who's using drop boxes and who's not.
It's a municipal clerk decision.
There was guidance that the election commission
came down with that says,
hey, if you're using drop boxes,
let's make sure they're secured.
Make sure they're secured to the ground,
to the building, to make sure that they can't be tampered with.
Make sure there's a security tag on that
so you can make sure that they haven't been open with them.
If possible, put video cameras on them, so be in watch.
So there are some municipal clerks
who will follow that guidance
and feel that this was something that was necessary
to be able to allow voters to return their ballots.
A lot of rural municipal clerks
only have a couple of orders a week
where they have office hours.
And if someone's not trusting that the ballot's
gonna get returned by the mail,
then the drop boxes, they answer.
There's some municipal clerks that don't feel
they have a secured drop box,
and they're not using drop box with this election,
but it's a municipal clerk decision.
The clerks that are using them in the cross county
are making sure that they're secure,
and they have a log when they're opening them,
how many absentee's are being taken on.
So it's done in a safe and secure manner.
And then the areas where the clerk feels
they're necessary.
I just wanna answer the question specifically,
because I think the actual question was,
is it conspiratorial to think that?
And I would say no.
I think it's okay to challenge how we do elections.
It's not conspiratorial to ask questions
and to want to have security
and or to have the suggestion
that they should be video monitoring.
I do not believe it's conspiratorial at all.
And so whoever asks that question, that would be my take.
So read.
Well, it wasn't me, but I applaud her now.
Sorry, I was interpreting the question.
I have a follow up on that,
because recently we've seen some headlines.
The Dodge County Sheriff was on record pressure
in a couple of local clerks in his county
not to use drop boxes.
And Wausau, the recently elected conservative mayor,
proudly took a picture of himself carting off the drop box,
and only now for there to be a DOJ investigation
of the drop boxes back in place.
So is this becoming a partisan issue surrounding this?
Can we get back to it being a clerk's decision?
We live in an era.
And it's been getting more and more this way
over the my time in office
where partisanship itself is masquerading as a principal.
And when you get to that place,
everything feels partisan.
And the case in Wausau, as I understood it,
the mayor felt that the city council hadn't given approval
so he decided to take action.
But I would also say that virtually every mailbox
in the country can take a ballot and mail it in.
And so there are ways to get ballots to the polling places,
whether it's in a formal ballot drop box
where it doesn't require us to have authority
to put a stamp on it.
That might be one change I'm discussing to make as well.
But I just think that there's,
we have this idea that everything
and especially our neighbors and those
who might disagree with us politically
are wanting to pull the wool over our eyes or cheat somehow.
And I will tell you,
as someone who served in Congress next to this guy,
I told him about his higher regard as it's even humanly possible.
And I never once would think that what he was doing in his role
as a congressman was nefarious.
He might have had a different policy solution
than I had for some problem that we were trying to deal with.
But I mean, I want to believe that my neighbors are the same way.
And so I choose to start there.
And we all can change how we think about this,
but you have to start it individually.
And I used to coach girls volleyball at Apple and he said,
did that for 20 years and we had a particular problem.
I would tell the girls this little poem, you know,
I am only one, but I am one.
I can't do everything, but I can do something.
That's something that I can't do, I should do.
And that's what I should do, I shall do.
And if everybody in this room would begin to talk to the circle,
the sphere of influence that they have, their friends,
their people at church, their social groups,
but what you heard tonight, you can change how people view things.
And we can have a different way of dealing with one another.
So, Jenny, another question coming in from the audience?
My college student requested an absentee ballot.
I received a flyer in the mail that identified awareness
that an absentee ballot had been requested.
Why?
There's a lot of third party groups.
I'm not sure if this is what they're asking.
There's a lot of third party groups out there trying to help.
And they'll be sending you voter registration forms in the mail.
They'll have your address from five years ago.
Or they'll be sending you absentee ballot request forms in the mail
with the wrong information on them.
And they're not being helpful, they're causing confusion.
And we're getting the phone calls from them saying,
well, I just got this voter registration form in the mail,
but I'm already registered.
And we're like, yes, you are.
Just throw this stuff out.
So, if someone requests an absentee ballot from their minutes book clerk,
they will get the absentee ballot in the mail from their minutes book clerk.
