INTERVIEW: Assembly Elections Committee Chair Scott Krug, Milwaukee Elections Commission Director Paulina Gutierrez

For the Civic Media Special Broadcast, making your vote count 2024, I talk to Scott Kruege,

a Republican state representative from Nikusa, who currently serves as the chair of the

Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections, and Paulina Gutierrez, the newly appointed director

of the Milwaukee Elections Commission. Clips from both of those interviews appear in the

special broadcast and also in bonus content at the Recombobulation Area, where I produce

a segment breaking down the late-night ballot dump that occurs in Milwaukee. In addition,

we're publishing both of those interviews in their entirety here as a podcast. First,

you'll hear from Representative Kruege and then from Director Gutierrez. Be sure to make

your voice heard and vote by November 5th. Let's Recombobulate.

All right. So joining us for this conversation or our voter special at Civic Media is state

representative Scott Kruege of Nikusa. Representative Kruege, thank you for joining us.

Yeah, absolutely. Happy to do this. It's always fun to talk about the inner workings of good

government, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. So you have been serving as the chair of the Committee

on Campaigns and Elections. When did you start in that role and going into the most recent session,

what were some of your top priorities? Yeah. So this is my first session running this committee.

You know, I'd seen some of the stuff that had happened last session. So I approached Speaker

Voss and said, Hey, let me let me jump in here trying to be more of a level headed common sense

referee and try to get some good stuff done. So my ultimate goal this session, though, was to take

on this idea of, you know, late night ballot dumps and all these conspiracy things and try to

address them by building conversation with both sides and the clerks and people who run our

elections and just say, Okay, what is it is what it isn't? It isn't, right? So I mean, that's

that was the big task this session. I, you know, when we talk about the overall end result,

we didn't get a lot of policy signed into law, but I think we've moved the ball really far down

the field on trust and security and confidence issues, at least. Yeah. And obviously in terms of

the timing of that. So you stepping into that role, what was at the beginning of 2023? Yeah.

So obviously the 2024 election looms large over over what your priorities are. And during that

session, the assembly passed a bill, assembly bill 567 that would allow clerks to process absentee

ballots the Monday before election day. Can you walk me through the process for what you saw in your

committee as that bill was being written amended and eventually voted on? Yeah. So I mean, it kind of

takes us back a little bit to right after the 2020 presidential election. This idea had sprung up

in conversations. I hadn't been on the committee yet, but we had seen an amendment come to a different

bill that included this Monday process provision. Hadn't had a public hearing and didn't get a lot

of confidence built up behind it. We did end up passing it through in the state assembly as an

amendment to a different bill. A lot of consternation from both sides on why we're doing it the way we

did it. I didn't get any, it didn't get very far in the state senate. So this session when I took over

and sorry, just to clarify, that was that was before you became the chair of the committee.

That was before I was chair. Yeah, that was in 21 and 22. I popped up out of nowhere. Okay. So this

wasn't anything that I had created or come up with. So things, something a lot of other states do.

So from the time I took the chair, we did a lot of research with a lot of other states,

figuring out what they do and actually spent some time in Florida with the secretary of state court

came up with his name now. Wow, as two years ago already. Of any of us spent time with the

secretary of state, director of elections of Florida, just kind of going through their process.

And this is one of the things that they do phenomenal, right? So when an absentee ballot comes in

in the state of Florida, it is it's opened, it's processed, it's prepared, it's stored in the

machine, the voter gets a ballot number. So basically by the time you hit 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock

eastern standard time in Florida, you've got all the early votes processed and tallied and ready

to be released for results. And the in-person vote is not very far behind it. So a state that's

got three or four times as a population voting population at Wisconsin does. It's in the books,

the elections in bed by midnight, right? I mean, it just kind of seemed like a gold standard after

what we saw in 2020 come out of Milwaukee. You know, it's obviously it was COVID election, tons

and tons of absentee ballots slowed down the process to about three o'clock in the morning.

