to monitor people, social media feeds that just in and of itself is the kernel for a major conspiracy.

It certainly is.

And pushback and problems.

So, you know, my point is they're putting this stuff on a public platform.

Well, that's my point.

It's like you're not reading their mail.

I've had people complain that, you know, you're surveilling I'm not surveilling anything.

Reading your Facebook, you then don't post it.

Right.

And the thing is, in order for me to know what's going out there in social media, you have to have you have to have a service to do that.

Otherwise, you have to hire, you know, 50 or a hundred people to look at social media all day long.

And we don't want that.

Do you think there's ever since you sort of crossed that Rubicon?

I could not Steve hours but a future secretary of state monitor it for un-American activities.

Have you built something that you can't real back?

I don't know how you can do that for for two reasons.

Number one, all it is is scanning social media, whichever one does access publicly.

Right?

Everyone can look at it.

And the other thing is the public records act so people can make public records requests, which they are doing right now.

And and and let everyone know what's going on.

I mean, people can develop public records request right now.

So I don't I don't see that happening.

What is the work product you get from logically just British?

What do you get?

We do it There's a report and it tells you, hey, this is what's trending, this is what's hot.

And right now, obviously, there's probably not much going on right now.

But I'm assuming as we get into this presidential election, we'll see more and more.

Is any of it tied to individual accounts like can you see that Bob Smith is posting this so we can deal with Bob Smith or is it name agnostic and you're just looking at keywords.

So what it does, it tells you what's hot, but then it gives you an example.

So it'll pull somebody's Facebook post or X or whatever and say, this is kind of like what we're seeing out there.

But we're not going to go after that particular person because, one, we can't do it.

It doesn't make any sense.

What we'll do is we'll go, okay, well, we see something's trending, so we're going to put our own social media posts.

We'll go to the media.

Look, you know, we'll go to the news, we'll go to you and go and say, hey, look, this is trending.

Could you please put it out to the public?

That tabulates machines cannot be hacked.

What if you find, though, that that account is a foreign actor, that, yes, you have a way that is something where will if if it looks like it's a foreign actor, we'll probably let Homeland Security know.

Chances are they probably already know.

Yeah, but I would definitely I mean, I would want us to take that stuff.

You've talked about public records and just, you know, from the point of disclosure, I'm a member of the Washington Coalition of Open Government and do a program every year about open it up about the PRC and the OPM.

And right now, you know, I'm going to tell you straight up, it's under threat.

It was a very powerful initiative that passed in this state.

But the legislature over time has slowly chipped away with chipped away at it and now is claiming a blanket legislative privilege against disclosure of records, county and city agencies is as well have been lobbying heavily in the legislature, the legislature, to pass laws to restrict access to public records, to make the process slower, to reduce the penalties for nondisclosure.

You are the custodian of public records.

I understand that you don't make policy, but I would like to know your position about government transparency and what you think about some of the efforts currently underway to restrict, reduce and diminish transparency.

Well, I you know, I do want to see that's my speed.

I do want to see transparency in government.

And you're right, the role of my office is to make sure people have access to that.

That's why we're digitizing a lot of records already, and not just our office, but other offices trying to make it so it's easier for people to access.

My fear is the weaponization that's happening.

I don't mind the press or a citizen that that's trying to get more information because they're being wronged.

My fear is going after a small county or an agency with with a whole bunch of public records request the sole purpose of slowing it down.

With the advent of A.I., the weaponization of public records by foreign actors can be a real thing.

It hasn't happened yet.

But imagine, if you will, using A.I.

generation and using macros.

Generate multiple public records request to target a specific county during an election time.

I'm concerned about that.

And so maybe the thing that people should be looking at is instead of all these restrictions, maybe just saying, Hey, look, maybe we can find out if if it is anonymous, there must be a way.

Maybe it's through the CAPTCHA to ensure this person's a real human being because the technology has advanced so much.

The big place is vulnerable.