They won't be getting any confirmation in the mail saying,
yep, you requested an absentee ballot.
That's these third party groups that are trying to be helpful,
but they're causing more confusion than they are being helpful.
All right.
Another question.
Ron, this is for you.
It said, Ron said, Trump was the original election denier.
What about Hillary and others in 2016 who repeatedly said it was stolen
and he was an illegitimate president?
Well, we can go back and relitigate all we want,
but I think the facts are pretty clear in regards to where the rhetoric was coming from
in order to sow the seeds of election fraud.
And it's still happening today.
January 6th is not an aberration, folks.
That danger exists today.
And this started years ago.
Donald Trump is still out there perpetuating these election lives,
getting people riled up about it, and threatening to challenge a result
if he loses again this November.
And what will come from that?
It's the classic heads I win tells you lose proposition.
For some reason, we have one individual who's having a hard time
internalizing defeat for himself.
Hillary Clinton accepted defeat.
She was there at the inauguration.
After the January 6th insurrection, Donald Trump blew out of town.
He was the first sitting president in modern history that didn't even have
the decency to show up for the peaceful transfer of power that occurred later.
Not only did he fly out of town, he took a bunch of stolen classified documents
that didn't belong to him with him down in Mar-a-Lago.
I'm just saying, the reason we're here tonight, the reason we're here tonight is because
there's one person out there perpetuating this fraud on the American people.
What the partisanship away, keep it objective.
It's hard whether you have one presidential candidate.
It might be hard if you can do it.
We have another question from either all from anonymous, probably thankfully.
Is ballot harvesting legal or illegal in Wisconsin?
Do you favor or oppose this technique, why or why not?
Do you think that ballot harvesting itself is illegal, correct?
But there are some questions when it comes to a disabled voter on what lengths
they can go to to have someone assist them cast a ballot if they're not physically able to.
Correct.
So currently only a voter can return their absentee ballot to the clerk.
If you are a disabled voter, you can assign an agent to return your ballot on behalf of yourself.
If you bring your ballot into the municipal clerk's office, the clerk is going to ask you,
if this is your ballot, you say no, I'm returning for someone they're going to ask you.
Is this for a disabled voter who assigns you to be their agent?
And the answer will be yes or no.
And if they say yes, I've been assigned an agent to return this ballot on behalf of a disabled voter,
then the clerk is going to take it.
So that's how the law stands right now.
That's the process the municipal clerks are using.
For any of the rest of you, would you support ballot harvesting?
I know there are other states where it is legal that has changed in some places.
Do you think that would be okay or is it better for each individual to return their ballot on their own?
I think it's, as you said, there are ways, if someone, you need help, you can indicate that on the ballot.
And I think that there is, you have a problem in a gray area in nursing homes and areas like this,
that feel of Alzheimer's, they aren't tracking very well, and this is a dangerous area.
And so I think most places like that, I have tried to put up, put in proper procedures,
but I knew that there was always a little bit of an issue with nursing homes.
I mean, a big point of kind of camping in nursing homes, but they're just so that they could avoid things that go for me.
Yeah, I don't know that I've got a good answer for it.
I really do believe that due to the COVID pandemic,
there were some changes that were allowed that kind of reset in 2022.
We didn't seem to have the same issues that came up in that midterm election.
And so I'm hopeful, but I'm always optimistic because I think that's how Americans should be and ought to be.
And just how I choose to live my life, that Americans are going to go out and vote.
There's going to be a lot of people voting this year, and I'm just very hopeful that, though,
and candidates especially will accept the results.
I also want to point out, one minute, so Clark sends out your absentee envelope.
That return envelope has a stamp on it already.
So that's required by law.
Every envelope that's mailed out has that return stamp on the envelope
where you mail your ballot back and you sign it and your view witness.
So that's as simple as getting it to your mailbox.
So do you need to bring it to the clerk's office?
Do you need to bring it to a job box?
No.
There are multiple ways to get your ballot returned.
And one of them is your front step in some cases, your mailbox or the end of your driveway.
And there are certain, obviously, unique circumstances that is helpful to have some harvesting of ballots.
Those in their single, they can't get on their own.
Those in the hospital.
Our veterans overseas are serving on a ship.
Where do you think those ballots are?
They're harvested and then brought back to the United States for proper accounting.