A lot of people have gone to bed, you know, 11, 12, one o'clock, one guy leading, you know,

wake up the next morning, the other guy took the lead and explosion occurs in conspiracy theories.

So this session, we wanted public hearing on this bill, wanted to talk about the inner

workings of it, wanted to bring into clerks, talk about how it would work. So worked with,

shipped it over to a rep, represent a tussler's office to kind of fine tunes of details,

a lot of negotiations directly with the governor's office, just saying, hey, this is our line

in the sand, where is yours? Like, I wanted to, you know, find out exactly what the end product

could be. So I just throwing something at the wall and seeing if it would stick. Along the way,

the state senate had seen very amenable to the idea as we were going through. And then forces that

may not be fully aware of kind of got into the process. And after we passed it through the

assembly and a voice photo got to the state senate, couldn't even get it hearing at that point,

right? So the senate committee wouldn't bring it up, tried to work through with leadership in

the senate saying, hey, we've got agreement on this as soon as it gets to the governor's desk,

it'll get signed. I think that's probably where some of our problem actually ended up coming up

is some Republicans thought, hey, if governor he ever is going to sign a bill, there must be something

wrong with it, right? Because we've seen so many vetoes over the last two and half three years

that some just kind of figured like, wait a minute, are we doing something that we shouldn't be?

So trying to go back into the education process with a lot of folks in that chamber saying, hey,

it's actually a really good thing. This is what we really want to do so we can get rid of this idea

that something happened in the middle of the night that ballots had shown up somewhere. So this

is a very long process and in the end unfortunately didn't get through the state senate but I think

we kind of laid the groundwork really well for what an early processing ballot could be and I think

in the future it's probably going to be a little bit more than a Monday process

that we can get to the point where maybe closer to what Florida and 40 some other states do

where that process them a little bit earlier even than Monday. Whereas if abstract ballot comes in,

we open it, secure it, store it in the machine, everybody knows it's safe and secure. I think the

only thing that's going to get us to that point though is an election that is non-controversial.

So we're hoping whichever way this one goes it'll be a one or two percent difference to

10,000 vote difference so that'll help build some trust in the process too.

So I want to go back to what you were talking about as the bill was being developed in committee.

Given the nature of the Wisconsin state legislature, it's not always a bipartisan process.

Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's not to what extent was this one by partisan process?

That was it's 100% bipartisan idea. So I mean that was the goal from the beginning working

really close with my ranking member Lee Snodgrass. Lee and I built a great relationship throughout

this whole session on the most controversial issues as you could think of. We may not agree

on other stuff but we agreed on elections and that's what we focused on a lot is trying to

figure out how to put common sense guidelines in place, fix the things that are actually wrong

with the elections but educate people on the things that it just aren't wrong with the elections

that are perceived to be wrong. And that extended into the state Senate and we worked really well

with Senator Cunodal and Senator Spritzer, the ranking member in the Senate. So honestly whether

the bills got done or not, we developed a lot of good friendships, a camaraderie with a lot of

the colleagues in both those committees that I just maybe hadn't spent a lot of time talking to before.

Particularly in the assembly and Clinton Anderson, another one of the Democrats on the committee

and Lisa Sue Beck and I have worked together for years and years on children and families and

other committees. So we had really good understanding of where everybody was at, especially in the assembly

which made this thing kind of just fly through the assembly as quick as it did. And I tell people

all the time, when we're talking election issues, it's not the policies that we disagree on so much

all the time, it's the politics of all the other things that we do with each other that seem to get

in the way. So if you can boil it down to what actually matters policy wise, conversations were

really easy, debate was very limited, we've made a really good product through the typical law

making process. And Lee and I actually kind of started coining this thing as our new way of doing

things, right? And we actually had this slogan before VP Kamala Harris stole it. We had this

thing we were calling the new way forward, right? Just trying to figure out how to get back to

collegiality within the Capitol, but you can't necessarily use that catch phrase anymore because

somebody else is using it, but it just seems to be a good way forward. And I think a lot of other

