Shortly.
Thank you all for attending.
And we'll start in a couple of
minutes here. Just going to give one
or two more minutes to let more
people file in.
All right, let's let's
get things started.
I just want to thank everyone for
attending and
for all the journalists as well.
And also thanks to this great panel
for taking the time to speak with
everyone today.
Just some housekeeping things.
We are taking questions.
So feel free anytime to type
in the chat and we will also be
having a about a 15
minute Q&A session at
the end of this briefing so
feel free again to ask
any questions in the chat and I will
be monitoring those.
Just really briefly I see a lot of
familiar faces and names
but also some new ones so just
really quickly about Keep Our
Republic.
We were founded in the spring of
2020 to address challenges
posed by the pandemic to voting
ahead of November of 2020
and we were engaged well before
January 6 and all the information
misinformation that took place
after election day in 2020.
Key Bar Republic, we're a
nonpartisan nonprofit, and we're
dedicated to safeguarding the
pillars of American democracy,
primarily making sure that every
eligible voter can
vote. We're committed to upholding
the integrity of our electoral
system and also educating citizens
on the threats to our democracy.
We try to, and we successfully
serve as a beacon of truth
with transparency in an
era of miscommunication.
Thanks for watching! And primarily
and specifically in the swing states
that we work in of Michigan,
Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, we work to
demystify the election process.
Specifically in Wisconsin, and
we do this in our other states as
well, but we go on the
ground working with election
officials like the ones that are in
this call, as well as advisory
council members who are also in
this call, and going to areas,
meeting community members, and
educating them, and the media,
national, state, local.
on the election process on
the all the administration
parts of the election and
really going into the nuts and bolts
of it.
We've been in person to Northwoods,
Waukesha, West Bend, La Crosse,
Swamico, Chippewa Valley, ahead of
the November election.
And so that's been great and we
continue to do great work in
Wisconsin.
And then similar to this briefing
ahead of 2024 we hosted a
briefing like this about a week
before the November election and it
was extremely helpful.
I'm so glad we're able to do that
and planning to do the
same here.
So I am going to
introduce our great panelists and
we'll start off with Reed.
Well, good afternoon, everybody.
My name is Reed Ribble.
I'm a former member of the U.S.
House of Representatives,
represented Wisconsin's
eighth Congressional district,
primarily Appleton and Green Bay and
parts north of there.
And I retired in 2017
from that position.
I've been involved with Keep Our
Republic now for two years
as one of their advisory council
members and working
with the clerks in
the state Wisconsin in preparation.
for current elections,
including the one upcoming here
in a few days.
And so it's very good to be with
you.
and I'll pass it on to John.
Good afternoon, everybody.
I'm John Boudry.
I was a federal prosecutor here in
Western Wisconsin for 38 years.
The last seven and a half of those
years, I was the United States
attorney appointed by President
Obama.
During that time, among my
other work, criminal work, criminal
cases, the voting issues we
focused on were protecting the right
to vote, especially in
the face of laws that we saw
that were
disenfranchising certain groups
of people.
I resigned in March of 2017
after the first election of
President Trump when it was his time
to appoint U.S. attorneys.
Like Reid, I've been a member of the
Advisory Council for the last couple
of years, since 2023,
primarily hoping to address
trust in the election process.
From 2008
to now, I
just keep thinking how we've
seen politicians of
all sides use lies
about voting fraud.
as a political weapon.
Just weaponizing, suppose at fraud,
things like non-citizens are voting
or absentee ballots in the mail
or the machines are
rigged. All of these, we all
know, are not true.
And it was my hope by going out
to communities, speaking
with the media.
to just try and tell people,
as I think Rita said so well,
persuade people who want to be
persuaded, who are willing to be
persuaded about the truth in our
election process.
But just yesterday, as we'll
talk about, Judge Schimel,
one of the candidates, was speaking
to the media, raised again
the lies about fraud
in Milwaukee in the and see
process ballot.
So it is not something that ended,
it is something that continues.
Thank you, glad you're all here.
Thank you, John. And then we'll pass
it on to Lisa Thompson.
Hi, I'm Lisa Tollefson.
I am the Rock County clerk for Rock
County, Wisconsin.
I started in election administration
in 2010 as a town clerk for
the town of Harmony in
Rock County. I was appointed county
clerk in 2015 and
been doing this ever since then.
Excellent, and then the other
listener.
Hi, I'm Lisa Freyberg, Fond du Lac
County Clerk.
I started in the office of the
County Clerk in 1998,
pre-2000,
when everyone was worried about back
then if computers were gonna work in
2000. And I was
elected as Fond du Lac County Clerk
in 2008
and took office January of
2009 and going
on my 17th
year of being Fond du Lac County
Clerk.
Excellent. Thank you all.
And so we'll start off talking
about the April election and just
kind of the landscape of Wisconsin
right now.
Okay, the April election
and the election that is coming up
is a really fascinating
election.
Historically, these April elections
were relatively low turnout events,
but that's no longer the case
in Wisconsin.