So there are going to be some unique circumstances to facilitate the process of making children's ballots,
get in at the proper time so they can be counted.
So another question here.
Are the paper copies of the ballots maintained in Wisconsin?
How long do you maintain paper ballots?
So when you say the actual ballots that were voted on the election day,
they are saved for 22 months or until any litigation surrounding that election has ended.
So they're saved for 22 months or if there's litigation until that litigation is done.
Another question here.
Is it possible that candidates spread rumors of election fraud that they have a stronger argument when losing
or do they really not believe in it?
And Reed, I think we were having a discussion before about the genuineness of some of the actors
that spread some of these or boost some of these arguments and why they may be doing it,
especially if they win their own re-elections.
Yeah.
And I always try to avoid assigning a motivation or an intention on somebody else's activity.
Sometimes those intentions could be very sincere and well intended because they themselves want to see
ballots act if they counted and what have you.
And so, but we do have a bit of a responsibility to really accept results when they're tabulated
and done and the contests are over.
The contests are over.
So I don't know if that's an answer to the question or not.
Another question here.
There is a referendum to make change to the Wisconsin Constitution from, quote,
every eligible voter to, quote, only eligible voters and they want to know,
could this restrict legitimate voting?
So what do we know about the consequences of the constitutional amendment on this November ballot
and what it could mean down the road for people's ability to vote?
In my room, I don't think it changes anything.
The Constitution is already pretty clear on it.
There's not a lot of evidence that there's a problem with non-citizens or people who are not eligible to vote in.
But if it makes the voters, if the voters who are going to vote in that referendum,
they feel that that would be helpful in restoring confidence, have that.
I'll support whatever makes you all feel the same, you know?
One follow up on that is I know that in some districts, I don't know if it's in Wisconsin or around the country,
they do allow non-citizens to vote in local elections for mayor or for council,
because those people do live there and pay taxes.
Could that restrict the ability of some of these municipalities to allow non-citizens to have a voice in their local government,
even if they're not allowed to vote in state?
I'm not sure that there's any local jurisdictions in Wisconsin that allow non-citizens to vote.
I'm not aware of anything.
Not in the state of Wisconsin.
I'm unaware that you require to be a US citizen when you register to vote in the state of Wisconsin.
I think I could be wrong on this, but I think years ago there was a problem, many of them up in Stephen's point,
where quite a few students were voting on a local issue having to do with bonding for school construction or something like that.
And people who were taxpayers who are going to take them to think that was quite fair, and it was an issue,
and I think they decided that they shouldn't be allowed to vote in those local elections if they could at that time.
It was quite a while ago, so I may be wrong on that.
Great.
Some of these are duplicate questions.
Oh, my internet's trying to reconnect.
Maybe someone's sending another one.
I can't see any action on that.
So it says, another question, just a point, only 109 invalid votes were found in an audit of Wisconsin 2020,
0 by 8 vehicles.
Is that accurate to your knowledge, Jenny?
Does that make sense in terms of 109 invalid votes from 2020?
I don't know what is meant by 109 invalid votes in 2020.
I don't have the stats memorized on what the fraud reports were.
They're posted on the commission's website.
All I know is when you look at these, the last 10 to 15 years, there's only been four instances of non-U.S. citizens voting.
So I don't know the 109 invalid votes.
I'm not sure what that means.
I don't have any answer to that.
Yeah, I'm not sure if there was some technical mistake or error that was made in submitting the balance,
but that's another area I think there's room for improvement in the state is for self-correction to take place.
If someone makes an honest mistake and didn't have the right address or something on it, having the ability to self-correct that.
So that vote isn't disenfranchised ultimately is something I think the state should take a closer look at.
I think there is a procedure, Jenny.
Isn't there for some self-correction?
If there was a mistake made for a mail-in ballot?
Yeah.
If an absentee envelope is returned to the clerk and the voter forgot to sign or they forgot to put the witness signature,
the clerk can reach out to that voter and that voter and that witness can come back in and they can rehab that ballot.
So then it can go to the polls to be cut to.
I could post questions.
I meant illegal ballots.
The Heritage Foundation apparently got to hold the list on the audit that was done and published them as to all ballots that were not voted legally.
Most of them were felonies who were given this information at the polls that they could vote.