committees in the Capitol in the assembly and the Senate both started seeing, hey, they're getting

some attention because they're actually working together and getting some things accomplished,

and maybe we should start doing the same thing. So I'm hopeful, even though the build didn't get done

that first of all, we did encourage other communities to look at their processes a little better

and a little deeper. Milwaukee has invested more money and more machinery to get ballots moving

a little quicker even. So I think everybody being involved in the sausage making process is help

them to advance this without the bill getting done. But secondly, I think on a bigger scale, I think

this is something we can look forward to next session with little tighter majorities coming

that we can actually work together and get some policy items accomplished.

Yeah. So like you mentioned, the bill, the bill passed in the assembly, passed on a voice vote.

Voice vote. Yeah. I mean, for something that seems so controversial in the state Senate,

this is a voice vote in the state assembly. Yeah.

Were there any significant objections from either party on the final vote on the assembly side of

things? You know, we had some components in there that didn't make the final version that I think

some of our assembly colleagues in the Republican caucus would have liked. We had a verification

of citizenship component in the bill early on. And that's something I've been fighting with,

the DOT on right now is just saying, hey, I just want to be able to verify that we are tracking

citizenship. And it was actually in the Monday process bill. I got pulled out because we couldn't

get agreement with the governor's office on how signature if that was in the bill. I would have

liked to see it in there. The assembly author sure would have liked to see it stay in there.

But sometimes if you're looking to get a bipartisan bill done, you've got to give up on some

of the things that you want, right? And that's one of the things that I took a lot of heat for

is sacrificing that part of the bill to try to get the whole thing accomplished. So you know,

that'll come back and that'll be another part of the bill. But otherwise, we had some side

components in there that both sides were a little iffy on. But in the end, everybody kind of agreed

that this perception problem that we have with elections that midnight, one o'clock, two o'clock,

whatever it might be, was a bigger need to fix and worry about some of the lesser details within the bill.

Yeah, I was looking back at some of the some of the reporting as this bill was being debated.

And you were quoted as saying this in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. You said 90% of the problems we

face in elections in the state of Wisconsin came from the perception of a late night ballot dump in

the city of Milwaukee. It built a snowball that unfortunately we've gotten to the point where

it's eroded confidence and trust. Is that the quote unquote ballot drop or however you want to

characterize it? Does that really stand out as the biggest problem that you've heard from people

in public hearings in your committee or just from being a legislator in Wisconsin? Is that really

stand out above all of the other issues that people have? Yeah, I mean, honestly it does. And having run

in so many elections since 2010 and just seeing how the public perceived them, how the reaction to

the outcomes were and everything else beyond that, it pales in comparison to what we saw people post

on a week after the election where you post these these curves and then there's a jump

right with all you saw anywhere and then all of a sudden that led to this big explosion of okay,

well if that happened then this must have happened too and if that happened this must have happened

and also we see something in DC building to be this big thing that ended up being because of those

smaller things that happened in the states, right? And I think this was the one thing that I wanted

to really solve this session in Wisconsin because that was the most talked about thing that had happened

and then everybody doubled back on incapacitated voters and democracy in the park and you know it

just started shedding light in all these other side things but that was the one thing that was

the catalyst where I went to bed this guy was winning I woke up and that guy won something happened,

right? So and that's the whole conjecture of that whole three hours has dominated last four

years on the election talk in the state of Wisconsin. And you said when you when you went to Florida

when you talked to some of the election officials there their process is quite a bit different

obviously it's a redder state than Wisconsin right now. So what did you learn there?

So what I learned in Florida is that you can go from hanging chads to one of the best systems in

the country in a matter of 20 years, right? I mean all you have to do is sit down and go through your

election related policies have good conversations develop some policies that that work and you know

when Florida started going through this process it was a lot less Republican than it is now

they always had Republican legislatures since 2000 but you know there it wasn't as easy as we

think it is. So working with groups like NCSL and and all the other election integrity networks

across the state and the country just talking to secretaries of states and directors of elections

and all these different policies what I found in Florida that I thought was the most interesting

is that every single county in the state of Florida has one elected representative that is dealt

that deals with all elections in the county right they have a county supervisor of elections.

