Election Fraud DEBUNKED: Wisconsin Elections Commissioner Ann Jacobs Sets the Record Straight

People, regular citizens, are wondering, is it real?

Were these election results actually legitimate?

What would you say to those people who genuinely believe that something went

wrong?

So it's the hardest part of this is to try to tell people who say, well, I don't know.

This is what I hear.

And if I'm hearing it this much, it must be true.

Right.

Right.

How do you fight that?

And the answer is you're hearing it, but it isn't true.

Hello and welcome to the Dr. Kristen Lyerle show.

I'm Dr. Kristen Lyerle and today we are talking about election integrity.

It's a phrase the Trump administration has weaponized, not to protect your vote, but to undermine your confidence in it.

And it's working.

People are confused, people are scared, and some are wondering whether their vote actually even matters anymore.

It does.

And today you're going to hear exactly why.

My guest is Anne Jacobs.

She's the past chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

She's an attorney and she's one of the people who has been on the front lines defending Wisconsin's election since 2020.

And that was no joke.

She received threats.

She faced calls to resign and she certified the results anyway because they were accurate and she knew it.

So today we're cutting through the noise, we're talking about what's actually true about Wisconsin's election system, what the Trump administration is really doing when it demands your voter data, and what you can do right now to make sure that your vote counts this November.

So let's get into it.

Welcome Ann.

Thank you so much for having me, Kristen.

I'm so happy to be here.

I'm so excited to be having this conversation with you because people need this information.

It's all over the news.

Everybody's got an opinion.

People are feeling really uncomfortable.

So this is a conversation that needs to happen.

100% and there's so much both accurate and worse inaccurate information out there that it's really important that we have these conversations to sort of let people know what's actually going on.

Yeah, so let's do it.

So now you have chaired the Wisconsin Election Commission twice, including during the controversial, still controversial 2020 election, and again through 2024 and into 2026.

You just handed the gavel to a Republican commissioner as the law requires.

So for people who don't know you or how this commission works, can you tell us who you are and what the WEC actually does?

Sure.

So Wisconsin used to be at the forefront of election.

Wisconsin used to be at the forefront of what was seen as the ideal election system.

Wisconsin had a nonpartisan board called the Government Accountability Board that was made up of retired judges.

And that was seen as a model for the nation.

In the mid-20 teens,

That board instigated an investigation of Scott Walker and as a result the Republican legislature decided to get rid of the model and instead go back essentially to a partisan commission.

So in 2016 the elections commission was created.

It is made up of three Republicans and three Democrats and it requires four votes to do anything.

So by definition this commission in order to function

has to work in a bipartisan way.

I joined the commission in 2016 and have stayed on the commission since.

I served as chair from 2018 to 20 and from 24 to 26.

I think that's right.

In any event.

So we don't have to get worried

about the,

did we get the dates?

No worries.

Okay, close enough.

So I've served twice as chair for a period of two years apiece.

And the role of the commission is really sort of the overarching policy creator and administrator of elections in the state of Wisconsin.

The commission itself is entrusted with management of the statewide computer voting system, voter system called WISVOTE.

It is the people who created and run the my vote, which if you've ever gone to look up whether you could get an absentee ballot or where you vote if you've gone to my vote.

So we run all of that at a state level.

What's really weird about Wisconsin and is not true anywhere else in the nation is unlike everywhere else, the commission itself does not administer the local level elections.

We are not who is running your election down the street at the church basement where you're voting.

That is done by 1,850 separate municipal clerks across the state.

So we have an incredibly decentralized election administration process.

overseen at the state level by the commission.

So that's a very long answer, but it helps sort of give a flavor of what the commission can and can't and does and doesn't do.

It feels like in concept, because there are three Republicans and three Democrats who have to work together in a bipartisan fashion, as you said, that seems like common sense.

But in this day and age where we are so divided, how has that worked out for the

election commission?

You know, it has worked out surprisingly well, in part because to the credit of my co-commissioners, the people who have been appointed and accepted appointment to the commission have been people who believe in voting.

They don't believe in tearing it down.

They want to have accurate elections so that the candidates they care about can win.

the importance of election administration is a bipartisan issue.

Everybody wants them to be fair, accurate on time, because that's the only way their candidates are going to vote.

We haven't had any burn them down, burn it down sort of people on the commission.