The turnouts are really quite
large and quite
frankly, I'm anticipating a large
turnout on April 1st
here.
This race has garnered a lot of
attention. It's one of the most, if
not the most expensive Supreme
Court. race and U.S.
history.
And so it's going to
drive a lot of voters to
the polls, I believe.
And significantly, it
is very important because
the potential of the court flipping
in Wisconsin from more
progressive control to more
conservative control, there's a
lot of dynamics that are
going on in
this race.
And so...
And part of the issue you
have for candidates, quite frankly,
there's so much outside money
coming in from political action
committees, mostly
from outside of the state,
that it creates
a real dilemma for a candidate to
control their message, because there
really is no legal mechanism
for coordination behind
the messaging from so whatever
Governor Pritzker's or
Elon Musback on the right do,
or Pritzker's on the left does.
they can say things that
may or may not be fully true.
And the candidate oftentimes
has to respond to things that
people trying to help them
are saying that
they need now to defend.
And they've lost complete control
over the messaging of these
campaigns because the amount of
money they can spend directly from
contribution directly to their
campaigns is now so
small as a total percent.
And there's just
this.
kind of annoying in my view,
increase of partisanship
in these state Supreme
Court races.
It's supposed to be a nonpartisan
position, but as everyone's
aware, I think that's a little bit
of a falsehood, but at
the end of the day, these things
have become very, very partisan.
And unfortunately, we now have
partisanship kind of masquerading
as the principle itself.
And so it makes it
difficult. when individual
candidates don't have enough money
to offset the
outside noise to actually
diminish some of that partisan
talking points, and maybe in some
cases nonsense, and
come forward with what
their views are on this
or that as it relates to the
Supreme Court and its makeup.
I think this is an incredibly
important race to watch,
but I'm also very concerned
that national media is
going to view this and try to
posture it as some type of
bellwether. I'm not 100%
convinced that this is a bellwether
race at all.
I think the country is pretty
closely divided.
Anybody who watches Wisconsin's
schizophrenic election nature on
statewide races, this
is a very candidate-centric race.
And I believe that the candidate
that is August is most likely to
win. uh, without regard to
all these millions and millions of
dollars being spent.
And I would also say without
regard to the
partisan talking points, I'm with
Trump or I'm
a pro choice or whatever the case
may be pro education,
however it may be, um,
and I'm not as convinced at
all that this is going to be some
type of bellwether race.
Um, it's, it's kind of a,
um, inside the family Wisconsin
race.
And I think people are more
concerned about either overturning
Act 10 or not overturning
Act 10 than they would be about
whether Trump
is doing something in the White
House that they don't like in this
particular moment.
And so, John, what are your
thoughts?
Thanks, Reed.
Just to add a few things to what
Reed said, it
strikes me, and I never ran
for elected office, but it strikes
me that with all the outside
spending and the ads, and we're
going to talk about the
misinformation a
couple slides downstream,
for the candidate, whether you're
Judge Schimmel or Judge Crawford,
it becomes whack-a-mole.
Rather than getting out
your message, who I am.
what I stand for, my positions
as best you can in a judicial race,
you just end up trying to respond
to things.
And when I say whack-a-mole,
we're all familiar with that game.
And it's troubling, of course,
because even with increased
turnout, what we see in a
couple of recent polls is a
large percentage of voters in
my state, our state,
saying, well, I just don't know the
And you're thinking.
Gee, people are spending $75
million, throwing out
really negative ads,
and none of them have achieved one
key goal of who
are these people.
And you can't perhaps get your
message out, as Reid said,
because you're too busy.
as I said, whack-a-mole,
hitting this issue, hitting that
issue.
Yesterday is a good example.
As I said, when Judge Schimel is
in Milwaukee and he's talking and he
says that this is all about
ballot dumping and they don't
count the ballots till late and
what's going on in Milwaukee.
So the Crawford campaign is
responding to that.
Neither one of these things tells us
more, perhaps it does at some level,
about each of them, but it doesn't
allow them to say, here's who I am,
here's where I come from, here's
what I do.
So that huge spending.
The other thing, we are seeing the
increased turnouts, as you see in
the screen, usually
an April election,
a judicial election, they were
historically low.
But one thing that I always
think is when we hear these
claims of fraud and the election
is, you know,
the non-citizens are flipping the
election and so on and so forth, the
ballot boxes,
I would pose this question as I
often do, if only 40%
or 50% of voters are
voting, which is
just a tragedy,
frankly, with the issues that are so
significant in this race.
Thanks for watching! that fewer that
that low number which is still
historically high that that low
number of voters vote it
strikes me how can we
seriously think that the 40
percent who are voting or the 50 who
vote that is also
made up of huge numbers of
fraudulent votes which is simply not
possible not been proven
so it feeds into this
my my concern
that the public thinks well this is
fixed and the races are.
clerks don't run good
elections and so on.
And our hope is to keep our
republic to beat that message
back.
And I think the spending in
this, the inability
for voters to
actually know the candidates
in this supposedly non-partisan
race is troubling.
