Yeah, it's required. We do public testing for all the voting equipment and it's required
by the men's book clerks. They do a public notice 48 hours before they're going to do
this test. And the public can go in and they can watch. There's a predetermined test deck
that they run through. Those results must match up with the spreadsheets that's there.
And that shows you that this machine is coming the way that it's supposed to. You know, when
people say the machines are hooked up to the Internet and people are tapping and throwing
the data and changing the votes. You know, that's just not true. These machines are only
connected to the Internet and only can be connected at the end of the day after you close your
polls. At that point is the only time you can turn the modems on in these machines and you
can send the results. And the results are a private secured network that you try to search
for if you want to be able to find it because it's a private network. And all that's sent
is an extremely tiny small file with the numbers that comes into my office. And that's all.
And those are unofficial results on election night. Like, we have to stress this that the
public wants the results at 801 PM. They won't result in what happened. Well, there's some
checks and balances that have to happen. But we've done modems now and we don't result
since we can get you the results faster. But that's just unofficial results on election
night. The next day the clerks bring me those memory sticks and I read them into my election
software. And what's on those stick is different from what modem in on election night. It flags
it for me. So if someone was able to tap in and decrypt these and change it and send
it back and we didn't catch that, it would be caught there. And then we take that a step
farther. When I do my canvas and I have a canvas board member sitting right here in the audience,
we call the numbers off of the tape. We don't even go off of the memory stick or we don't
walk the results that are moded on the election night. We read the numbers from the tape that
was printed off at that machine at the polling place on election night. And so when people
say like, you know, they're tapping in and they're changing their votes. And we have
to keep in mind that in Wisconsin, every ballot has a paper trail. We say get involved if
you don't believe this. Come sit through one of my recounts and you'll see how scrutinized
we do everything on election day is redone. And we count those ballots now once, but we
call them twice. After every general election, the elections commissions randomly picks
municipalities to do audits. We sit there. I think it was after the 22 election. I see
what Clark here sat there for six hours. We recounted almost 10,000 ballots twice. Every
ballot was counted twice. And that was an audit to say, what do we have here? Did that match
the tape and what we did for the canvas? And never had we had an instance where the tape
did not match the ballot where we didn't have a reason. And if something changes, it's usually
because the voter circled the oval versus filling it in or they did the actual machine couldn't
read it. There's never been an instance where randomly votes have appeared or disappeared
or changed because the machines vote on those results. And so at another one of those things
I get thrown out there. So you have that enthaling of a doubt that you can trust the results
of these elections. And I think we're always going to be fighting that. But I will always
be here telling you that it's not true for the reasons we're talking about tonight.
So just like remind people that the 2020 election, there were certain news organizations that
were sued because they're perpetuating the lies about manipulating voting machines. In Fox News
that we sell close to a billion dollars based on the lies that they're perpetuating in their
news content following the election. So again, there may be severe consequences if you're
going to be out there perpetuating these lies about manipulation at the ballot box and how
the votes are counted. And that was demonstrated through these lawsuits against news organizations
that were involved in it. So Tim, I'm going to pass you my mic. What's the latest you
ever had to stay up for election night for any of your results? Because yours was pretty
much slam dunk most of the time. But what can you tell the rest of us about when we should
fairly expect to see results and why it doesn't come at eight or one? Well, the first time
I was elected to the United States Congress, we didn't know what the results of the election
would be for about a day and a half afterward, because the polls closed. And I think it was
that might have been behind 12 or five, a little bit later, a little bit later.
Juneau County was way in the West. Most of the votes in the district were in Sheboygan
and Oshkosh and Fond du Lac and Matt and Joach and so on. But Juneau County, good rural
county and the people there sort of just went home at about 10 o'clock in the night. I thought
they would finish counting later. And to the next day, they counted as far. And it turned
out I ended up winning much better than that from, I don't even knew who I was in Juneau
County. But there was a race for judge in Juneau County that draw a lot of people to vote. It was
a special election in the spring. And well, they were there. They voted for me too. And I ended
up winning by about 600 votes out of about over 100,000 votes. And it was Juneau County that made
the difference. So one of the other issues that was brought up a lot has to do with absentee
ballots and Rita want you to comment on this because Donald Trump in 2020 told his people
not to vote absentee. He said, do not trust the mail. Do not trust absentee balloting.