Of all the ones that they listed, every single name, it was why they couldn't vote and zero of them were illegal aliens.
Yeah.
You're talking about the fraud.
I was talking about ballots and I didn't know how you get that.
Right.
And those reports are on the commission's website and as I said over the years, it's ridiculously low the amount of fraud that's there.
A majority of it, if you look at these reports, it's people trying to vote twice and they think they can get away with it and they don't understand the system and they get caught.
So a couple new questions came at the very end.
Good job.
My phone is slow and updated.
And I'll kind of merge these two together, Jimmy.
They're more on the technical aspect.
If you vote by absentee ballot, how do they know they're a US citizen and how do they know if they show a fake ID and are they now required to have a birth certificate to vote?
So what are the technicalities when someone registers?
Yeah, you're not required to show birth certificate when you register.
So in order for someone to receive an absentee ballot, they have to be registered to vote first.
There's an exception for military and overseas voters, but they have to register to vote before we even going to accept your absentee ballot request.
So again, you're filling out that registration form, you're a testing that you're a US citizen, that you're 18 years of age.
You've been at that voting district for 28 days and that you're not currently serving a felony sentence.
Once the clerk gets that information, they're going to see your proof of residency.
That's required.
And then if you request an absentee ballot, you have to show your proof of residency.
That means you're submitting a copy of your driver's license or your state ID or your passport, whatever it is that you're showing for acceptable photo ID.
So that's the process that's put in place before we send out absentee's.
We just don't get emails and say, I like your absentee ballot and we send it out.
There's a whole process that goes in place to make sure the voters registered with a database shows us if they have a photo ID on file, the copy that photo ID is there.
So it's a very lengthy process before we're going to send a ballot.
They're still a promise student ID's qualifying for registration purposes.
Yeah, the campus is the student ID qualifies if it has certain things on it.
I'm not up to par on what those are.
Nikki Elson, our city clerk is amazing with that.
And she has all that taken care of to make sure that college kids are able to vote the way they need to.
And all polling books, we get requests all the time after the elections.
You can even go to the commission's website.
It's badgervoter.wi.gov.
And you record and request a list of everyone that voted in certain elections, anyone that voted the August elections or the April election.
So you can request that information.
You can see exactly who voted in which elections.
On top of all that, if you question it, go to the polls and be an observer.
If you feel someone's going there that's not a citizen or someone that you know there's a felon, go to the polls and be an observer.
If you see that happen, you pointed out to your chief inspector.
They can challenge that voter and we can go through the process of challenging it to confirm it.
They're a citizen or not or a confirm it.
They're on the felony list or not.
So there's processes in place if someone wants to question it.
Just you have to get involved.
You can't sit back and say, well, this happened and this happened.
This happened.
Well, if that happened, get involved and bring it up.
Point it out.
Be involved.
We can't stress that enough with these elections now.
So there, there is an interstate system that exists for clerks to communicate between states to confirm when someone moves between states, correct?
Yeah, I believe you're referring to the electronic registration information center.
I'm looking at my deputy.
It's Eric.
Let's call it Eric.
So since 2021, one of the things that's happened is that there have been a number of Republican led states that have left that system.
There's actually a lawsuit just recently filed in Wisconsin by a former member Republican in the assembly to have Wisconsin leave that system.
How do you rely on Eric and what would be the impact if Wisconsin did leave a system that was set up and designed to help catch some of these issues if people are going to multiple states?
Yeah, I know we've seen that there was that loss of file, but there's also a state law that requires us to be part of Eric.
Eric is a system where we use that if someone moves to another state and it registers the vote, it alerts us.
If they use the DOC, they use the DOT, DMV, postal service.
So if you go anywhere and it looks like you've changed your address, you know, we get the alerts back.
We send mail postcards out saying, hey, it looks like you may have registered in another state or in another municipality.
Is this correct?
Yes or no?
When we first signed up with Eric, a lot of it was when parents would send their kids off to college in Madison and they would register the car down there.
Well, we'd get the alert that, hey, you registered a car in Madison, did you move?
And it's like, well, no, we just took our kid to school and we registered the car so it would be legal down there.
So would there be, would it complicate when we check our voter rolls and with other states to see if people are voting in multiple states?
It potentially could.
The Elections Commission is the one who really oversees the Eric and they know all the ins and outs about it.