The big problem is that the gadflies and what are called malicious requesters, they are they are the the what was the name of the horse that went in Detroit?

the Trojan horse.

The Trojan horse, that is that the legislature, lawmakers and policymakers are using to hang their hats on to neuter the prey to some degree for legitimate purposes.

It's a it's a tough balance there.

I understand both sides of the argument.

Is there anything you can do as the secretary of state to help facilitate small government, small counties, small cities, small agencies, small water districts, to help them be more transparent, to digitize their records, to get them online, where if a records request comes for everything, they just go up, push a couple buttons.

Well, the good thing is we're kind of doing that right now with our archives.

Now it's up to the counties to send our way and we will certainly help them.

The problem, though, is the cost too, for us to digitize everything and to store all this free.

Yeah.

And so that that is certainly an issue.

The last time I talked to Kim Wyman, a lot of the state archives was in some basement somewhere with leaky pipes threatening and has that been resolved at all or did you get handed that?

Where is that process of maybe even building a beautiful new shiny archive building?

Is that something.

that, that would be great.

The leaking is still happening.

We are still dealing with this issue and it's just not just archives, but libraries too.

So we call it the lab building with library libraries and archives building, and we're still going through the permitting process.

We'll see what happens.

Also, we're suffering from budgetary issues because, you know, the original cost was not what it is now because of inflation.

Also, we're dealing with higher interest rates, which affect the bond rating.

So all these problems are kind of happening all at the same time.

We're dealing with each of them as they come along.

We've got some heroes in the legislature that's helping us to meet that that delta that we have.

And in money.

But we still have to wait for the interest rates to probably fall a little bit.

And we're still working with Fish and Wildlife to deal with our permitting issues.

Yeah, you know, revenue projections have been looking good and and to me, archiving and that process seems like a worthy but worthy receptacle for some of that overflow funding.

So I'm not here to lobby on your behalf.

Steve.

I'm just thought here I think, you know, that's important.

It'd be nice to see see that happen and then work on that to continue to move forward.

Last 2 minutes here.

What should the average person be doing this year?

You know, if they're afraid of outside actors, is is there anything if they see something, should they say something?

What would they what would that be if they saw it?

I'm just wondering what you would like to tell the average voter.

Well, number one, just use common sense, right?

If if you're seeing something, a message, first of all, who's this person that's sending this message?

They are saying this message.

Unfortunately, people my age and older, we like their reshare our things.

And that is that is not the way you should do it.

Right.

Just pause a little bit.

Also look at the message, look at the information.

Can you verify it?

Check out to sources.

Look, if if you're a conservative and you love FOX News, great.

Check out FOX News.

See if it's on there, too.

But also check on another news source.

So verify what is going on.

The other thing is if you have a questions instead of getting mad about it, just ask go to a source Iowa that gov.

Go to.

But while dot gov.

If you don't trust me, go to your county auditor.

You should trust them.

They're your they're your local elections official.

You can contact them and they'll they'll let you know what's going on and you can actually go down and see the election process happening with your own eyes and be an observer.

So there's lots of good opportunities to actually get off your sofa and get your thumbs off your phone and actually do something right.

Don't don't yell at a cloud.

Go yell at us.

You know, go go ask us a question.

Yeah, well, like we mentioned at the start, you've got a big year coming up.

This will be kind of your your test, if you will, a major presidential election and a big one in the state as well.

And we wish you the best of luck going forward.

thank you very much.

All right.

Thanks, Steve.

with mail in voting That starts in October and a long history of Democratic control.

You might make the argument that our upcoming election will be a snooze fest.

The bottom line be that as it may, the secretary of State's job is to run elections smoothly and securely.

And I wish Steve Hobbs the best of luck and thank him for coming to Northwest now.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking.

You can find this program on the web at KBTC dot org.

Stream it through the PBS app or listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

That's going to do it for this edition of Northwest Now Until Next Time.

I'm Tom Layson.

Thanks for watching.

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