And I certainly agree
with Reed that it, hopefully
it is pretty
much state.
state-centric to our state in
terms of the issues themselves.
But then again, Judge Schimel
made the comment, well, I'm here to
support President Trump.
I don't know where that comes from.
You're a Supreme Court justice.
But then Judge Crawford,
they try to respond to
that and we go down the rabbit hole.
So it's a difficult time and
hopefully people will see through
the smoke.
Thank you, John.
Thank you, Reed.
We are going to now hand
it over to both Lisa's to talk about
kind of what clerks have been seeing
on the ground what they are doing to
prepare and just some of the overall
trends that they are seeing as well.
Whoever wants to start.
Prepping for elections, we are,
first of all, it takes a
tremendous amount of work for
our municipal
clerks and our county clerks.
We have to come right off February,
get those cert, the primary
certified and we're prepping for
ballots to make sure everything is
ready to go and everything goes out.
Early voting in person
started on Tuesday and
our clerks are seeing numbers that
they've not used to seeing and some
of my clerks are already requesting.
new absentee extra ballots
for election day.
If someone wants to vote absentee,
the deadline to request an absentee
ballot by mail is next week,
Thursday.
recommend you don't wait that long
because you're you're waiting
you're depending on the mail to get
it to you.
So if you're gonna request an EPSTE
ballot I recommend you're if you're
gonna want it by mail I would
request it today.
We are looking for record turnout
again, making sure that
everything is prepped.
Pole worker training we are doing.
There's so many little
pieces throughout this entire part
of what we're doing.
Talking about I
have 146 different ballot styles
just from my county.
There's 72 counties, some have more,
some have less.
Pole worker training, making sure
we're giving supplies and supports
to all of our municipal
clerks.
There's there's so many pieces
to put together to make this work.
It's amazing.
And the fact that there's only six
weeks between the February primary
and the April 1st election.
Lisa, I'm sure you can cover this a
lot more detail than I can.
You're doing a great job, but one
of the things that we are seeing,
obviously, too, is the amount of
absentee requests and
people looking for
in-person absentee
voting. That is always frustrating
when people call it early voting in
Wisconsin, in my area,
at least, because people truly
believe that it is early voting
and they're looking for the machine.
Because when the media puts it on
the TV, early voting
began and they have a picture of the
machine. That's when I wish they
would hold up absentee ballots
and explain to
the two.
everyone that this is actually
going in the envelope,
and it's going to
some that's what we trust our
election officials to put that
ballot on your behalf into the
machine.
Preparing communicating
communications is so key right
now with our municipal clerks
with the borders.
I have four referendums
big referendums in my county besides
So it's, you know, everybody is
worried about the top of the ballot,
but yet our April elections
truly are what is on
your tax bill, county,
municipal, and then
onto our schools.
So it's getting everyone to
understand that, yes, the top of the
ballot is very, very important,
but our local races
are just as important,
especially when there is opposition
and our candidates work so hard.
They don't have that kind of money.
to spend like the top of the ballot
does.
Getting right now the testing,
letting the public know that
machines are being tested,
that the public can come and witness
the testing of the
machines in the next two weeks.
Most counties, I can't speak for
all of them, but in our county, we
are also testing the transmission
of those unofficial results
on election night, making sure
all of that all works
and that we don't have any.
problems out in the field with that.
Lisa, some more to add to that.
Um, just some more things for voters
to consider is that if you're
looking to request an absentee
ballot or where's your polling
location going to be election day,
checking your voter registration,
the best place to go is
myvote.wi.gov.
You can, you can search all of
that and look at your sample ballot.
It's, it has the information that
you need to know for election day
and it lists all the deadlines,
absentees, everything is there and
you can track your absentee ballot
there also.
That is a great point, especially
when you said how many different
ballot styles, uh, obviously
a little bit smaller County,
but I have almost 90 different
ballot styles.
One of my smallest towns has four
different school districts.
Uh, their next door neighbor
may have maybe in the different
school district. So when you're
talking across the fence, say, Oh
yeah, you got to remember so-and-so
is on the ballot. That doesn't sound
familiar. That's different school
districts. So going on
to the my vote website to make sure.
what is on your respective ballot
and knowing
who you're
going to vote for prior to going
into the polling place.
But our election officials cannot
answer who somebody
is, or even though this is a
nonpartisan election,
I get phone calls.
So which one leans towards this
party and which one leans on that
party? We can't answer that with
the statewide referendum also
being on this ballot?
I have never had so many people
in many years call
and ask what does the question
really mean.
I've had to get the type C
notice it's called out to
our municipalities as soon
as we were able to get it from the
state to give it to the voters.
We have that for in-person
absentee voting.
I instructed all of the election or
all of my municipal clerks,
please have that available for our
voters. In the past, we worried
about making sure it was there on
election day.
Now we actually have
to start thinking about what
we have there on election day
is going to now back up those two
weeks prior to that because
2026 we are going to see
even more absentee voting.
