and abilities are of the government.
>> Grant Sovern, thanks very much.
>> Thank you. >> In a move that had state
election officials sounding the constitutional alarm,
President Trump threatened in an all caps social media
post to get rid of mail in ballots and target highly
inaccurate, very expensive and seriously controversial
voting machines. He said he would sign an executive
order to do so. The president went on to post
that mail in voting results in massive voter fraud.
Election experts say this is not true. The white
House press office demurred on Trump's call a day later,
saying it could be a subject for Congress to
take up. But we wanted to check in with a local
election clerk for her take. Rock County Clerk Lisa
Tollefson joins us now. And thanks a lot for being here.
>> Thank you. >> So what was your
reaction when you saw the call to abolish mail in
voting and voting machines? >> Just another piece
that's trying to get some false information out there
to get some headlines. It's not accurate. Those voting
machines are extremely accurate that we use. Been
through nine recounts. And it's not the machines that
have issues. There are highly accurate. It's
usually somebody didn't sign the envelope correctly.
Something small. It's human error not the machines.
>> But beside that point, can such a thing be done by
presidential executive order?
>> I believe Congress has the authority to change it,
not the president. So and each state actually sets
their own rules for how they run elections. Not not
the president. >> So again, in your
experience, does absentee or mail in voting result in
fraud or massive fraud? >> So the there's a check
and balance through our entire system. Some states
mail out absentee ballots Wisconsin we mail. We only
mail you absentee ballot if you have requested it. And
to request it, you have to be a registered voter. So
there's lots of steps and checks and balances that we
go through in the entire system. So it's not it's
not randomly you just mail in a ballot with nothing to
back it up. There there's checks all the way through
the system. >> What about voting
machines or tabulators? How do they work?
>> So tabulators are not connected to the internet.
They are highly tested before they can be
certified at the federal level and then at the state
level. We do public tests to make sure everything's
working correctly before the election. And then
after the election, we do audits to verify that they
counted correctly also. And again, if we need, we do a
recount. And I've been through nine. And again
they don't. It's not the machines that are the
errors. It's it's human error. It's they're highly
highly accurate. >> Where does all of this
leave clerks who maintain the integrity of elections
when it comes to assuring voters once again that
these things, as you say, are highly accurate?
>> So it means we have to explain again over and over.
Sometimes the biggest thing we can do is invite them to
the public, test or or have them be poll workers. Once
they learn the system and all the checks and balances
in place, they feel more comfortable with it and
they understand all the work that goes into an
election. the roller coaster of
election conspiracies? >> Well, I, I don't have a
boring job that keeps me very, very entertained.
Sometimes some of the things that come in. Yeah,
it's up and down. Boring. Might be nice every once in
a while, but we keep ourselves very, very. We're
we're explaining things constantly over and over.
And sometimes that keeps us from doing other things
we'd like to be doing. >> Like what?
>> Getting ready for another election or
training more poll workers or, you know, working right
now, we're everyone's working on their budgets
for next year at all the municipal levels. There's
you know, we we a clerk does not just do elections.
We are basically in the towns. They're the
administrator of those lot of other jobs that we
do. We don't just do elections.
>> Is there cause, though, to be highly vigilant when
it comes to election security?
>> We are always highly vigilant. We are constantly
doing checks and balances. We are checking security
tags and chain of custody. There's tons of pieces that
we're always doing. They're always in place so that
that never goes away. That's that's constant.
>> All right. Well we leave it there and we wish you
luck with attending to the many duties that you have
on top of all of this. Rock on top of all of this. Rock