They deal with the town elections they deal with the village elections the school board elections

everything filters back to one elected individual that can be held responsible for whatever may come

up at the time and I thought that was a great idea right we've got very very decentralized

elections in Wisconsin already with every municipal clerk running their election but I think it's

so decentralized that people don't know where to go and it builds up their anxiety when they don't

have somebody to complain to and it turns into a powder cake so if you can figure out a way to

design a system we've got maybe a director of elections per county even in Wisconsin or you know

if we get to that it'd be great but we can find other ways for people to be more open,

communityative, responsible, you know responsive to constituents on election issues that

gives them an outlet to kind of take away the powder cake I think that's probably the next big

goal is to figure out how to how to diffuse that a little bit and we've worked really well with

our county clerk's session as they seem to be the ones that are probably the most

directly related to what Florida does and that necessarily responsible for their municipal

elections but very involved in all their municipal elections already so the county clerks may

end up finding themselves in more of that role into the future where we you know guide people

towards them and say hey go ask your questions go spend an afternoon with them go walk through a

process with them so that that was the biggest thing I took away from what Florida does is that there

is a few more people who are the figure head for responsiveness than we have in Wisconsin.

That's interesting yeah they they have become the state that is I think they report as fast as

anybody in the county and it's a good state. Plug in that that that thumb drive at 1030 in the

state director of elections office and bam all your early votes are counted and reported

your in-person votes come almost instantly right after that and everybody's in bed and

happier sad and processing the seven Greece there are seven stages of grief before they before

they go to bed and wake up in the morning so I think I think that's honestly the the biggest

issue that we could deal with here in Wisconsin is just if you if you won you won if you lost your

lost you can deal with it at night you don't have to wake up and go what the heck happened

and that was I think our biggest problem 2020 and hopefully people understood that the COVID

elections probably are the one off probably not gonna happen again you already see this election

where absdie ballot numbers are way down especially Milwaukee so hopefully we don't have a three

o'clock issue again but it would have been nice to have that bill done just to ensure it wouldn't happen

right right so obviously this has been very much a Milwaukee specific issue just given the size

of the city the amount of absentee ballots that came in the timing of the reporting the Milwaukee

isn't the only municipality that uses this central count right so what are some of the other

you know other cities are on the state that this would impact and are you hearing from clerks

in those cities that they would also want to make this change as well yeah you know we we did talk

to a lot of clerks in some of this more smaller I call them central count communities you know for

example marathon county here in central Wisconsin is a central count uh you know and to to

Kim Trueblood the clerk there it didn't really matter you know they were probably going to be able

to get this done regardless whether the bill was put in place or not uh some some did have some

consternation about it you know uh you know in the rock county area they've they've they've done a

great job in a lot of these other mispellies their central count that are smaller they didn't think

they necessarily needed this but it's hard to create a one-off piece of legislation to say hey

this is only going to apply to so-and-so but we did try to guide it as best we could just to

try to deal with that issue of Milwaukee. Dane County is a great example of what can happen without

central count so as we go and we went through this bill in a community just you know number two

to to Milwaukee and size and number of voters we saw that this can all be accomplished without

a central count and that led a lot of legislators to say well what are we doing here maybe if we

can get away with not doing central county Dane County do we need central count anymore

that's going to be a discussion for communities to have on their own we're not going to

drive that conversation but you know if they wanted to get away from having to do this that was

the other option they had it's like if you're going to be a central count community they're going

to have to do this if you're not you can get away from having to deal with it on Monday so we gave

them that option in the bill to say hey you know this is something that even some of the Republicans

would like you to take a look at if you don't want to deal with the new process then just make

the choice to not do central count so we've tried to be as flexible and creative as we could

but again if you know we're looking at you know apples to apples it's going to be interesting to see

those conversations developing on the need for central count to the future besides just what Milwaukee

does and so since this did not pass what do you think leaders should be saying or doing now to

educate the public on this issue man I tell you you know that's that's the million dollar question

because both sides right now are going through this massive campaign to bank your vote right to

go vote absentee to go build those numbers back up like crazy and I had this conversation even with