We've had people who take this duty really seriously.

That's so important because, as you said, it is the foundation of everything.

We all, no matter which side we are on or if we're in the middle, we all want our votes to count.

Let's talk a little bit about how you led Wisconsin through one of the most contested elections in modern history.

In 2020, you were threatened.

You had photos of your home posted on social media.

You faced calls to resign, but you didn't.

You stood strong.

How did you stay in that role?

What kept you there?

And what does that experience tell us about the pressure election officials are operating under right now?

So I came into the chairmanship, and now I know the dates, in 2020.

In June of 2020, we were in the midst of COVID.

And the commission was meeting by this new thing called Zoom.

Half the time we couldn't figure out how to get our microphones working.

And what we had to do as a commission was, on a bipartisan basis, figure out how to have safe and effective elections.

How were we going to assist the voters of Wisconsin?

And we had something like, I don't know, 25 or 30 meetings that year.

Statutorily, we're only supposed to have four meetings a year?

Or we're only required to have four meetings a year?

And we had something like several dozen meetings as we tried as a group to navigate through, how were we going to make sure that elections were safe?

How were we going to make sure people had access to vote?

And I think part of that work.

really made me believe in the importance of the commission and the work we were doing.

Because you could see how we had to come up with creative solutions and work together to make sure that people could vote in November.

And so that stuck with me.

And yes, there were some implied threats.

One of them posted a picture of my house and said, I wonder where her children go to school.

That was a nice touch.

On the other hand, it was a lot of noise and it was a lot of noise from people who were upset that their preferred candidate didn't win.

I think the unfortunate thing that came out of that wasn't those loud voices.

It was that after the election was certified, President Biden was installed that people didn't work to

tamp down those voices that they were allowed and encouraged to fester that I think is Where things really went off the rails what should have happened were?

Really largely the Republican higher-ups needed to be like no knock this off That's not what happened and instead they amped it up and so I really think that that's where things went awry and

Unfortunately, we're seeing the detritus of that still in place today.

You say that so diplomatically like they encouraged it and they emptied it up.

The truth is they blared it at in every possible arena at every media stop and they still are.

It's crazy to listen to President Trump still talking about the results of the 2020 election and the fact that we are still questioning it is so.

incredibly concerning, and people, regular citizens, are wondering, is it real?

Were these election results actually legitimate?

What would you say to those people who genuinely believe that something went wrong?

So it's the hardest part of this is to try to tell people who say, well, I don't know.

You know, this is what I hear, and if I'm hearing it this much, it must be true.

Right.

Right.

How do you fight that?

And the answer is, you're hearing it, but it isn't true.

And one of them, for example, is the fact that the city of Milwaukee's ballots come in very, I guess, technically early in the morning, the day after an election.

They always have.

Okay?

Like, this is not a shocker.

And when that happened in 2020, there was these claims that somehow that was brought.

It wasn't, it was predicted.

We all talked about it ahead of the election saying, hey, Milwaukee's gonna come in late.

Milwaukee is a blue city.

We know that.

We know that proportionately, you're going to have a huge percentage of votes out of Milwaukee being democratic.

Not all of them, and not all of them were when they were announced late at night.

But Milwaukee's absentee ballots were going to be predominantly Democrat.

And depending on what the margin was, going into Milwaukee's ballot release, it was possible that Milwaukee's total was going to tip from the race from Republican to Democrat in Milwaukee, in the state of Wisconsin.

And that's exactly what happened.

But we knew it was going to happen.

We knew this was a possibility when Governor Evers was elected in 18.

In 18, I was in Madison at the Victory Party at the Orpheum Theater.

We were awake until the Milwaukee Ballads came in at, I think, 1.30 in the morning or two.

and tipped the race from Scott Walker to Tony Evers.

This happens in Wisconsin.

We've known it happened.

It was turned into something nefarious, and it was turned into something nefarious for nefarious reasons, which was to undermine the election, and that's really unfortunate.

So I hear you saying that these results were predictable based on history.

This is what we were expecting to happen, even though it was close, but...

they took that information and decided to create a different narrative to insert uncertainty into the balance and make people question, hey, is this actually legitimate?

And, you know, the thing is this after Wisconsin had recounts, we recounted Dane County, we recounted Milwaukee County.

In 2016, we had a statewide recount.