I strongly believe that I've
let my municipalities know at the
town's association meeting budget
for that but getting
the word out there for
people as soon as we have our
sample ballots.
I request that the
municipalities get them hung in
their town halls, their village
halls, so when they have meetings
or they rent out their hall for 4-H
or whatever, that those sample
ballots are already hanging up for
people to view.
Perfect, thank you.
And Lisa Tolson, I know you
mentioned about early voting and
do you have any statistics from what
you've seen from this year versus
others?
So I did go on to the election
commission website.
Um, so elections.wi.gov
tons of information on there,
especially if you like to geek out
on lots of stuff.
Um, if you look under statistics,
you can actually look back at
previous elections.
Um, so I did pull up what
they have from the 17th and that's.
There's over 400,000
ballots that were issued, absentee
ballots that are already been sent.
And a third of those are already
back.
That is already beating the numbers
that we had from last
year. And last year we had the
presidential preference.
I'm expecting that number to keep
climbing as more people are taking
advantage of that in-person absentee
voting.
So we're expecting record
turnouts for this election.
Thank you. And then we'll move on to
election day and if both of you can
kind of talk briefly about what
what the state does what you do and
what your municipal clerks do as
well come election day disabled.
Go ahead, Lisa.
Okay, well I'll start with the state
and the county.
So on election day, the biggest
thing for the
election commission and the county
clerks is we are a source of
information.
We have voters call us every
on election day we have all of our,
our, our systems up so we can check
polling locations for people.
If they have questions on photo ID.
um we are making
sure if you know anybody needs extra
ballots like just
election day something happened we
are we are their support That is
our main goal on election day,
support our municipal clerks.
They are in charge on election day.
So they are the ones that
make sure everything happens in the
field. We are just their backups.
And the election commission works
the same way.
They are their support on election
day.
Lisa, do you want to take over what
the municipal clerks do?
The municipal clerks are actually
not in charge on election day.
There is, well,
they are the chief
inspector is actually in charge.
And that is, uh, you know,
you see that a lot more.
I know most municipal clerks are at
their town or village halls, but in
a city, uh, I have 22
words in the city of Fond du Lac.
I know Lisa has a lot more in
Janesville and everything, but um
the city clerk obviously can't be in
22 different places so these
uh chief inspectors
are trained that they are in
charge they are going to
uh answer questions for voters
they're going to keep everything
running very smoothly they do a
phenomenal job they are kind of
that uh secret person
that is on the ground running on
election day and they have
a huge a lot responsibilities.
They're going to take care of
observers coming in and making sure
they're all uh satisfied
with what they're seeing or where
they need to go uh
to sit a view all of
that um just when
they're running short on ballots
they're the ones that are going to
be calling me on the county level
that we're running short uh in our
county we have check-ins during the
day to let me know where they
are i have a little formula i
use that if i think they're going to
have enough ballots.
uh we will not run out
of ballots on election day.
We run um our ballots
in-house so we're able to get more
run to them.
Whether it's myself getting it to
the polls, uh somebody from the
municipality or I work
hand in hand with the sheriff and
law enforcement all day long.
Uh back in November I had two
deputies assigned to me personally
that would do any running or if
I needed anything.
We work hand in hand with law
simply because
uh, we want the voters
to feel safe in
the environment on election day.
And yes, we've had to go down
that route, but it is appreciated
by our election officials and by
the voters.
But that is, um, we
want that. We want that feeling for
people that they're not intimidated
and that they can vote that
ballot, that this, uh,
the machine is secure.
and that their ballot is
going to count on election day.
That is all of our goal, I
believe, out there.
And one thing we didn't really touch
on from the last slide is that
the chief inspectors
and the poll workers go through a
lot of training.
Lisa and I do a ton of training in
our counties. I know most counties
do as just as much as we do,
just to make sure that they
understand any changes in the law or
just to remind them of all the
steps.
There's a ton of training that
goes ahead of this election, so that
they're comfortable and have the
knowledge and the resources
to make sure those election days run
smoothly.
Absolutely.
We got to remember this only happens
a couple times a year.
So we, even though Lisa and
I and other county clerks and our
municipal clerks are working
elections year-round, which 20
years ago I never thought would come
to that, but you
know, we're not going to see, except
for special elections or anything,
elections till next year.
So it's continuously keeping
our election officials.
uh, knowing what is going
on as far as laws, any
changes, what is on the
ballot? I, I stress, I'm sure
others stress my, I stress
that my election officials do know
what is on their ballot.
There's nothing worse when the voter
says, Oh, why am I here?
What is on my ballot?
And the election official looks at
the ballot and to see what's on
there. So those are things I even
instruct so that they can have
the confidence when the voter does
come in and has that unusual
question.
Thank you. And then briefly, if you
both can talk about kind of what
goes on on election night as well.
On election night, they on
the municipal level, they are
going through those ballot once
everybody has voted.
And once again, we have to remember
if you're online at eight o'clock at
night, and there is still our long
line, everybody gets the vote.