RPW the Republican Party Wisconsin I'm like you know you're you're doing one thing but you're kind

of cutting off your nose despite your face here like we we had this problem last election where we

got all these absentee votes we couldn't get them in and process encountered and reported before

time X or whatever it was wherever and now you know we didn't get this bill done to to streamline

the processing but now we're trying to build those numbers up again so I'm like I get the point

where we want everybody to vote early and to be free on election day and I have to worry about

whether or car problems or family emergencies or things like that absentee voting is a great thing

for the more we push it without this early processing the more we're looking to create another

12 a.m. to 3 a.m. issue somewhere in the state of Wisconsin so it's a it's a it's a hard thing for

clerks to have to deal with to try to tell people this is what you can expect so I think one of the

things I've taken on is you know our role here the last two weeks special an early in-person voting

starts it's try to be a reporting source to say hey this money this how many absentee ballots have

been requested this how many have been returned here you can look at the results here I mean we do

this in our campaigns already you know when we go knock on doors we know where to knock or

where not to knock in which municipalities are returned elected or ballots are ready and

so I was just going to be a little bit more pulling back the curtain and saying okay this is

you know Glendale has already requested this many absentee ballots and returned this many absentee

ballots so just so you know an election night this is how many votes are out there you know so

it's trying to trumpet that as much as I can the next three weeks before election day when

people say okay now I'm ready for results and then they wonder why 300,000 more votes come into

late I don't know the best way to get people to understand that I mean that's that's the

challenge that we have right now whether a Republican Democrat independent or whatever else in

between I just want to set expectations for people on what they should see when they're watching

election results in election night absolutely well any additional thoughts on this or any other

kind of big picture pieces of the you know kind of the fundamentals of the elections as we go into

the final stretch here yeah I mean it's it's not keeping me awake at night right now you know I mean

that's the that's the best takeaway is all the work and all the conversation all the relationships

we've built up the last few years that people in our local municipalities know they can talk

to their clerks their clerks know they have to be out being a little bit more responsive legislators

know they have to be a little more tempered on some of the things they're bringing up and talking

about even been calling out you know stupidity that I've seen from the RNC the last few weeks

just saying hey let's just keep tamping it down I think both sides understand how close the election

is I think both are trying to make sure they don't say or do anything stupid in the last few weeks

so I think that's taking a lot of the powder out of this potential mixture that we could have on

election day on reporting because I think everybody is not trying to build up the excuses that we

had seen in 2020 getting built up so it's measuring expectations is the biggest thing right now

and I think we've done a really good job on trying to make sure everybody knows just

if you want to go vote go do it this way if you don't want to vote and turn off your TV and just

don't do it we really need you to go be a part of the process somehow so I think everybody's

on board with their plan I think everybody knows how to deal with reporting you know crosser

fingers and just pray to God that you know it goes pretty smooth this time but you know that

that's what's going to keep me up at night afterwards if it doesn't right and if it doesn't

then we didn't do our job all right well representative crew you've been generous with your time

and I really do appreciate it thank you so much for joining us for this special broadcast

at seven media absolutely thanks for that

joining us for this conversation for civic media's voter special is Paulina Gutierrez the

executive director of Milwaukee Elections Commission Ms. Gutierrez thank you so much for joining us

definitely thank you for having me so let's just start with some of the basics about how Milwaukee

runs its elections so what are the options currently available to voters in Milwaukee for early

voting absentee voting voting by Dropbox and voting on election day definitely so uh plenty of

options that we offer to voters uh because we love I love it when you vote and we want you to vote

so there are a couple things you can ask for a ballot by mail so you have to put in a written

request for an absentee application once we receive that um we you know do the review and then we

send you a ballot via mail um we do voting at uh long-term care facilities it's called special

voting deputies and so we administer basically a polling location inside of nursing homes for those

that can't make it to the polls um in addition um we uh do the as you mentioned early voting centers we

have ten that open up next Tuesday October 22nd located throughout the city and then for returning

your absentee ballot you have a couple options we have the drop boxes that um opened officially on