Because of COVID pandemic, there were a lot of Democrats more than ever. A lot of voters
more than ever that voted by absentee. Now we are seeing a shift in some of that mentality.
But what can you tell us about your experience with absentee balloting and encouraging voters
to trust that process? A lot of elected officials vote absentee. And I know for almost all the
April elections, I voted absentee because I was working in Washington. And so we've talked a
little bit about how those ballots are counted and the envelopes that they ran and things like
that. All of our veterans that are active duty military that are deployed around the world,
they vote absentee. President Trump voted absentee. It's just my guess is given the type of business
he was in, he probably voted absentee most of his life, to be honest with you. And I think there
was a certain grasping at straws as he began to see his own polling struggle. But the whole
absentee ballot thing has been going on in the country for a very long time. And you can take
it to mail-in voting. And for Republicans in the room or who are listening on the livestream,
that may be concerned about the idea of mail ballots or almost all mail ballots. Think of the state of
Utah. They send a ballot out to everybody. The state of Oregon sends a ballot out to everybody.
And the idea there is they want everybody to vote. They want everybody to participate as Ron said.
And so I've got one very, very conservative state and a blue state that are using the mail
to get ballots in all the time. And so it's a very secure system. And it makes it available for people
that otherwise could not vote. In 2020, my wife had broken her back and it had major surgery. She
was unable to walk. And so she voted absentee. And that's life in America. And we might have
aging parents or people who are disabled for different reasons. And we want them to be able
to participate in this great American democracy. And that gives them a reason to. And I think the
bigger concern that they have were the drop boxes because there was a concern that the postal
service couldn't keep up and get mailed there. So the idea was you don't need a stamp or can't
afford a stamp. You can drop your ballot in the box. And there were adaptations that took place
during COVID that different states showed to do to try to try to make the right to vote available
to everybody. And it wasn't like they said, we're going to make these new rules up but only
Democrats can use them. I think in some cases, loud political party, they undermined their own
efforts by how they talked about this. And so it didn't help them. And I think they're learning
now because all of a sudden the RNC is talking about mail-in ballots and early voting. So they
do get there. But for those of you in the room that are skeptical about the elections,
I want you to know that the government at all levels has heard your concern. And they're trying
to rebuild and try to remake the trust in it. And so I thank you for coming. Thank you for
listening because if there's anything we can do to help encourage you not to not have faith in it,
we want to encourage you to trust what's going on because we want a fair and honest result.
And I can tell you, as a candidate, all I wanted was a fair and honest result. That was it.
So, Jenny, let's talk about something you did reference and that is what happens after election
night because the real coming, the official results, our official until the quarter canvases me,
and we have heard rumors, theories about what may happen in other swing states, key states where
there may be additional challenges to certifying elections and what power does anyone have at
any level to challenge these elections for being certified to getting to the point where we can
officially say who won in the Senate. No challenges can be done in the state of Wisconsin until
your board of canvases has certified those results. So, to say our board of canvases are
almost certified results. That has never happened in Wisconsin. I don't foresee that happening in
Wisconsin. You probably have 72 Comey clerks that are going to be elated to sign their name to that
board of canvases tabular statement, putting an end to the election and saying this is the results.
We're done and now we can move on with our lives because we've been nothing but the presidential
election for the last six to eight months. You know, once that certified, you know, those results
then go up to the Wisconsin election commissions and they certify the results for all 72 counties
and for all the federal contests and the state contests. Once that done, if a candidate feels
something happened and they're within that range that they're allowed to ask for a recount,
they certainly can ask for that a recount and that's what we're going to do. We did a partial
recount after the 22 election. We did a school district recount after the April 23 election.