We instruct our election or
our municipal clerks election
officials that somebody should stand
at the end of the line at eight
o'clock to make sure that somebody
doesn't come in at eight or one.
Once everything has been done, they
are going to verify the number on
the machine and the poll book.
And then they will close the poll
and various everything
is the same around the state, but
everybody has different state steps
on doing this.
But basically what it comes down to
is they get that unofficial or
that official total, I'm sorry,
official total from the machine.
And once they get all that through
in our colony that is
transmitted.
to the county clerk's office.
It is unofficial results
from the county clerk simply because
everything is official from
the machine on the municipal
level and that's why we call
unofficial because I have not seen
those tapes from
the voting machines until
the next day so that
is why we are very we
strongly say it is an unofficial
result plus there has been no
canvassing at when it comes to
state and county.
Lisa, you want to continue?
Sir, the municipalities are
also reviewing all those ballots for
voter intent.
We're a high voter intent state.
So we're going to look to see the
machines just basically read the
filled in ovals.
So they're looking to see if a voter
decided to circle the name instead
of filling in the oval, or if
there's any write-ins because we do
have races where the write-ins will
actually win a race.
There are some that don't have any
candidates on them.
And that does happen usually at the,
at the municipal levels, uh,
and some of the smaller offices.
going to be reviewing all of that
and they might actually be
determining the results of some of
those races so if it's a town board
with one polling location they
may be actually doing that canvas
and determining the winner that
night.
We're also making
sure we're logging any provisional
ballots those
people that didn't have their ID
with them when they came to vote
there's different reasons there's
very few but we do log all that
to make sure that they have the
chance to come back and make
sure their ballot can get counted
later.
Again, those results are transmitted
or somehow gotten in the county.
And once we have them, every
municipal, every county is required
to post those on their website,
um, on election night, they are
definitely unofficial because we're
going to review everything after the
election, uh, the towns
and the village and the
cities will certify their
portion of the ballot.
The school districts have certified
the school district referendums
and the school board members.
then the counties will meet a week
after the election and they are
going to actually review
all of the county and above
races and that gets
sent to the state once we certify
and the state does it again and
recertifies everything there.
I jumped there didn't I?
Anymore
one thing on the can I just add one
thing for the media to note
when it comes to the school
districts make sure you're
aware of what lines or
what counties those school districts
go into I had a situation
a couple of years ago that
the local media announced
somebody was the winner which
you know it was unofficial
they had missed one county
and that person wasn't the
winner so as media
on election night, always
making sure the different
counties that the
school district goes into.
You might not realize that there
might just be that one little town
that has 40 voters
that in a different county.
So that's really, really important
with this spring election.
There is just so many
variables in our spring elections.
Thank you both.
So we will now, we can start off
with the read and talk about kind of
some of the advertisement and mis
and disinformation we are seeing
around this election and in the
state.
Yeah, thanks a lot, Anthony.
And I don't know if
the audience can see me or just see
their slides.
What is the reality there,
Anthony?
can see you.
and the slides so perfect thank
you but I would often tell people
when I was in office or going
to town halls I would hold up a
ruler like this you can see that
with the background and
I might put my finger over here
in one part and say this
ruler contains all the
truth about a particular
topic or candidate
but someone decides to tell
you just this piece of the truth
over here They
can then go to bed at night and say,
well, I said something that
was true.
But they know full well that if they
told you all this other truth over
here, you might come to a conclusion
that you otherwise wouldn't come to
if you had truthfulness,
if you just had part of the truth
or part of the story.
And that's disinformation.
And that's predominantly what you
see.
And people can put something out
there, but without giving you
all the background information,
It looks like they're telling you
something that's true, but it's
totally misleading and it's intended
to be misleading.
They do it on purpose
to be particularly deceptive.
And you see this in almost
any type of political campaign and
now we're seeing it in these Supreme
Court races
where this sentence once
wasn't right or this person let off
this child sex offender
or this or that.
You have no idea.
the true background or information
on any of these cases.
And it can be very, very misleading.
The data itself can be true.
Yes, this sentence was imposed or
this occurred, but without
more information,
it falls into that category of
disinformation.
And with the
widespread use of social
media, people who believe
it and believe this information,
they spread it
out through all of their social
media networks, whether it's on
Facebook or what I
affectionately call Zitter
or Instagram or whatever,
and it begins to spread.
Now, they don't really have
any bad intent
there. They just read this
information, they believe it to be
true, and then they spread it.
And so then they're spreading
misinformation, and it
takes on a life of its
own. And it's very, very
difficult to combat.
And it's particularly difficult to
combat when you have so much
outside money
and you have no control over the
messaging as a candidate, as I
mentioned earlier.
And so you've got ads that
just
take you to all different kinds
of places. And you begin
to wonder at what point
do regular
voters they just
tune this all out.
At some point they just
stop hearing the noise of
it all and then more
and more and more money comes in.
But every time a candidate wins
based on using these tactics,
it encourages the use of those
tactics even further
in the next election.
And so there's this escalation
up of this environment of,
and listen, there's always been
disinformation and misinformation.