October 14th around noon those are open 24 hours a day until election day at six p.m you can drop

off your ballot there when they're in the drop box it is guaranteed to count as long as it's a

legitimate ballot um on election day uh and then you can drop it off at any of our early voting centers

um we have a lot of different hours for each center we try to align the hours with the library hours

because most of them are at a library and we also extended hours where we could to help working

families um so that um you can do it after you get out of work uh and then um on election day

you can drop off your ballot until six p.m in a drop box or drop it off at our central count

location which will be at the Barrett Center um and at four hundred west wisconsin avenue and you

can take your ballot there until eight p.m that's a lot of options for people to be able to vote it's

good to have a lot of options though um so Milwaukee is in one of a number of municipalities in the

state that uses central count you mentioned this year it's going to be at the Barrett Center

downtown Milwaukee uh so use the central count to process ballots so let's just get right down

to the basics here what is central count and how is this used in Milwaukee yes so there are about

I think a little over 30 jurisdictions in the state of wisconsin that administer central count

and we are by far the largest we've been doing it the longest we have the most experience and put

forward a lot of really good best practices so basically what happens is all of those absentee

ballots so the ones that go by mail the ones that go to the long-term facility the ones that are

used to vote at our early voting centers all get collected into our operation center where they are

stored in our secure ballot room and in that room we have specially trained staff who make sure

that the ballot is legitimate make sure that it's eligible um and then we start to sort them by

word and by um by last name alphabetize by last name we get them all organized as much as we can

we are one of only two states in the country that are not allowed to pre-process or open or touch

the ballot until 7am on election day so when we walk into our central count we have all of the

absentee ballots that have been coming to us since mid-syptember and so for the presidential it's

tens of thousands of ballots and we cannot touch them until election day so that's where we hold

central count so if you take those steps real quick they're just to clarify that you can't touch

them until election day because of state law is that correct correct yeah so if you recall um

there was a bill it was called the Monday count bill that made it pretty far in in the legislature

unfortunately didn't pass but that would give us the authority to have some time on the Monday

before an election to pre-process those ballots and so what i like to tell people about that is

if you have concerns about that pre-processing we are only one of two states that prohibits us

doing that and so that means that around the country there is a lot of really good best practices

there's a lot of security measures and that it is a safe system to do that and if we are able to

get that Monday processing bill at some point in the future you can guarantee that getting the results

at the end of an election will happen much earlier than what has happened in in the past

because of what i tell people is that in uh Milwaukee we administer elections just like every other

jurisdiction in the state of Wisconsin from the smallest to the largest we're doing the same things

because we're following state law we just have a lot more to do and there is no one that comes close

to the amount of work that we have to do to process our ballots where the largest city

with the most voters and so it's just a lot more work great yeah there's you know there's obviously

so much to this and you mentioned that bill that went you know kind of got stalled in the state

legislature this uh this session i talked with uh republican assembly representative Scott Kruege

who was the head of the campaigns and elections committee uh in the state legislature and and he

was you know hopeful that that bill would get passed it did pass uh in the assembly but stalled

in the state senate that would have allowed like you said clerks just start processing those absentee

ballots on a monday is this a bill that you and the Milwaukee elections commission support and

do clerks and Milwaukee support that change as well yeah i mean as long as it's written obviously

in a responsible manner and provides a safety and security we need i think it's a good move and like i

said we're only one of two states the other one is uh Pennsylvania where we are not allowed to do

this and if you remember Pennsylvania took multiple days to count at the at the last 2020 general

and so Wisconsin and Pennsylvania we're swing states and we because of the size of who we are

