Just as Wisconsin is heading to
the polls next Tuesday,
calls from Washington to nationalize
elections.
The executive order President Trump
signed this week would create a
national list of U.S.
Citizens eligible to vote and
restrict mail-in ballots.
This order is not in effect for our
April 7 election, and Democrats
have filed a lawsuit over it,
but does it perpetuate mistrust
in the voting process?
We turn to the chair of the
Wisconsin Elections Commission,
Ann Jacobs. Thanks very much for
being here.
Happy to be here.
So what is your reaction to
President Trump's executive order?
I think it was at
best unfortunate and at worst
unconstitutional.
The administration of elections is
delegated by the U.S.
Constitution to the states,
and Congress can make laws
regulating elections,
and an executive order is
neither of those things.
And so it's your belief
that this would not be in effect for
the November elections or in effect
ever.
My suspicion is never in
effect ever.
It's sort of a backdoor way to
create time limits
and new administrative
hurdles for voters to go
through under the
auspices of addressing
essentially what our conspiracy
theory is about absentee balloting.
If it were to go into effect,
what would the ramifications be
in Wisconsin?
So in Wisconsin, by way of example,
you can request an absentee ballot
five days before an
election. And you are eligible to
vote if you've been a resident of
Wisconsin for 28 days.
So a new resident of
WIsconson could come
and ask for a ballot and have the
right to vote.
Under the executive order, however,
that name and that address had to
have been submitted to the U.S.
Government prior to 60 days
before the election.
So you create conflicts between
the statutory rights under state
law with this
mailing deadline.
And now the government's going
to control whether they
will even mail your
ballot. And how do you undo that?
What is the remedy if the
government says, oh, you weren't on
the list, so I'm not going to mail
your balance, ha ha.
And the reason they're not mailing
it is maybe because there's a typo
in a list somewhere or you
move. Or what have you, so
it's really just sort
of creating an unnecessary
and unworkable mess.
In your mind,
is it more possible with
mail-in ballots to
experience voter fraud?
The short answer is no.
There's a number of checks and
balances involved in
addressing mail-in ballots.
First of all, you gotta be
registered.
Being registered in Wisconsin
requires a driver's license or
the last four digits of your Social
Security number if you don't
have a license or ID.
It has to go to
your registered voter address.
If you're sending it somewhere else,
we send a postcard to your
registered voter's address saying,
hey, did you order this ballot to go
somewhere else?
Um, it requires a
witness with an address to
sign your absentee ballot envelope
that affirms that they know you
and they saw you complete this
ballot. And then when it comes in
to the elections, uh,
municipal clerks across the state,
they check it off, check it in,
and that ballot then is
tallied. There's just a lot of
checks and balances alone.
This executive order also
seems to be trying to get at the
issue of only U.S.
Citizens voting.
Because that is considered in
some corners, you know,
rampant with fraud.
What is your knowledge of whether
that is happening here in Wisconsin,
non-citizens voting?
We actually
have some numbers on that.
There are four documented cases
of non-citizen voting since
2016.
During that time, 25 million
ballots have been issued in the
state of Wisconsin.
And if you want to do the math,
it's like 0.00000
something something
of all ballots cast.
This is quite simply not
an issue and not
a problem.
Non-citizens, generally
speaking, don't want to get in
trouble with the U.S.
Federal government.
And that's why we haven't
seen really hardly any
numbers of non-citizen votings.
And even those cases where
non-citizens have voted,
many times it's because
they received some sort of legal
status that they incorrectly
believed entitled them to vote.
Is this executive order separate
though from the U.S.
DOJ
suing Wisconsin to turn over
redacted voter registration data?
Let me clarify, they're not
asking for redacted voter
data, they are looking for
unredacted voter data.
They're looking for your
complete name, date of birth,
driver's license number, and social
security number.
That information under Wisconsin law
is protected.
We don't give that out, and
that's a state law that prohibits
that. And I think we've also seen
recent disclosures
of, I believe it was a
Doge employee.
Who loaded some
sort of entire social security
database onto a thumb drive and took
it elsewhere.
Wisconsinites want their private
information protected.
They don't want it going out to be
shared by the government with random
anti-voting entities so they
can, quote, investigate
non-citizen voting.
So, The government's
asking for private information,
not the public information.
They're welcome to have the public
information.
Anyone can go to
badgervotors.wi.gov,
I think, Badger Voters website and
order the entire Wisconsin
ballot voter
roll.
As to our question at the head, do
these moves out of Washington cause
mistrust in elections?
I think it waters and fertilizes
the seeds
of conspiracy theories and
distrust.
And it's so important for people to,
if they've got questions, to
ask the people running the
elections. And that could be their
municipal clerks, that can be
their county clerks and that can be
the elections commission.
We always encourage people to come
to our website.
We have an FAQ page.
We probably have answered
any concerns voters have
about voting, about absentee
balloting, about all of that.
So I really encourage people to
do that.
All right, Ann Jacobs.
Thanks very much.
Yes, I had a typo in my question.
Thank you.
Unredacted, unredact it.
Thank you
That's all right, I thought maybe
you were testing me.
I would not be so foolish,
madam.
I caught it, so all
is well.
All right.
Thank you so much.
Have a good weekend. You're welcome. You're welcome.
Have a good day.
Thanks.