Just as Wisconsin is heading to the polls next Tuesday, calls from Washington to nationalize
elections.
The executive order President Trump signed this week would create a national list of
U.S. citizens eligible to vote and restrict mail-in ballots.
This order is not in effect for our April 7 election, and Democrats have filed a lawsuit
over it, but does it perpetuate mistrust in the voting process?
We turn to the chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission and Jacobs, and thanks very much
for being here.
Happy to be here.
So what is your reaction to President Trump's executive order?
I think it was at best unfortunate and at worst unconstitutional.
The administration of elections is delegated by the U.S. Constitution to the states, and
Congress can make laws regulating elections, and an executive order is neither of those
things.
And so it's your belief that this would not be in effect for the November elections or
in effect ever.
My suspicion is never in effect ever.
It's sort of a backdoor way to create time limits and new administrative hurdles for
voters to go through under the auspices of addressing essentially what our conspiracy
theory is about absentee balloting.
So if it were to go into effect, what would the ramifications be in Wisconsin?
So in Wisconsin, by way of example, you can request an absentee ballot five days before
an election, and you are eligible to vote if you've been a resident of Wisconsin for
28 days.
So a new resident of Wisconsin could come and ask for a ballot and have the right to
vote.
Under the executive order, however, that name and that address had to have been submitted
to the U.S. government prior to 60 days before the election.
So you create conflicts between the statutory rights under state law with this mailing deadline,
and now the government's going to control whether they will even mail your ballot.
And how do you undo that?
What is the remedy if the government says, oh, you weren't on the list, so I'm not going
to mail your ballot, ha ha.
And the reason they're not mailing it is maybe because there's a typo in a list somewhere,
or you moved, or what have you.
So it's really just sort of creating an unnecessary and unworkable mess.
In your mind, is it more possible with mailing ballots to experience voter fraud?
No, the short answer is no.
There's a number of checks and balances involved in addressing mail in ballots.
First of all, you got to be registered.
Being registered in Wisconsin requires a driver's license or the last four digits of your social
security number if you don't have a license or ID.
It has to go to your registered voter address.
If you're sending it somewhere else, we send a postcard to your registered voter address
saying, hey, did you order this ballot to go somewhere else?
It requires a witness with an address to sign your absentee ballot envelope that affirms
that they know you and they saw you complete this ballot.
And then when it comes in to the elections, municipal clerks across the state, they check
it off, check it in, and that ballot then is tallied.
There's just a lot of checks and balances along the way.
This executive order also seems to be trying to get at the issue of only U.S. citizens voting
because that is considered in some corners rampant with fraud.
What is your knowledge of whether that is happening here in Wisconsin?
What is your knowledge of the citizens voting?
We actually have some numbers on that.
There are four documented cases of non-citizen voting since 2016.
During that time, 25 million ballots have been issued in the state of Wisconsin.
And if you want to do the math, it's like 0.000000 something something of all ballots cast.
This is quite simply not an issue and not a problem.
Non-citizens, generally speaking, don't want to get in trouble with the U.S. federal government.
And that's why we haven't seen really hardly any numbers of non-citizen voting.
And even those cases where non-citizens have voted, many times it's because they've received
some sort of legal status that they incorrectly believed entitled them to vote.
Is this executive order separate though from the USDA suing Wisconsin to turn over redacted
voter registration data?
Let me clarify.
They're not asking for redacted voter data.
They're looking for unredacted voter data.
They're looking for your complete name, date of birth, driver's license number, and social
security number.
That information under Wisconsin law is protected.
We don't give that out, and that's a state law that prohibits that.
And I think we've also seen recent disclosures of, I believe it was a Doge employee who loaded
the entire, some sort of entire social security database onto a thumb drive and took it elsewhere.
Wisconsinites want their private information protected.
They don't want it going out to be shared by the government with random anti-voting
entities so they can, quote, investigate non-citizen voting.
So the government's asking for private information, not the public information.
They're welcome to have the public information.
One can go to BadgerVoters.wi.gov, I think, BadgerVoters' website, and order the entire
Wisconsin ballot voter roll.
As to our question at the head, do these moves out of Washington cause mistrust in elections?
Yes, I think it waters and fertilizes the seeds of conspiracy theories and distrust, and it's
so important for people to, if they've got questions, to ask the people running the elections.
And that could be their municipal clerks, that can be their county clerks, and that
can be the elections commission.
We always encourage people to come to our website.
We have an FAQ page.
We probably have answered any concerns voters have about voting, about absentee balloting,
about all of that.
So I really encourage people to do that.
All right.
And Jacobs, thanks very much.
Thank you.
Yes, I had a typo in my question.
Thank you.
Unredacted, unredacted, thank you.
That's all right.
I thought maybe you were testing me.
No, I wasn't.
I would not be so foolish, madam.
I caught it, so all is well.
All right.
Thank you so much.
Have a good weekend.
Well, have a good day.
Thanks.