I mean, the...
The John Adams, Thomas Jefferson
presidential race was one of the
ugliest in U.S.
history, and that dates way back
to the very,
very late 1700s
and early 1800s, and it was
filled with disinformation.
And so this is a
proud heritage that American
elections have that has
been put in kind of a
supercharged mode.
with the speed and ability
at very low cost to spread
it. And so it gets
to be very difficult to
combat it.
And I'm not an
advocate of stopping it.
I'm an advocate of having more
free speech with more
accurate speech.
And this really
imposes a burden on the candidates
to get out there and get in the
public. where people can read
their eyes, see their body language,
see how authentic they are and
make a judgment on their own.
And it does
become more and more incumbent
on the candidates to work especially
harder.
And I would say on the political
advertisement side,
there's very little that you can
believe on it as far as
being truthful.
And I
would just say that given
the very tight
nature of political
races in Wisconsin,
in Wisconsin in particular,
this plays,
I mean, you're only talking about
moving 10,000 votes in some
cases for a statewide race.
And this is in a state that on the
same ballot elected Senator Ron
Johnson, one of most conservative
kind of America first.
senators out there on the same belt
that they reelected Governor Evers.
Or they elected Ron Johnson
in one election and
two years later reelected
Senator Tammy Baldwin, who's one of
the most progressive members.
And so these races are so tight
in Wisconsin that
misinformation, disinformation
can swing an
election.
And so part of the reason
we talk with folks like you is
to to try to
combat some of this information
and fact check and
truth check things that
something doesn't sound right, it's
probably not right.
But we're also hearing about
the misinformation about
how elections are
rigged in Wisconsin and how
you can't trust them, that there's
going to be ballot dumps
or that illegal immigrants
are voting and false
claims like that.
It kind of, again,
gets gets put on a supercharger
as these rumors float
through the internet.
I can't even tell you how much of
that I've seen on on
Facebook and and and on
X lately. And it's kind
of shocking that with all
the discussion since twenty twenty,
that this is still even a topic
of discussion. And even after
the twenty twenty
three election, where Wisconsin
put in their constitution that
illegals can't vote, that you have
to be a citizen. Even though they
never really were voting in
Wisconsin, there's always illegal
there, it just continues
to go on.
And so it really plays and
there's a lot of money behind it
and pushing it.
And so, John.
Just, again, I'll just briefly
follow up what Reid said.
This particularly sticks in my
craw, but Reid said it so
well.
There's a little bit of truth.
Yes, somebody did give a
short sentence or somebody did give
a plea agreement to somebody when
they were a prosecutor, but
there's so much behind those
decisions that we never know,
especially the ones where they
attacked. since I'm an old
prosecutor, they attacked either
of these two candidates who did have
some prosecutorial experience,
they attacked decisions they made.
And you just, you
don't know anything and they don't
take the time to explain it.
And I go back to
the election between our
now Attorney General Josh Call and
then Attorney General Schimmel, and
they ran these ads that Josh Call.
Assistant U.S.
Attorney, which I was, in Baltimore,
he gave a plea agreement.
A guy got almost no time and
called Josh Call, tell him he's not
tough on crime.
Well, I knew that case and I knew
what had happened. It had been a big
cartel.
They had 30 people convicted.
They finally got somebody to
cooperate. He got a reduction from
the judge clearly under our
sentencing guidelines, just what
should have happened to bust up
a big cartel.
None of that was part of the attack
act.
It's the Willie, if this is a
verb, I'll make it one.
It's the Willie Hortonizing of
our campaigns.
And we all remember it's this
man went free and something horrible
happened and Dukakis is to
blame.
It's unfortunate because even
as I speak to the media,
you don't have the time to dig out
every.
sentencing transcript, every
sentencing record.
Why did Judge Schimel or Judge
Crawford give a shorter sentence?
Perhaps there was something in the
family that perhaps there was a, who
knows?
But nobody has, it's whack-a-mole.
Nobody has the ability to do that
and the people, the public, doesn't
do it either.
One other thing I would just follow
up, and I know it's one of our
bullet points in the slides.
And I don't think the voters are
sensitized to this.
So many of the decisions that
are being highlighted, whether it's
sentencing a sex offender, whether
it's making a decision in a criminal
case as a prosecutor,
or not seeking a charge or so
on, those decisions simply
are nothing like the
decisions that a Supreme Court
justice makes.
Supreme Court justices are
at least two levels removed from
the trial.
They have no charging decisions.
They have no sentencing decisions.
They just see whether the law was
correctly applied.
It is these two judges, these two
people, Schimel and Crawford are not
running to be a Dane County
or Milwaukee County or Final Act
County Circuit Court Judge.
They're running to be on our Supreme
Court.
What are their legal skills?
How deeply did they think?
How clearly did they speak and
write?
Can they understand law
complicated issue?
All these things are not even part
of the attack ads.
So I, it is unfortunate.
and reads the truth ruler,
I wrote it down, is so perfect.
