>> The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original
production you're watching "Her& Now".
>> On day one, she did exactly what she promised. And now
Wisconsin and every other state is dealing with the
consequences. >> Vice presidential candidate
J.D. Vance returns to stump for Donald Trump. This is just days
before yet another appearance by presidential candidate Kamala
tonight on here. And now we check in at the Harris event
live in Madison. And as absentee ballots get sent out this week,
so is guidance about local clerks certifying election
snapshots of the horse race. But then what? We go beyond the data
with pollster Charles Franklin. And finally, a new government
program could save time and money filing taxes in 2025. It's
"Here& Now" for September 20th. >> Funding for "Here& Now" is
provided by the Focus Fund for journalism and Friends of PBS.
Wisconsin. to Wisconsin for Kamala Harris
since her bid for the white House began in late July with
another big rally, this time in Madison, we turn to senior
political reporter Zach Schultz, who joins us on location at the
Alliant Energy Center. And hey, Zach. So this rally ended about
50 minutes ago. Set the scene for us.
>> Well, it was quite the event. The crowds were here late
afternoon. There was a DJ playing. There were people had
color coded bracelets and there were colored lights. It was
really more of a party environment reflecting the
intentions of the Harris campaign to treat this as a
momentum builder, a motivating factor for these people to
volunteer, get out, vote and activate and energize the rest
of the Democrats that they know and their family and friends
group. So from that point of view, it was definitely designed
to get people excited about this campaign.
>> Well, Madison is always a good place for any Democrats to
come to. It's very friendly territory. Dane County is the
fastest growing county in the state. Democrats need to run up
the score here in order to win statewide, but it's also a place
where you can show that energy and motivation to people around
the state. It's really important for Democrats to come here. John
Kerry, in 2004 came in October, Barack Obama in 2012 came in
October. As those big motivating rallies to try and show all the
momentum to the rest of the nation. The question is, then
why did Harris come here in September? Well, because
campaigns are earlier now. We've already seen more than 400,000
absentee ballots being sent out around the state. Early voting
has started in some states. It starts early. In-person voting
starts in Wisconsin in just a few weeks. And as Harris said
from the stage, the election has already started.
timing because people could already be voting with 400,000
ballots already sent out as to those ballots, though, having
dropped out, RFK Jr is in court to get his name removed from the
Wisconsin ballot. He knows it's too late to get those reprinted,
but he wants clerks to cover his name up with stickers. But
here's what the City of Milwaukee elections chief said
about that. machines, right? Because they do
have to process through our machines. And so that is a
concern, other concern is what if the sticker moves or, you
know, falls off like that? Just there's a lot about what is
putting a sticker on a ballot could do that could really
disrupt the process. >> Just today, as you know, the
Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed to take this case directly. What
does this signal? >> Well, at the moment, the Dane
County judge already ruled it's too late for RFK Jr to pull his
name off the ballot. His campaign appealed, trying to go
to the Second District Court of Appeals in Wisconsin, a more
conservative court, to try and put a stay in place and try to
get those stickers in place. And the Supreme Court took that case
directly away from them. And what, more importantly, what
they said is there will be no oral arguments in this case. The
RFK Jr campaign has until tomorrow to finalize their last
appeal, and then they will make a decision. And in this case,
the facts and the law are not on RFK Jr's side. State law does
not allow you to pull out as an independent candidate. The only
case for stickers is if the candidate dies, and that's
certainly not the case here. And the Wisconsin Supreme Court said
that they expect to issue a decision in writing very soon to
give clarity to clerks around the state. Right.
>> Because, of course, time is of the essence. But the bottom
line here, why does Kennedy want his name removed from the ballo?