The Elections Commission does machine audits.

after the presidential elections where we choose municipalities at random and have them compare hand count paper ballots and compare them to the tapes of their machines to make sure their machines are tabulating accurately.

We do all these things both to ensure that elections are accurate and to reassure people that elections are accurate.

All of the breathless claims of fraud can never explain how it would even be possible to insert the 20 to 25,000 ballots that would be necessary in Wisconsin to flip an election with nobody knowing and nobody talking about it.

They can't get there, so they just keep saying it's possible, but they'll never tell you how.

Right, so on one side we've got people saying, claiming that there's something happening and on another side we've got recounts and calibrations and all of these safety checks ensuring that our elections truly are safe and secure.

Right, and you know people can go be observers at any poll site and we have lots and lots of them across the state from both parties who will come into a poll site and observe and nobody's ever come out of there saying that they saw anything that could possibly

affect an election.

And the people who have claimed so, there's been a couple.

One of them claimed they didn't really know what they were looking for but looking at but they thought it was suspicious.

And the other one claimed something that was so preposterous that no other witness at the location has ever said a similar thing.

It's a little nuts.

So we have to just be aware that people who are making these claims have ulterior motives.

and that it's really to undermine our elections so that presumably as a pretense either to change how we vote or to change the outcome of an election and that that's sort of the frightening part.

Yeah, there are a lot of frightening parts.

Let's talk about another controversy that has been penetrating people's minds and their feeds.

It is non-citizen voting.

One of the biggest narratives that the Trump regime has put out there is that non-citizens are going to the polls in record number and screwing things up, and that's why we need things like the SAVE Act and all of these precautions in place.

And actually, the Trump DOJ has sued Wisconsin to hand over Wisconsin's voter

data, and a federal court just rejected that demand in May, recognizing that it was just invalid.

How big is the problem of non-citizen voting in Wisconsin and, to the best of your knowledge, nationwide?

I believe the number nationwide that they were able to document is something like 100, that they found 100 examples of non-citizen voting.

Why is that?

Well, think about it.

If you're not a citizen and you want to be a citizen, breaking the law is a bad idea.

It will prevent you from achieving your goal.

If you're undocumented and you're here, the last thing you want to do is go and interact with the government system because that's going to bring some attention to you.

Also, there's really stiff penalties for this.

So the logic of it doesn't make any sense of why anyone would do that.

The few cases that have happened have largely been people who were

had like a green card but weren't naturalized.

Where they thought they could vote, they were told they could vote, but then they actually couldn't because they didn't have the right status.

Let's talk a little bit about what the federal government wanted with regards to Wisconsin's voter list.

You can go right now to BadgerVoters.wi.gov and purchase Wisconsin's voter list.

You can do it right now.

That wasn't what the federal government wanted.

What the federal government wanted was that voter list plus your driver's license number plus the last four digits of your social security number.

Why would they need that?

Well, the answer is they don't.

This is part of this large data grab that they're trying to do to create some sort of master database and

Under Wisconsin law, it's just not allowed.

They're not entitled to this private information.

So they've gone to federal court and tried to argue that federal law allows them to have it.

As you mentioned, federal court said nope.

That was the district court.

They then appealed it to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, asking for an expedited review because they wanted this information before November.

7th Circuit said no.

I believe that was yesterday or the day before.

last week, Friday, or the day before.

Seventh Circuit said, no, we're not doing an expedited appeal on this.

There's no reason to think that there's any basis to need an expedited appeal.

And also, the courts have noted that they can't explain what it is that they need this data to do.

They haven't been able to really say, well, this is why we need it.

They say, well,

We think we should be able to verify it well, and the courts have asked, well, why?

What's the factual basis for this desire?

And they haven't been able to come up with anything.

So that's been a part of this as well.

So to be very

clear, this isn't about the voter rolls.

This is about our personal information, our driver's license numbers, our social security numbers, data that has nothing to do with voting.

Correct.

It's about what state law calls PII, personally identifiable information.

And I think we saw when Doge was all the rage that the current administration was rather lackadaisical about protecting people's data.

And they're asking for it from Wisconsin.

And under Wisconsin law, we've said no, because you're not allowed to have it under Wisconsin law.

Courts have agreed.

Fortunately, we've got those protections in place.

We're very lucky.

Let's talk about another thing that's been on people's minds, voting machines.

There is concern that they are hackable.