A little bit of it is true, it's yet
the sentence was imposed or yes, a
criminal decision was made.
But what was everything that led to
that?
And if it wasn't right, then why
wasn't the case appealed and why
didn't an appellate court reverse
them? None of that comes out and
that's unfortunate.
Thank you.
Really quickly, also,
John and others, if you have just
very brief input because we're
running out of time and want to get
to questions, just talk about
what updates on
what's happening in Madison and also
some information on the
constitutional amendment.
Look, let me hit that real quickly,
because you may all know this.
It refers to about 200
uncounted absentee ballots
from our prior election.
It is under investigation,
as it shows on the screen there by
the WEC.
On March 12th, the Madison
City Clerk was suspended,
placed on administrative leave
pending the investigation
to Thanks for watching!
This didn't affect the election.
I think that's what's really important.
It's clear that it had no effect on
the outcome, but
the effect it had is what we're
talking about at Keep Our Republic.
It feeds distrust.
Oh my gosh, in Madison,
they're throwing away ballots and
they only threw away perhaps
conservative votes.
How that would ever be, I don't
know, but something
happened, but the WEC is gonna sort
it out. And in the interim...
to bring some faith to our
local election. I happen to be in
Madison.
The city attorney, Mike Haas,
he's a former legal counsel at WEC.
As a sideline, he was also one of my
law students at UW.
Bright guy, honest guy,
and he's gonna run the election.
It just can't be a reason to attack
our election.
As to the voter ID amendment.
Reed alluded to this, I believe,
or somebody did, on the
amendment so non-citizens
couldn't vote.
Well, it's the same thing here.
We're being asked to decide if it
should be in the state constitution.
It is the law in this state.
If you go to vote, there are several
types of photo ID you've got to
have.
So one might ask the question,
why are we changing the
constitution?
These hallowed foundational
documents in our constitutional law
usually aren't to be subject
to, well, let's just change it like
we vote a law or don't vote a law.
Clearly, who's ever behind
it wants to, it
appears simply to handcuff
future legislative bodies
from changing or tweaking
or adding to or.
So it is there.
Yeah, I'm sure it's...
seemingly clear to people about what
people
don't understand is, and
they should, it is already our law.
Excellent.
And then before we get to questions,
John and others, have you seen any
new election laws or anything
coming up ahead of this
April?
I'm not aware of any significant
changes.
Most of the, I mean,
the issue on the
one near and dear to my heart, the
drop boxes, was ruled
out by the Supreme Court.
That does not stand
there anymore.
But Reed mentioned this earlier.
The big issues that this court is
going to decide are public sector
unions, Act 10 litigation, workers'
rights, put it that way.
Clearly voting rights.
Thanks for watching! maps became
huge, drop boxes, I just
mentioned that.
And we have to say it,
it is certainly reproductive rights.
And how will the court
view these three key areas,
which are very, very significant
to everybody, whichever
way you view these things, for the
future of our state,
these will be before the court.
The issues are huge.
We can only hope that with all the
smoke floating around.
the election that the public is
educated and knows what their
votes mean.
Excellent.
Thank you all.
And then we are now going to open
it for questions.
So if you can type in the
chat or you can also raise your hand
and you can ask it verbally as well
for any of those are
our first question
is from Amy Sherman.
I'm from PolitiFact and she is
wondering with discussions
of
Procedures and processes in
uh in Wisconsin specifically
on ballot dumping um
you know how is there an impact on
voters or officials ahead
of April and also if you could talk
about how these claims in the past
have had affected you
as well.
Could I suggest that Lisa,
or Lisa, explain really
quickly how absentee
ballots are handled, specifically
since Judge Schimel raised it
with the central count in Milwaukee,
where there's all the numbers you're
talking about and how that just
simply slows the process down
because we can't process them.
We don't, under our law, process
them ahead of time.
So Rock County also has two
central count locations.
So instead of the absentee ballots
going to the polls and be processed
with all the other ballots on
election day, there's between 30
and 40 municipalities that use
central count.
So all their absentees go to one
location.
In Wisconsin, we cannot start
processing any absentee ballots
until 7 a.m.
on election day.
And you can only do so many at a
time.
There's a limit as to how fast you
can go.
We can't start till seven.
So we have to keep going until they
are done. We can't stop.
There's nothing that allows us to
stop and start up the next day.
We keep going till we're done.
So thinking there's a ballot dump
is it's a little off-putting
because unless you understand how
the whole system works, they're
using high-speed tabulators at
Milwaukee and they have to
wait until every single ballot is
processed until they can actually
pull that data.
So if they're still going
They are taking all the data that
all of the ballots they started
processing from 7 a.m.
in the morning until they are done.
And then they can send that to the
county.
That is a huge number of ballots
considering what Milwaukee is
running through.
It's not a dump, it's just how the
system works and how the processing
works in our state.
If we could start earlier than
Monday, or earlier than, I'm
sorry, I'd love to have a Monday
bill. If we could start earlier than
7 a.m. on election day, you would
get your results faster.