>> Well, recently he came out and endorsed Donald Trump, and
polling has shown in Wisconsin that RFK Jr is polling around
6%. Now, that's a little misleading. Third party
candidates always poll better in the summer and early fall
compared to what they actually receive in November, but most of
that polling has shown also that a large percentage of those RFK
Jr voters are also Donald Trump fans, and he was actually
pulling those votes away from Donald Trump. So the Trump
campaign specifically, and RFK Jr's campaign, want those voters
eligible to vote for Donald Trump and not to be convinced to
vote for RFK Jr. So that's why they're looking to do this at
this time. >> Yeah. Well, it will be
interesting to see what they decide. And as you said, this is
on an expedited schedule because time is of the essence. Zac
Schultz thanks very much. Thank you. At the state Capitol today,
state Republican leaders held a press conference ahead of the
Harris visit, downplaying enthusiasm for the dem candidate
and slamming her policies. >> She's not going to be able to
pass herself off, as you know, working class individual. You
know, she's always been part of the elite, and now she wants to
become president without telling the American public exactly who
she is and what she stands for, what policies she would impose
on our society. So again, the enemy of the Harris campaign and
of Democrats in general, is the truth and the reality situation
that they caused the open border. The 40 year high
inflation, the weakness that America is demonstrating to our
global adversaries, which have literally, literally set the
world in flames, certify election results or face legal
consequences. >> That's the message from a
group of nonpartisan voter advocacy groups to election
clerks in Wisconsin and six other battleground states. The
groups are detailing state specific election laws,
including how any clerk choosing not to certify results could be
prosecuted. They say since 2020, more than 30 local election
officials across the country have tried or threatened to
refuse to certify results. None of them in Wisconsin. But the
groups are trying to get out ahead of any problems with rogue
clerks following the 2024 presidential election, protect
democracy is among the groups releasing the rules guidance.
Its Wisconsin lead for policy and litigation on election
subversion is Edgar Lin. So what makes you and others believe
that there are election clerks out there that might refuse to
certify results? >> Yeah, that's an excellent
question. And to answer it, I like to just give a little
context. If you don't mind, and talk about two terms canvasing
and certification. You are a voter and after you cast your
ballot, there's a robust process to make sure every valid vote is
verified and tabulated. That process is called the canvass.
Certification ends the canvass. The role of certification is not
about verifying the final count, but simply to kind of sign off
on the verification process that's already been performed.
So if I if I may use a sports analogy, you can think of the
certifying election official as a scorekeeper in a basketball
game, a scorekeeper whose sole job is to make sure that the
number of the points for each team add up correctly so we know
who the winner is, right? It's the referee and not the
scorekeeper who is responsible for enforcing the rules of the
game. And at the end of the game, the scorekeeper doesn't
get to go back and say, I don't think X, Y, and Z shots should
have counted because I don't believe, the shooter, I believe
the shooter traveled or something like that. It's just
not the scorekeeper's job. So to your question of why would a
clerk refuse to certify certification? Used to be a
pretty quiet, mundane part of the election process. People
don't pay attention to it. Things started to change in 2020
when we saw a rise in election related conspiracy theories and
accusations, baseless answer your question, since
then, a small number of officials motivated by
partizanship or conspiracy certification or the sign off
process as a place to disrupt the election when they don't
like the results. So I'll just emphasize that this has happened
a few dozen times. As you mentioned earlier in in various
states in the last four years. But the vast majority of
election officials across the country and here in Wisconsin
have been committed to performing their jobs, doing
their jobs, certifying the election results. And today, all
these attempts have failed. Courts have promptly ruled
against these efforts as they violate the law just because
refusing to certify isn't legal. >> So even in Wisconsin, where
Republican false electors scheme played out, as you say, no
clerks have refused to certify results here. And still you you
see the need to remind Wisconsin clerks of this.
>> I do, I think part of it is just a also a public education.
There might be folks who are not aware of this, but it's very
clear both state and federal law, Wisconsin law says
certification is mandatory. It's a ministerial duty. In other
words, scorekeepers or scorekeepers. And referees or
referees. Our state law and legal precedent are clear.
Election officials have a duty to follow the law, so but I do
think the more education we can give, the better.
>> Are there any legal reasons why a clerk could not certify
results? >> No. They are required to
certify results. if any? You know, so-called
rogue clerk were to not certify? >> Yeah. It would be met with
swift legal action. But let me start with this. As you
mentioned, Wisconsin has not had anybody attempt to not certify
or refuse to certify since 2020, unlike other states. We just had
a really smooth primary. Our local election officials are
doing their jobs regularly, fulfilling their roles as
stewards to our democracy. But if a county official refused to
certify either in bad faith because of partizanship or
baseless claims of fraud, or because they genuinely
misunderstand their legal state actors like the attorney
general or the Wisconsin Election Commission, and even
voters can bring legal actions to compel them or to make them
do that job. It's called a mandamus action. The attorney
general or local district attorneys may also prosecute bad
actors for election fraud by election officials. Again,
all failed so far, as I mentioned earlier. And that's
because our courts operate on law and facts and not on
conspiracies. And conjecture. >> All right. Well, thank you
for the education on this. Edgar Lin, thanks so much. Thank you.