Milwaukee central count will be the last jurisdiction the last place to to put their results in

at the end of the night on election night and so you have to expect that when that occurs it could

shift in election well it will right because it's it's 80,000 ballots that need to be counted as part

of election day right uh so has the Milwaukee elections commission ever considered moving away

from central count as a way for operating its elections you know the way that some cities like

Madison for example might and and how would that work even if you know you did you were considering it

right i mean running any election particularly a general election is a major logistical feat right

and just you know all of us all of my colleagues across the state and country we will prioritize

accuracy safety and security over speed any day um we have been doing central counts in 2007

so any shift um into any other operations other than central count requires a significant amount

of resources so the the local jurisdiction the common council would have to approve that so there's

that um hall same with uh Madison if they decided to move to a central count that would require a

significant legislative move so if i'm not mistaken we started this in 2007 we were the first ones to

do it um i believe that we are very efficient in doing it um we are i think and correct me if i'm

wrong then i think we have a larger footprint in terms uh compared to Madison and so when you

think about like good hope library right that is a polling location way up there that's a 30-minute

drive so if you could imagine ballots are coming in um drop boxes and mail we're having to then

deliver all of those absentee ballots to all 180 polling locations i don't think Madison

it has as many as us so if you think about the logistical feat that we would have to do it is

it is a pretty major change so at this point uh also we don't want to make changes before the

general but um i think we've been doing it the longest we're really good at it i'm happy with

what we're doing and we continue to improve here at the election commission we have a culture

of continuous improvement you know we bring in researchers we talk to our colleagues across

the country and we're always looking for best practices um and so i'm feeling confident that um

you know despite all the work we have to do we're going to get it done we're going to get it done

right and it may be a late night but again you know if we're able to open beforehand we can

we can make that sooner um and we are scaling up for the general so to help you know make things

as efficient and as safe and secure as possible could you share any further details about what you're

doing to scale up uh for the general election then um sure uh sure i know we didn't finish like

how the central count process works but basically all the ballots come to central count to count we

manage where you know in other elections we hire about 90 60 to 90 staff to process for this general

we're scaling up to about 300 um we're going to have 13 high speed tabulator machines so in 2020

that's how many we had but that was i think about 167 or 176 000 ballots that we counted at that time

you know that was a pandemic much different than what we're facing now in 2022 it was about 60 000

ballots for the governor's race um and we only had nine machines there so we're feeling really good

about the 13 that we're having um and then you know the way we process ballots happen in teams of two

and it's bipartisan there's a lot of checks and balances um everybody's you know taking care of

and watching everyone else making sure we follow the process in procedure um so we are also doing

a lot more signage so that observers can have can see like what's happening in the public and the media

can immediately know what's going on at each different table we've made some like logistical changes

in terms of like how do we reduce the number of steps people take um those kinds of things you

know a few seconds here and there can add up so you know i can't guarantee like this is exactly

how much we're going to reduce but we hope some of these efficiencies will result in a more

smoother process that ends um you know it's going to be a late night regardless because it's still

tens of thousands of ballots but that we hope it creates some efficiencies um that people can

recognize uh on election night so let's look ahead to election night then so what you touched on

in a little bit here uh what is your expectation for how election night will unfold on November 5th

and Milwaukee how and when should people expect to see results could you walk us through a little

bit of a timeline from when the polls close at 8 p.m. yeah so yeah polls close at 8 p.m. and we

can accept ballots at central count until 8 p.m. so if we get a stack of ballots we're going to

process them because everybody's vote should count if it's eligible um and so even if they arrive at