And that's the piece that's
disheartening to some of us who work
so hard to be so
accurate and so checking
everything that they're saying
there's a ballot dump when it's
really not a ballot dump.
It's how the process actually works.
It's not my job to ask questions,
but let me follow Lisa.
I know it's come before our
legislature a couple of times to
change the time so you could process
earlier.
Is that in fact, do other states do
that?
And it just isn't, it hasn't become
our law here for whatever reason.
Um, I believe it's, I think it's
four or six states.
I'm not sure exactly now.
Others may have changed their laws.
Um, everyone else process them
before election day,
they start processing them.
We are, we're just one of few states
that does not.
stands alone.
Almost.
The next question we have is from
Hope from the Journal Sentinel
in Milwaukee.
Every election there's hundreds or
even thousands of absentee ballots
that are sent to voters but not
returned. Do you have any insight
why that is?
Do voters need more information
about options for returning their
ballots? How common is it for clerks
to include instructions in this
envelope?
You want to take that one, Lisa?
I think, yes, absolutely that
they're not sent back is
because the voter does
not, they get the ballot and they
look at it and they realize that
it's not, they don't know who the
candidate is, they don't know what
the contest is.
We don't always know.
February, you see that a lot,
especially with the primary
we just had for
public instruction,
nursing homes.
In Wisconsin we have the
indefinitely confined list so people
automatically get that ballot in
our state and they
I'll get the phone calls and say who
are these people I didn't realize
there was an election so
I don't have the true answer on
why people don't vote that ballot
but it is costly to
our municipalities that those
ballots are sent out not even just
the cost of the ballot but the
postage and uh postage
alone for the ballots and
everything.
Uh, instructions are
sent to along with,
um, just on what
you should do with the absentee
ballot, making sure you get a
witness and everything.
One thing people don't realize in
Wisconsin that you can send
back an unvoted ballot
and it will be processed.
Uh, nobody needs to know that
you voted.
Not nothing was voted on that ballot
and it still shows in your,
uh, voter.
record that you did vote in
the election.
So that's any ballot.
A lot of people think they have to
vote every single contest on that
ballot or it's going to be rejected.
Whereas you can just vote
county clerk and send the
ballot back and nobody's
going to know that you did not vote
in the other contests on that
ballot.
Thank you.
We have a question from
Mitchell from Wisconsin State
Journal.
And this is talking about spending
and elections and misinformation
that stems from ads, specifically
is asking if Keep
Our Public has any position on the
need for campaign finance reform in
Wisconsin.
And also we've
come to expect in these elections
also is there any changes that could
help keep our public is not an
advocacy organization and we don't
necessarily have a stance on
campaign finance reform.
Um, but if you, uh, if any
of the panelists want to talk about
this more, please go
ahead.
Yeah, I would just offer one
thing, just as additional
information.
We're seeing so much outside money
because of post the Citizens
United Supreme Court case
where
free speech is not limited to
the amount of money that you spend.
One thing that I think would help
is if state
law would allow candidates to
raise more money directly from
individuals as opposed to
what I would say is often darker
money, money that's harder to track
where it comes from
from outside sources.
The more power that candidates have
to speak in their own
voice, to be seen by
the public, and to address the
public face to face
or via the media
where it's actually them talking,
any type of reform that would be
legal there would be helpful.
But what Citizens United recognized,
and I think in the correct way, even
though it's been highly criticized,
is that our media for the most
part is for-profit.
And these for-profit companies have
political biases themselves.
I mean, you can see it, I'll just
pick on two, Fox News on the right
and MSNBC on the
left. They've got opinion people
talking day in and day out
all day long with all the free
speech that they want,
and yet a private entrepreneur
in...
Milwaukee or Green Bay, up
by where I lived, didn't have any
right to have any political say.
And now the Supreme Court said, no,
we're going to level the playing
field if an individual
wants to spend their own money to
say what they think about an
election, they should have the same
right as a for-profit media
person.
And so it
has certainly changed the dynamic.
And in Wisconsin,
where races are so closely
contested in many cases.
I would be very, very supportive
of some type of campaign finance
reform that would give candidates
more ability
to be direct
with the public.
I don't know how you do that.
I don't know exactly the legal
mechanisms now, the way
the court has decided
about speech.
But it's definitely a challenge
for sure. And I think it's a really
important question, by the way.
Um, thank you.
That's all the questions we have
currently. If there's any more, we
have about five or more minutes
until we'll bring this to an end.
Also, if there's any media outlets
are interested in speaking to anyone
to keep our public or any of the
panelists, they're available on
background or for one on ones after
this as well. So, I'm just,
let me know and we can get you
get you a communicated with
them.
Um, well, don't
see any more questions now.
So, I just
will end things here and
just want to thank all the
media outlets for attending and for
taking your time to listen to us
and also to report on this Wisconsin
election as well.
And yeah, we are keep our public is
here we're open for the media
and for the public.
So please feel free to reach out to
us anytime.
And yeah, we're always happy to
help. So thank you all and
enjoy the rest of your day.
Wow.
Record