We've done more recounts than I can think of. And it's not that thing to come to a clerk's
like to thank the recount as our Super Bowl. But I don't mind doing them because when you have
people out there saying these elections are rigged and this happens and that has them,
all you can see is get involved. Come to my recount. If you don't want to work the recount,
we pay while we give you food. But come and watch, you see how we tear apart election day
between the poll book and who's on the poll book and does that match the number of ballots that
were cast and we go through the absentee envelopes. We talked about absentee voting. We're going to
look at those absentee envelopes and every absentee envelope, is that person's name on the absentee
log? And does that show they requested a ballot? Does it show the ballot was returned? Does it show
the ballot was counted? And does it shoot a number? We go through the ballots themselves. We count
every single ballot twice. So we certify these elections that the recounts, we go through them
and we do everything all over again. And we do it painstakingly and it takes time and it takes
days sometimes and it takes weeks. But that's the process we go to is when we're done and we say
these are the results and I can guarantee you these results are safe, secure. And this is how
the election was done by the voters who cast their ballots and we made darn sure those ballots were
counted properly. So we're about 10 minutes away from the section where we'll start taking
I'll read also the questions from the audience. So last chance to scan some QR codes and
submit a question. But I kind of want to go through the panel here and Tim I'm going to start with you.
If there is one piece of legislation or one lodging you could make either the federal or state level
that would most reinforce a boost trust in our elections, can you think of something that you
would like to see passed?
I had a magic wand that I could wave that would stop all that.
I don't I think frankly that the system is pretty open and people can go down and watch
the votes being being counted. You have parties can have observers at the polls but we try to
keep campaigning from and people from interfering with the vote for a good reason.
I don't I think the system is and I actually one thing that I personally feel very strong about
is that I like the fact that it's a state based system in the United States and in each states
based on the county and local because it really is from the bottom up and if it were if we were
to change it and do it go to a national system I think we lose a lot of the discipline that we
have now by having it done locally.
If I were to make one change it would be that they
start counting the mail-in ballots at the beginning of the day and not wait till the end of the day.
So there is a there was a proposal that would have allowed for early counts to that because they
can start the morning of election day but there was an effort to switch that to Monday before
election. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah yeah I think that earlier you can start counting
those because those have already been delivered and set up whatever time printer you want but the
idea to count them so late lends to this kind of rumor mill oh this candidate was winning and
that all of a sudden these magical ballots showed up I think it plays into the the idea if you are
prone to mistrust results and so the the sooner you can count the sooner the results can be done
the more reliable I believe it becomes and so that would be the one change and I would like
the federal government to stay out of Wisconsin Wisconsin I want her to deal with it and I want
the 1800 other neighbors of mine to deal with it and not some of your kind of Washington DC dictating it.
Well unfortunately Reid stole my plan A as far as what I was hoping for but plan B would be
making it easier for people to register regardless of party affiliation. We're just making too many
obstacles to make it harder for people to even register and then mail every registered vote a
ballot and make it easy for them to vote and that ought to be our north star in all of this
discussion of reform. What can we do to make it easier for the American citizen to vote during
the election cycle and let that be our guide regardless of any party consideration.
Jenny I don't want to make you into a lobbyist here but would you like to chime in is there
something that you would like to see done? Yeah I'm gonna have to agree we had the county clerks
and municipal clerks we thought we had a bipartisan bill for Monday processing of absenteees and it
goes into exactly what we said here in Milwaukee and the counties where they have central count
because they have hundreds of thousands of absenteees they can't start counting them until the polls
open at seven o'clock the process of central counting is very tedious for absenteees so
all the polling places in Milwaukee County and Waukesha County and those bigger counties
they pulled their results they're posted but everyone forgets that there's still those central
count absentee ballot totals that have to come in so when they say they went to bed and one
candidate is winning and they woke up and it got flipped and that's what happened well
that's the reason for it and we were trying to get the Monday processing bill passed so
absentee ballots could be processed on Monday they're not tallied the results aren't released
they're processed they're held tight until election day and then at the end of the election day all
the results are posted at once and then that goes to that conspiracy theory that oh you just switched
all the votes or you dump the ballots to make sure your candidate went and you know you won't
find a county clerk who is against this i think there was many many of the 1850 minutes will clerks
are in favor of this because it just makes things that run smoother if we can get those
absenteees counted and results posted as one on the election night so let us shift to some of the
questions that i reading off of the app came in from all of you i have a few questions here so thank
you for submitting them and if any of you want to get some more in there's still a minute here
so the first one is note drop boxes were video monitored as promised in 2020 then those boxes
were declared