For months leading up to Election Day, we hear from
Marquette Law School poll director Charles Franklin, whose
poll was recently ranked number three in the nation. As polls
dominate the news, we wanted to go behind the scenes to better
understand them and the director behind the data, Marissa Wojcik,
started by asking how the polls are conducted and what has
changed from 2012 until 20 through 2022.
telephone, okay, randomly dialing phone numbers in the
state, both landline and cell phone. But that became
increasingly difficult because more and more people don't pick
up phone calls. So beginning in 2023, we shifted to a sample
based on registered voters. The list of registered voters you
can buy from the state. And that allows us to send an email and a
text message inviting people to take the survey online. Only the
person we've sampled can take it. They can only take it once.
You can't volunteer to do the poll. So it's still a random
sample of the population. It's just that we're not randomly
sampling phone numbers. We're randomly sampling people we know
are registered voters. Now about 80% of people complete the
survey online, either on their. Phone or tablet or whatever is
convenient, and about 20% if we haven't heard back from them in
a couple of days, we start phoning. So we complete those
interviews by telephone. >> How has that changed the
data? Or has it changed the data?
there are some subtle ways. There are some advantages to
online in that you can ask a slightly more complicated
question online that might sound really hard to understand when
an interviewer is reading the question, but just reading it,
it's pretty clear to the respondent. The other thing is,
we know a bit more about the person that we're trying to
interview, because we sample from the voter list. We know
where this person lives, and so we can be geographically more
precise in our sample, when we were on the telephone, we
divided the state into five big regions based on media markets.
In the state. Now we divide the state into 90 different regions
because we know where these people live. And so that means
those regions are defined by going from the most Republican
to the most Democratic, say, within the green Bay TV market.
So we're making sure we get the right percentage of people from
the most Republican areas of the green Bay market and the most
swingy areas and the most Democratic areas.
>> I wanted to show you Vernon County.
>> So that's one of the changes we've made to try to make sure
that we're representing the full range of opinion.
>> It's just really striking how much diversity and heterogeneity
we have in opinion, even within a pretty rural Western Wisconsin
county. polling more accurate or better?
>> We think it does. The reason for making these changes is in
part in response to the polling errors that we had in 2016 and
others had in both 16 and 2020. But the proof will come in
November when we finally get the vote count, and we'll see how
close we are. >> 2016 and 2020 was a tough set
of cycles for many pollsters, not just the Marquette poll.
Some of the explanation for that was people who wanted to vote
for Trump didn't feel potentially comfortable telling
that to someone on the phone. Does that mean that kind of
might be mitigated? >> I don't think it's so much
the so-called shy Trump voter who somehow doesn't want to
admit they're supporting Trump, go to a Trump rally. There are
not a lot of shy folks at a Trump rally. What I think it is,
though, is that Trump appeals to a set of voters, some of voters
who have not traditionally voted in elections but are being
motivated to vote because of him, and who are very skeptical
of mainstream media. The established political parties
and pollsters. So I think where the problem comes is not so much
unwillingness to say who you'd vote for, as it is skepticism
about doing a poll at all and therefore falling out of the
sample beyond turnout. >> Do polls ever convince voters
who to vote for, or how they should feel about an issue?
>> I I'm skeptical of that. >> What I would push more is the
value of seeing what the polls say about the people in your
community, your state, who don't share your views. It's so easy
to be trapped in the notion that everybody I know agrees with me
on this. This is the obvious majority. And yet the poll can
tell you that maybe 30, 40, maybe even 60% don't hold the
same view as you on that, it's a bit of a pipe dream to wish
people would use polls that way, but I really think that one of
the most valuable points of polling is to talk about policy
issues, not just candidates, and to try to recognize the wide
range of opinion people hold on those things even within a
county or certainly within a state that not everybody's on
your side on this. >> How should an average voter
use this information? It can feel a little overwhelming. It
can feel like there's horse race polling and how how do we get
value? >> One fairly serious answer is
try to ignore it all. Make up your own mind. Talk to your
friends and do that. I think that's a totally valid way to
follow this. >> How has this election really
shaken things up for you as for me personally, I have rewritten
so many survey questionnaires this year and this summer,
especially on the last night, I can make changes before we start
interviewing. to hurry to rewrite the
questionnaire for Harris rather fun time for me that way.
>> What do you think is the most important thing for voters to
think about in this election as a whole? Not in polls.
