You
Recording in progress.
Well, good evening, everyone.
And thanks for
bearing with us on the change of timing for tonight's media availability.
I'm really
Better can public information officer at the Wisconsin elections commission.
I'll hand things over in a moment to Wisconsin elections commission administrator Megan wolf who will provide some remarks on how election day went.
Once administrator wolf is done with her remarks, we'll head over to questions.
Just as a reminder to everyone, please make sure to raise your hand and then we'll call on you in the order in which you ask your question.
And just another reminder that you should have your full name appearing on zoom so that we can identify you. Thanks, everyone.
I'll hand things over now to Megan.
Great. Well, good evening, everybody. I'm Megan wolf. I'm the administrator of the Wisconsin elections commission and the state of Wisconsin's chief election official.
So election day isn't over.
But thus far it's really been a great success. There were a few items that made the news today, which we will walk through along with a couple of reminders.
Today's election was diligently administered by Wisconsin's local election officials reminders that Wisconsin has the most decentralized election administration system in the country with each of our 1850 cities towns and villages in charge of administering
elections to their communities. Thank you to our local election officials and tens of thousands of poll workers for their hard work to ensure that every eligible Wisconsin night is able to participate.
As results come in from the polling places around the state.
Remember that what you're seeing on TV are the unofficial results that will be verified and certified still in the public eye once the polls close.
You can find links to the 72 county websites and where unofficial results are posted at elections.wi.gov.
As you're viewing unofficial results from some municipalities, please note that in some cities, they count their absentee ballots centrally.
This means that election day results will be recorded first, and the absentee will then be announced only after all of their absentee have been tabulated.
You can find a list of those 30 some municipalities and the number of absentee's that they have issued at elections.wi.gov.
As you have probably heard by now unofficial results from the city of Milwaukee may take take a bit longer tonight.
This afternoon by partisan Milwaukee election officials chose to start over on the counting of absentee ballots at their central processing facility out of an abundance of caution after identifying that a procedural step was originally missed and then corrected.
I want to be clear, this is something affecting the city of Milwaukee so you'll need to follow up with them for any additional details.
What I do know is that no equipment malfunctioned, no ballots were compromised, and every step of the process was completed in the public eye by election inspectors from both the Republican and Democratic parties, and under the watch of Republican and Democratic observers.
I also want to provide some background information for you on how voting equipment is designed and certified that may help you to put some context to this issue.
Voting equipment is designed and certified at the state and federal level, so that none of the mechanics can be accessed in front of the power cords and other mechanics.
There are doors that are intended to be locked. There is also a tamper evidence seal that is placed over each door.
These seals have a serial number on them that is recorded on the chain of custody law.
The law requires these doors to be locked and sealed and Milwaukee election officials wanted to ensure that the letter of the law was followed Milwaukee made the decision to make sure this was addressed.
The day on election day in the public eye so that no one could use a procedural misstep to call those legitimate votes into question later.
While my office, the state of Wisconsin elections commission does not oversee or administer elections at the polls, that is a function of the city.
And now we know that we have a platform that we can use to help ensure that accurate information gets out, and we can also help to provide transparency on the process.
So while I can't speak for Milwaukee and their decision making, I do know how Wisconsin elections work and Wisconsin election law requires, and I'll do my best to answer any questions I can about that.
We'll briefly talk about some reporting we've seen about alleged bomb threats. We've seen statements from FBI that there were bomb threats to polling locations in several states that appeared to originate from Russian domain email domains.
None of them have been determined to be credible.
We're aware of a report related to this from the city of Madison, but it was deemed to be a non credible threats and didn't impact voting today.
Regardless of these local reports at no point today was there an active or credible threat to a polling location that we're aware of.
Finally, as you've likely seen the US intelligence community has been observing foreign adversaries, particularly Russia conducting influence operations that they've said are intended to undermine public confidence in the US election system.