They can be manipulated, that the results can't be trusted.

What would you say to a voter who is genuinely afraid that their vote won't be counted correctly?

So there's an incredible number of myths, videos, and what have you of voting machines.

Voting machines are certified by the State of Wisconsin, so our staff members certify the machines.

They test them, they run all these different protocols on them, and then they certify them.

They are tested before each election.

So before each election, your local clerk will conduct a test of each machine, and that involves putting stacks of ballots in and making sure they tabulate them accurately.

They are not connected to the internet.

And this is a big myth that's out there.

And then they complain that what they are is at the end of the evening, most machines, not all of them, after the tape has been run.

So you push the tabulation tape, the tape is run.

Tape is what you see printed out of the results.

The results are then transmitted via a one directional, it's almost like a, it's a one dimensional transmission, encrypted transmission to the clerk's office.

And the machine, voting machine can only talk to the clerk's office, can't talk to anyone else, except here's what's important.

What is transmitted are the unofficial results.

Those are the results that AP or ABC News or CNN,

put up on their screens.

They are not the official tally.

The official tally are the ones that are on the jump drive that's in the machine.

And also, you can observe what's on the tape and test it against what the official results are.

You can do those things.

So afterwards, as I think I briefly mentioned, we also audit those machines.

We check them out.

We make sure they're tallying properly.

So we have all of these things that are in place.

But no, Elon Musk is not hacking your local voting machine through Italian thermostats.

That's not happening.

And we've also had recounts that have shown exactly that and where there have been small discrepancies.

I think there was a 20-vote discrepancy at one point.

Usually it's because how...

A ballot was counted one way, and it should have been counted another way, and usually that's about it.

Italian thermostats, I hadn't heard

that.

Oh, look it up.

It was part of a conspiracy from Venezuela to have thermostats that are connected to the internet somehow interface with voting machines.

It was never quite clear to me how that was going to work, but it was a thing for a while.

Wow.

But I think the important thing here is the voting machines are not connected to the Internet.

The voting machines have a one-way path that gets to the clerk's office and then there is the internal information and there's a double check there as well.

Correct.

Also, by the way, the electronic poll books are not connected to the Internet.

So, Wisconsin, some communities, some of the larger ones mostly, have moved to an electronic poll book.

And it's terrific.

You go, you check in, you're already in there.

You can register to vote using those machines and the data goes right in.

It's terrific.

They are not connected to the internet.

And in fact, to load the data onto the electronic pullbooks, clerks are required to use a jump drive.

They're not even able to use the internet within their own office on those.

So that was another thing where that somehow you could

use the internet to mysteriously add voters.

And then somehow have them vote using electronic poll books.

It's impossible.

It's impossible.

Oh, I should mention one more thing if I may.

So like I mentioned, Wisconsin's, the Elections Commission, we run the statewide voter database.

We have a lot, a lot, a lot of safeguards on that data.

things where if somebody thinks that after the close of an election at 8 p.m.

That somebody could come in and Activate 20,000 voters and somehow create absentee ballots for them and put them into the voter stream It's impossible.

We we don't allow it.

We have all sorts of alerts if there are massive changes in data We

take real good care of watching things and anything that's an anomaly is flagged.

We have terrific people monitoring this.

And we have a lot of security on our systems because people want to come in and mess around with them and we don't allow it.

So it's really not possible to do some of the things that people are claiming like that you could wait until 8 p.m.

and see what a total is and add votes.

It's impossible.

There's so much safety and so many safeguards to counter the conversations about the disinformation.

But there's a whole other campaign out there that's meant to suppress the vote.

And that is the intimidation of election officials, threatening prosecution, visiting their private residences in Milwaukee.

We saw that recently, creating a climate of fear.

We've seen reporting that a significant number of local election officials are considering stepping back and leaving their jobs because of these threats, because of what they're seeing in their own communities.

What does it mean for our democracy when the people who run our elections, the 1,850 people all across the state, are being threatened like this and potentially driven out?

It's

a real problem.

It is, I think, especially for clerks in smaller communities where they don't necessarily have the same sort of legal resources of a larger one.

They can feel very lonely, and it makes them feel afraid, especially when some of the Trump executive order, which we'll talk about in a little bit, threatened additional prosecutions of voting officials.

The question is, what do we do about it?