>> I think I really go to the question of this election is
important, no matter which side you're on, and paying attention
to the candidates and making your own mind up and treating it
as seriously as you can is really my main advice. It's not
about the polls, per se. It's not even narrowly about how the
candidates campaign. But I think this is just the political
scientist in me. I think we're a better society when more of us
vote, we're a better society when the majority wins, when we
release our final poll before Election Day, the last thing we
say is, remember, polls don't vote. People do. The election's
in your hands. In the voters hands. And I still think that is
the most important lesson. >> Governor Tony Evers paid a
visit to the UW-Madison campus this week, listening to students
discuss their higher education experience as part of a tour of
UW campuses. The governor is using the visits to prop up his
planned budget increase of $800 million for the UW system.
Governor Evers also spoke to his reaction of a new policy
released by UW system President Jay Rothman in the aftermath of
Israel-Palestine war protests on campuses last spring. The new
policy has some concerned about impacts on free speech, as it
says university leaders should maintain viewpoint neutrality in
any reference to any matter of political or social controversy.
>> It would have a chilling effect on me if I was a Merrick
faculty and really didn't know what I should do to be complian.
>> After a trial run in 12 states was deemed a success, the
IRS is launching direct file nationwide in 2025, including in
Wisconsin. The free electronic filing system will allow people
to complete their federal returns online, and then
taxpayers will be taken to the Wisconsin tax filing site. The
hope that taxpayers will save time and money because,
according to the U.S. Department of Treasury, the average
taxpayer spends approximately 13 hours and $270 to prepare their
taxes each year. Here to detail direct file is Wisconsin
Secretary of Revenue David Casey. And thanks very much for
being here. >> Thank you for having me.
>> I appreciate the opportunity. >> So why did the government
decide to go with this direct file?
>> Well, I think, thanks to Senator Baldwin and Governor
Evers here in Wisconsin, we had the investment or, sorry, the
Inflation Reduction Act passed that funded some some of the
activity at the IRS and technology advancements. So
Direct File was a direct result of that, we here at the
Department of Revenue actually started a program, a couple of
years ago. We had some foresight on this and created Wiz tax and
online filing tool primary. You know, motivation for this was to
provide another tool for our taxpayers to use. You know,
right now they can use a third party vendor for the pay as you
file type software approach, where they can also use our
community of tax preparers, which are very helpful, but we
saw that there was a niche of taxpayers who were spending too
much time and too much money and thought that direct file would
be a good solution for them. >> So how many Wisconsin
taxpayers will be eligible to use it?
about 600,000. Taxpayers will be eligible for the eligibility.
You really just need to be a wage earner with less
complicated income. So no interest income or for example,
no real estate income. So the majority of Wisconsinites have a
particular wage income and that's it, and then also some
limited credits that you can apply for will have the earned
income tax credit and some others, but it's fairly limited
at this point. >> So how does it compare or
compete with, say, TurboTax? >> Probably, you know, from a
comparison or it's not really a competition. It's filling a void
that we've had, you know, the pay as you file tax preparers
offer an excellent service and they, they provide a service to
what we think is just the more the more complicated tax
returns, if you've got more complex financial, background
and tax obligations, they're a great solution. What we found,
however, was that a number of taxpayers with what we call just
the simplified, though the wage earner approach, were paying
to file when we could offer that same product for free.
>> So we know it's free. But is it easy to use? I mean, people
won't get all balled up in the online confusion of it.
>> It's well, we hope it's very easy to use. We know our wiz
tech solution when we piloted that over the last couple of
years, grew from a few hundred users the first year to tens of
thousands of users the second year. So it was very popular.
We've also heard from those 12 states that piloted Direct File
last year that it's averaging 15 to 20 minutes for a user to
complete both their federal and their state return. One of the
ways that we achieve that is that once you file your federal
return, you go to the state site. It's pre-populated with
all of the tax information from your federal return, which is
the basis of the Wisconsin return. So we get all of that
demographic. Financial information is all
pre-populated. So it's state return, it's a review. You
review what you have. You apply for any additional credits that
the state may, may offer. And then you submit it as easy as
that. for whatever reason, are they
able to reach out to the Wisconsin Department of Revenue
for help? >> Absolutely. We have an
excellent customer service team that we are training up on
direct file. It will be a new application for us to
administer, they'll be ready and waiting for the calls, though
frankly, the direct file solution is so user friendly we
don't anticipate a lot of need from our customer service
agents. thanks very much.
>> Absolutely. My pleasure. >> For more on this and other
issues facing Wisconsin, visit our website at PBS
wisconsin.org. And then click on the news tab to see all of our
election coverage. Visit Wisconsin Vote.org. That's our
program for tonight I'm Frederica Freyberg. Have a good
weekend.
>> Funding for "Here& Now" is provided by the Focus Fund for
Journalism and Friends of PBS.