We see the other side of it when we get the alerts.
So I don't, I don't want to miss speak on everything that Eric does or doesn't do because I'm just not that familiar with that side of it.
I'd like to ramp up this, this evening with each of you answering the same question and that would be what can people in this audience do or anyone watching tonight.
When they're talking to a neighbor, when they're talking to a friend, we talked about the importance of talking to neighbors and the trust there if they still have some doubts about the integrity of Wisconsin elections.
What's the simplest message without getting into tabulators and Eric and lawsuits?
What is the message that you would ask them to convey?
Well, I'd just say that if people have doubts, they should learn more about the system and how it actually works.
No human system is going to be perfect, but people have worked on elections for a couple hundred years now here in the United States and have tried their very best because one time you're in charge, the next time you're the other parties in charge,
and you want to have the election fair so that you can continue having elections.
And I think learning more about how it works is what I would tell them.
I go back to what I've said a few times tonight is get involved.
If you're doubting or questioning what's happening at the polls on the election day, get involved, go to the polls, be a poll worker.
We're going to do poll worker training in the next couple weeks to get people ready for the polls.
And then if that doesn't do it, call me.
I have never turned down a call from a citizen who had questions on how elections work.
After the 2020 election, I spent days and days on the phone at voters.
Just wanting to know how does the system work and what I'm hearing, having your nap.
And I will spend all the time I can to help you understand how the system works.
So when you understand it, you can share it with your neighbors and your friends.
And as a community, we win when we have the right information out there.
But get involved, and if you don't want to get involved, then call the people who know what's going on.
That's me and your company clerk, that's your municipal clerk, that's your poll workers.
They're the ones that are on the front line of these elections, and they can answer these questions for you.
I would just say that embedded deep in the heart of Americans is a great deal of love for this Republican system of government that we have.
And that is, we've had elections for over 200 plus years, and the actual amount of fraud is remarkably tiny,
given the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of votes that have been cast over all those times.
It's tiny.
And that tells me that American people, at the very core of who they are, they want it done right, they don't cheat.
They take their civic duty responsibly, they vote, and they go home, and they wait for the results to be tabulated and put out there.
And it's just, for me, it's just so refreshing election day.
And as a former candidate, I will just say, members of Congress are most fearful the day before an election and the most courageous the day after.
But it's because our great system has taken the power away from Ron and Reid and Tim and given it to you.
And that is something almost magical.
Well, Ditto, that's tough to follow up on, Reid, it really is.
But, yeah, I think educating yourselves a little bit more about the checks and balances, the safeguards that are put in place that work very, very well.
It's an honor to be on the stage with Ginny and your team and what you do every election cycle.
We ask you to do a lot.
You deserve our encouragement, support, and respect for what you do.
And it's an honor to be able to be up here with my two former favorite members of Congress, with whom I had a chance to serve, Tim and Reid, and have this discussion with all of you.
And I think this discussion needs to be taking place throughout the country today, given the perils that we face.
And I go back to my original point, the Constitution really does put the power in the hands of us, the citizens of this country.
And there's a dual responsibility with that.
Not only to get out and participate and to vote and to let our voices be heard, but also a responsibility I would submit to accept the results of those elections and to accept the peaceful transfer of power.
America's great strength and what we came to learn as a member of Congress traveling overseas and listening to other people isn't our mighty economy or our military force.
It's the example we set with the peaceful transfer of power, which most people around the world are in awe of that we're able to do this during the election cycle.
And we're losing a little bit of that each day right now.
And once we lose it, it's going to be awfully tough to get it back.
If the seas of distrust continue to be allowed to grow and to fester out there, we're going to see more repeats of January 6, I fear.
And I think that's really one of the things that's on the ballot this fall.
All right, that is our time.
You do have another QR code.
If you are so inclined to give us a survey, give us a little feedback on how we did tonight.
But I want to thank all of you for being here and sitting patiently and your wonderful questions and mastering how to send it into my phone.
So we could master that.
And I want to thank everyone here on this stage.
The four members of Congress, the congressional study groups.
Ginny, thank you for your expertise.
That really helps for the rest of us who aren't experts in that capacity, but didn't be tried, read, read, read, read, read, read.
Let's give them a hand.
Thank you.
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