And I think the answer is to point out that the Trump administration has not been successful in doing this particularly.

They have tried and failed, and that following state law, we try to make it as easy as possible for our clerks.

We don't want to see our clerks do anything wrong.

send all sorts of orders and requests and demands and what have you to them to do it right.

And they do.

For the most part, our clerks are amazing.

So hopefully what they're seeing is that it's a bit of a paper tiger and that these threats aren't real and aren't going to be hurting them.

And we should talk about the executive order, because I think a lot of the fear stems from that.

So let's talk about that.

Several months back, the Trump administration put out an executive order full of all sorts of insanity relating to elections about what couldn't, couldn't happen, threats to election workers.

The case was brought against the administration.

The caption is California versus Trump.

So you can look it up.

Wisconsin was among the plaintiff states.

I don't remember how many there were, there were several dozen suing the administration to enjoin any actions under that executive order relating to the November third election.

And what the judge did in that case was essentially say nothing about the executive order can go into play for the November

election.

And when I say nothing, I should clarify.

None of the substantive things that we're being asked for in the executive order can occur before the November election.

They're like, we're not allowing that.

It also said that after the November election, we can continue to have litigation on whether or not these things are allowed or not.

But you're not allowed to do them before November.

And then there was one section where they said, eh, we're not really going to enjoin it because it's aspirational and nothing's happened yet.

That's a big deal.

It really changes some of the landscape of what's going to be happening going into November.

So that part is enjoined for now.

I'm glad about that.

I think it's important.

Hopefully, we don't see any additional new mischief.

There's not a lot of time between now and November.

And this is another thing.

And we're not really going to get into the SAVE Act because that is federal and we're focusing on Wisconsin.

But that's another thing that we're hearing from a lot of folks across the country that even if that were to be passed, which it's not likely to, it would be nearly impossible for states to be able to change their systems.

to enforce some of the things that would be necessary as a result.

So timing is important for us here.

It is.

And I would expect to see if the SAVE Act were to pass.

I would expect to see exactly the same sort of litigation coming out of the states where essentially saying this is impossible and would improperly affect an election.

There's something called the Purcell Doctrine.

based on a Supreme Court case, which generally stands for the premise that you don't mess with elections too close to an election date.

Now, that's been eroded a little bit, but it has largely held that under Purcell, if you want to mess with an election, you can't do it when you're really close to an election.

That's very reassuring to hear.

And it's also interestingly a similar reason why, as a commission, we don't mess with our database.

close to an election.

We don't make correction unless it's an emergency.

We don't change our operating system.

do any of that because if it goes down close to an election there's a real problem.

So we also sort of obey a similar type of blackout period where we say we're not changing anything because we don't you never know with the computer if you change one thing what the downstream effects will be and we take that really seriously.

That's right.

We've talked about a lot of the safeguards.

We've talked a lot about a lot of the good things.

Let's talk about a time when the system did fail.

And that was in Madison.

A high profile situation where nearly 200 absentee ballots weren't counted in November of 24.

The election commission investigated and found real failures there in the clerk's office.

So how do you recognizing that it's not a perfect system?

You've acknowledged that.

Mistakes can happen, but you are confident in the overall system.

Bring those two things together for me.

Absolutely.

We were notified in late December of 24 that these ballots had not been counted.

And in the subsequent days we were, as a commission, not given really any explanation of how it was even possible for that to have happened.

And as a result, for the very first time in the commission's history, we instigated an investigation to try to figure out what had happened.

And Commissioner Don Millis, the current chair, and I worked together.

We took depositions.

We did written discovery to try to figure out where the system had failed.

And it was important for two reasons.

One, obviously, to hold the city of Madison accountable for what had happened.

But secondly, and perhaps even maybe more importantly, to find out where the system failed.

You can't fix something if you don't know what went wrong.

And something clearly had gone pretty catastrophically wrong for that many ballots to be involved.

Now in the past, have we had clerks contact us and say, you know, I was looking in a ballot bin of a tabulator and I found a ballot that was stuck up somewhere and we didn't count that one.

Has that happened?

Sure.

It happens.

We remind them.

You got to check everything.

You got to stick your hand up.

Use a flashlight.

But has that happened?

Sure.

Had anything like this to our knowledge ever happened?

No.

So we really took it to task to learn to understand what had happened.