Today we saw a video circulating on social media that may be an example of such disinformation, although that confirmation would need to come from the intelligence community.
This video depicted violence between supporters of the two major presidential campaigns, but it had clear indicators that it was not legitimate that it did not take place at an actual Wisconsin polling location.
It really serves as an important reminder to just be aware of these disinformation efforts that are ongoing, and to really think critically about the information about elections that you consume, and certainly think before sharing information about elections.
So that's what I have for you in terms of updates. We will be back again tomorrow to speak with you all. I also want to thank you all for committing to providing accurate election day coverage.
I know it's been a long day for all of you, and it will be a really late night ahead. So really thank you for all that you do and for making sure that the public has access to the important details about how elections work here in Wisconsin.
And with that I'll turn it back over to Riley to facilitate the question and answer.
Great thanks Megan again if you do have a question, please go ahead and raise your hand and then we will call on you in the order in which you raised your hand.
We will try to get to as many questions as we can. The first question goes to Ruth Connor.
Sarah this is Ruth kind of from the Wisconsin examiner. I just wanted to see if you would be willing to explain in a little more detail what those doors that were unsealed, or you know hadn't properly been sealed in Milwaukee.
We're covering like what was behind the door could you just sort of physically describe it.
No, I am not at Milwaukee central account so I don't have access to it, but I can point you to some resources that show exactly what their, their tabulators look like.
So it's my understanding that they're using what's called the DS 950's.
And so there are as part of the certification documents that comes from the, the federal government, the USC and from our Wisconsin elections commission.
They have all of the various components and technical diagrams that are part of that equipment. So, while I don't have those specific details before me because I'm not there.
I'm sure that Milwaukee would, and I'm sure you could also find a lot of those details on elections.wi.gov with our voting equipment certification documentation.
Great. Thanks for that question. And if you do have a question, please raise your hand and we'll call on you. I'm not seeing any other questions at this point.
That looks like Alex. Sure.
Hey, they're just wondering if you could weigh in Milwaukee election officials seem to.
You know, they had a couple options they could have continued their account despite these tabulator doors being open, or they could have restarted the count.
Was the elections, did the elections commission weigh in on their decision or do, you know, does the commission support what they ended up doing and rerunning that first batch of ballots.
So thank you for the question. So myself and the commission would not weigh in on such a decision. That's a decision for the municipality to make using their statutory authority.
And we also have to be really careful not to weigh into matters that could come to us in the form of some type of administrative complaint.
And so we can't prejudge any of those things that might come before the commission to consider.
You know, unrelated to the actual decision that was made. I think something that they did here was that they were very transparent about it. They made sure that any of the things that happened today happened as part of the election day process.
They made sure that they dotted all their eyes, they crossed all their teas. They made sure the letter of the law was, was followed in terms of how those procedures should be carried out.
And they did it in the public eye. They had their bipartisan election inspectors involved in those as well as bipartisan election observers. And so I think anytime there is some type of mistake that's identified being very transparent about it and making sure that the public understands exactly
what they're seeing is incredibly important.
Great. Thank you for that question. We'll now go to Holmes librarian from CNN.
Hi, thanks so much. I wondered if you could elaborate on why on how it was that you debunked that video that was circulating earlier. I don't think you I think you said it was disinformation.
You said it was pretty easily proven to be disinformation. I'm curious how you how you debunked that and also if if you've gotten any indication that it's from any foreign actors or what the source might be thanks.
Yeah, so in viewing that you know we can see based on the details of the video that is not a Wisconsin location that is not a Wisconsin polling place that is not allowable behavior at a Wisconsin polling place.
Also in speaking, you know with law enforcement, none of the law enforcement said that that's something that actually occurred in any of our jurisdictions.
And you know we're not able to make attribution. That's going to have to come from the intelligence community. But if you look at the statement that came out from our federal intelligence community partners yesterday.
They foreshadowed this this exact same type of thing was going to happen. And so I think for us what we're observing we're able to see this was not a Wisconsin polling place or pulling location.