And what we saw was a situation where a lot of... They had a lot of processes, but the processes didn't...

effectuate a reasonable, they weren't being done for any reason other than to do them.

They didn't result in ballot tracking.

They didn't result in information.

They were forms for the sake of forms.

If I, I'll give you an example that came out of Madison is they tracked the batches of ballots that were going to different poll sites.

Madison does not use a central count.

Madison uses, they count at each individual precinct.

But they were all in just running order.

So Ward 1 got this number of ballots.

Then Ward 12 got this many ballots.

Then Ward 32.

And then the next day it was Ward 56.

And how do you know how many ballots are supposed to be going to Ward 12?

You have to look through the whole book and find everywhere it said Ward 12 and add them up.

They were writing it down, but it was worthless data.

Because it wasn't being used to make sure that you could cross-reference, hey, precinct 12, do you have 65 absentee ballots?

Because that's how many you should have.

Now they did fix that and then wound up not delivering some more ballots again.

So they're working through that and we're working with them through that.

But it's a process and it's a process that nothing is perfect But what I hear you saying is that there was a problem and for the first time in over a decade the election Commission undertook an investigation where commissioners Republican and Democrat came together identified the problem and Worked through it and continue to work through it to ensure it doesn't happen again in the future

I am really proud of the work the commission did on that because we felt bipartisan that it was important to immediately deal with this so that people could feel assured that their ballots would count.

The integrity of the system is essential to the legitimacy of the commission and of elections in our state.

If we're not willing to investigate and hold people accountable, that's a real problem.

Another notice today that the City of Green Bay has sent out another set of duplicate ballots and my jaw hit the floor learning about that.

I can't comment on it more than to say we need to keep our fingers on the pulse of elections and I'm confident the Commission is going to be dealing with those issues moving forward.

And that's the job of the commission.

Yes.

That is a hundred percent.

Our job is to oversee the statutes five through 10 and 11 or excuse me five through 10 and 12.

We are entrusted with that.

We are the administrative agency that complaints come to that charges of of impropriety come to and we take that seriously both on the one hand so that clerks do not have to face completely fabricated

allegations of misconduct and where there is real impropriety to address it.

And I think that's really important that we continue that and do so with eyes wide open.

I think it's heartening for the people of Wisconsin to know that it is not something that is run by one party or another.

I think we can't emphasize the bipartisan nature of this, especially in this divided time and how everyone is focused on ensuring that our elections are truly safe and secure.

This last election in April, we had two situations that arose.

One situation was Madison, where they failed to deliver ballots and have them counted.

but then did count them and the city of Mequon that was rejecting ballads and we brought that in front of the commission as a whole and as a commission ruled because we had to that Madison had improperly counted those ballads that had arrived late and I'll come back to that in a minute

And we ruled that Mekwan was improperly rejecting ballots.

So you had a blue community and a red community, and both of them were found to have acted improperly by the commission.

With regards to the Madison ballots, the Madison ballots were delivered late through just obvious negligence of some employees at the Madison Clerk's office.

As an administrative agency, we are bound by the statutes.

Statute said delivered late doesn't count.

So I voted

to not count those ballots as a part of the canvas.

And I think I said on the record, please sue me, because I don't think that's the right outcome.

But I have to follow the statute.

I'm not a judge.

I don't get to decide willy-nilly what is or isn't constitutional or is or isn't proper, but a judge can.

And those voters, City of Madison, along with the voters involved, did go in front of the circuit court in Dane County.

That judge ruled, nope, got to count those ballots.

We did.

I very happily canvassed the election, including those ballots, which I 100% think was the right thing to do.

But sometimes we're stuck making decisions we don't want to make.

But this one turned out the right way.

And it changed the system.

which is really important because people need to know that the system, I think a lot of people mistrust, distrust the system for obvious reasons.

This news is, the information is in the news, the Green Bay ballot information is in the news, people are wondering what's happening, so to know that the administrative rules are there.

They don't always apply in a way that serves the people and there is a process for making that happen.

I find that really reassuring.

It was really one of those situations where the sins of the clerk should not be visited on the voter.

The voters did everything right.

They did everything right.

Their ballots were there on time and then the clerk's office messed up.

And I agree with you that it is heartening when a court recognizes the importance of when you weigh what's more important, the voter or the process, that the voter, not always, but frequently, the right to vote's got to be given extra heft.

And that's what happened there, and I'm pleased with that.

Let's focus on the voter.

We've said some of these things throughout the course of our conversation here, but to focus in specifically on people who are listening and they're thinking, they're still feeling uncertain.

Maybe they've heard these stories.

They're worried that their vote won't count or that voting is risky.

And Jacobs, what do you want these voters to know?

I want them to go vote and I want them to go vote in whatever mechanism.

makes them the most comfortable.

So there are some people who have said, you know, I'm concerned about the possibility that the federal government sends armed guards to my poll site.

Right.

Okay, then I think you should vote absentee.

I think you should ask for an absentee ballot.

Some folks have said I want to vote but I'm worried that if I mail my ballot that it's not going to get there on time.

Yeah.

That's real.

I think you should investigate whether your clerk has drop boxes or whether you can go to your clerk's office and drop it off.

If you are disabled, you can have somebody else do that for you.

So I think that that's perfectly legitimate.

So let's pick that way of voting for you.

There's other people who think, well, I don't even want to trust the mail to come to my house.

Great.

You can go do in-person absentee voting.

Once that begins, which I believe is 30 days before the election here in Wisconsin, don't quote me on that because I haven't looked in my book of dates yet.

It's changed,

yeah.

I think it's two weeks now.

Is it two weeks now?

It is two

weeks.

It's gone back and forth.

It's hard to keep track.

That's another thing that makes it complicated that the rules are changing and it's

hard.

Something

that worked last time for you may not work this time, which

is why,

and you mentioned this earlier, myvote.wi.gov is an incredible resource where you can track your ballot.

You can order your ballot to vote absentee.

You can track your ballot to see where it's at in the process.

You can see that it's been counted.

It is such a beautiful resource for voters.

Thank you on behalf of our staff They're also designing some upgrades for after this election cycle that'll make it even better.

We're very excited about that And then finally for the people who are you know, I'm a purist I want to watch my ballot go into the machine and I want to hear the boop boop and I want to get a sticker Go on election day.

Yes.

I always tell people if they think there's going to be lines Go at about two o'clock in the afternoon.

There is nobody there at two o'clock

The people who work there are, you know, they're knitting, they're reading the paper, they'll be happy to see you.

Everyone thinks if you vote first thing in the morning it'll be less crowded, but I'm telling you the trick is two o'clock.

But, you know, if you're a purist then go in person.

Everybody, there's a different way to vote for everyone.

Pick what works for you and all of them are perfectly fine.

Take a late lunch, get your sticker.

Everybody loves the sticker.

It feels so good to wear that sticker around.

Isn't it amazing?

I remember when my youngest registered to vote and he was so excited that he got a sticker and got to vote and went on social media with it all.

It was adorable.

Yes, more of that.

I have one more question for you before we say goodbye.

What is the single most important thing Wisconsin voters can do right now before November to make sure that they are ready to vote and that nothing stands in their way?

It's a cliche.

You probably get it in text messages a hundred times a day, but make your plan to vote.

Think ahead about how you want to do it.

Go to my vote.

Pick your poison.

Choose how you're going to vote and then talk to your friends and family about it.

Maybe they'll come with you.

Maybe they'll vote with you.

Maybe they don't know how to order a ballot and have always wanted to know.

So make your plan, bring a friend.

Make your plan, bring a friend, myvote.wi.gov.

And Jacobs, thank you so much for taking the time to talk through all of this and to explain this complex, worrisome,

important thing that we

all need to be doing right now.

Kristen, thank you so much for having me.

I love talking about this stuff and this was a lot of fun.

I can tell you love it.

Friends, Anne Jacobs has been fighting for the integrity of your vote long before it was this hard and she is still standing.

I hope this conversation gave you both the facts you needed and the confidence to use them.

And here's what I want you to do right now.

Share this episode with somebody who's been told not to bother voting.

Somebody who has been fed the lie that it doesn't matter or that the system is rigged because the most powerful thing we can do in the face of that kind of manipulation is to show up anyway.

Be informed, be prepared, and be ready.

And if you found this conversation useful, please take a couple seconds and leave a rating and review wherever you're listening.

Subscribe so you don't miss an episode and find me, Dr. Riston Lyrely, on YouTube, sub-stack, and everywhere else.

The links are in the show notes.

Your vote is your power.

Don't let anybody take it from you.