And then we're also seeing that information that you know this this is something that that may be happening so the final attribution will have to, you know, come from the intelligence community.
But we can say that what was portrayed in that video was not was not truly a state of Wisconsin polling place.
And so for that question, we'll now head over to Halleluka say wait, look as they wait.
Thanks. Thank you for your time. I just wanted to follow up on the fake the fake bomb threats I saw.
You said the report related to Madison and it was an incredible threat.
We were seeing reports that there were threats to two polling locations. So just wondering if you would clarify how many, you know, threats.
There were to polling locations in Madison.
And really the specifics of it would have to come from the law enforcement entities themselves that looked into it.
You know, we're operating under the same type of information you're probably all seeing, which is news reporting that there was, you know, any of the threats that were not deemed to be credible.
They were to either schools that aren't open today, or places that weren't polling places, and that there may have been one that was a polling place in a school.
But that law enforcement responded examined it and deemed it not to be a legitimate threat.
Thanks for that question. I'll go to Miranda Davis.
So, just to kind of piggyback on that.
You say you're operating with the same information that we are. Have you spoken to law enforcement about this at all? Have you spoken to the FBI, the field office in Milwaukee, or any local law enforcement regarding those threats.
So my understanding is that we've spoken with at least the emergency management folks from Dane County to understand, you know, what, what, what their information is that they're receiving. So, yes, I believe that the information in the assessment that we've gotten is coming from our law enforcement partners.
Thank you.
Thank you. And we'll go over to Anya Van Wegndong.
Yeah.
Hi, I just wanted to.
I heard that she only goes to something like this.
Are you able to have a bit of background noise.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
I had a watch party.
Are you able to confirm whether two locations in white water where you have to open until 30 and why.
I am, I am not.
I haven't heard that.
But I guess what I can say to that is anybody that's in line by eight o'clock is still able to participate.
And so I would say that it's not uncommon in the student campus areas and polling places to see long wines form.
Right before eight o'clock that may take a while for them to all, you know, be able to get into to vote.
A lot of times students also have to register to vote. And so, you know, I guess I haven't heard that in particular.
But we do often on election night here of longer lines in campus areas where the students may have joined the line.
Right before eight o'clock or, you know, of course, by eight o'clock to be able to lawfully continue to participate.
Thanks for that question. And we'll go over to Peter Sarlambo.
Hi, thanks for taking the time.
The former president at this point has begun to suggest that there were irregularities in Wisconsin.
I wanted to, I guess, get true thoughts on that or get a response about kind of these doubts being raised before you guys even begin reporting any results.
And the, you know, veracity of any of that kind of allegations.
So in the state of Wisconsin, every step of the election process is publicly observable.
Not only do you have bipartisan observers so people from the major political parties.
You're going to have multi partisan, you know, observers as well from minor political parties on affiliated people.
There are so many observers in the state of Wisconsin.
It's a really important part of our process. And I can tell you that in a lot of our major locations, we saw a lot of observers there today beyond observers.
You've also got party appointed election workers election inspectors.
And so in places like Milwaukee central count. These elections are actually administered carried out ballots are tallied by Republican and Democratic poll workers that were submitted by each of the major parties list.
And so I think that, you know, we've got a lot of folks that would be able to vouch for the veracity of today's elections, and that everything was administered in a fair and free way.
And you're going to be able to get that information from firsthand accounts from individuals that were actually appointed to be there and fulfill those roles by the major parties.
And so I would guess that any claims about elections that have not that don't have that factual basis behind them could easily be disputed by the folks that have that on the ground experience that were appointed by the political parties to be there and to do their job today.
Great. Thank you for that question. And I'm not seeing any other hands raised by those who have identified themselves. So I want to thank everyone for joining tonight's call. If you do have additional questions, please reach out to elections PIO at Wisconsin.gov. Thanks so much.
Thank you.