8 p.m. we still have to do the eligibility review making sure that the ballot is connected to a voter

and then processing those and then get them to the table so those ballots could still be going to

tables after 8 p.m. um and so once once the ballots are processed at a table and they're prepared

and ready to be counted they get sent to the high speed tabulators and we have 13 of those

until those specially trained staff will process those ballots through those high speed machines

until that all has to happen once we know that the polls are closed there are no more ballots

being processed every ballot has gone through the tabulator and all of our books are reconciling

then we can start the download process and that is a very formal transparent process um um we it

it takes several hours because so basically um with the democratic republican in tow and and

in a chief inspector we are formally downloading the results from each machine and as we download we

then secure those results into a bag that never leaves the person um and then so that's 13 machines

that we have to do that and it can take a couple hours for that download to occur uh and then those

are then transported physically to the county under police escorts so we'll be inside of a vehicle

multiple police cars and then we're escorted into the county and then there's the formal transfer

of those results which happen in the public sphere um and then the county then has to take each of

those 13 secure data sticks and upload them into their system and so when you're watching you know

the the results when the public is watching those results on TV you know it'll say like 60%

reporting Milwaukee but that's just the polling locations you still have all the absentee ballots

for all the other wards right um and those get uploaded basically all at the same time which is

why you'll see like here's a number and all of a sudden it's 100 because we've just dropped off

those central count numbers and then you know the challenge will be sometimes the media will be like

oh they're done counting they're sending the results in but they're still all that time to

upload those results um so it takes it takes several hours for that download and upload and

download transfer and upload to occur so even though we may say central count is done counting we

still have all of that so even if we get done at a reasonable hour it's still gonna be after midnight

for sure yeah that's still the expectation then I mean you know like you mentioned last election

in last presidential election in 2020 higher number of absentee ballots because of the pandemic

you know perhaps some people have gotten used to voting that way or like to vote by mail or by

drop box or whatever it might be so are you is there is there a certain expectation that you have

for this year for how many absentee ballots you're expecting um it's hard to say I am a risk

adverse person so it's hard for me to estimate especially being newly appointed however

what I can tell you is that prior to 2020 absentee voting was there what it's been trending upward

right and then we had the giant flip and during the pandemic and the numbers have come

come down but there's there's still trending upward and so based upon what we're seeing now

we're making a high estimate of about 80,000 ballots for this election so you know that the

governor's race was about 66,000 and the pandemic presidential was about 176,000 we're kind of

doing it in the middle so that to me you know when you're an elections official you always want

to over-plan so you have enough resources you know if if I don't over-plan you know I may not

have enough pens at the central count so we over-plan so we have all the resources there in the event

that we do have a large turnout which you know we started off the year maybe not thinking it would

be and then you know obviously now it's a lot different and so we are you know we've scaled up

since then. So you mentioned this too this is your first year leading the Milwaukee Elections

Commission what you know what steps are you taking personally to prepare for this election and

how might this be different from the way things might have been run in years past? Yeah so I've been

I've been at the election commission for almost two years now I started off as a deputy deputy

director in charge of central counts so I do have a special place in my heart for central count for

sure you know I have really amazing staff here elections aren't run by just one person it's run by

the thousands of dedicated residents here both from both parties you know some of my staff I have a

staff person that's been here for 34 years who is amazing and I always check in with her to say hey

have you experienced this before the state Wisconsin Election Commission has been amazing in terms

of providing resources I consider you know the Green Bay clerk and Madison clerk to be one of two

of my biggest mentors and so pro getting using all the experts that I have here to it's available to me

has been helpful for sure you know nationally too we're all in it together and you know it's not

unique I mean one in four clerks are new this election so we are all working together to make sure

we get things right and so I've constantly dependent on my staff here and the experts that have been

here longer than I but also the guidance of the Wisconsin Election Commission so I'm feeling really

good about where we're headed in November and we're preparing for all that we can and you know

we're we're going to be ready that's great so obviously we touched on this a little bit but one

of the most prevalent conspiracy theories surrounding Milwaukee elections has been referred to as the

quote unquote ballot dumps and you walked us through that process as well but you know in these

weeks leading up to the election what can or should people be doing or saying to help restore

confidence in the process and educate the public on what's happening yeah I mean misinformation

miss mail and disinformation is really tough for all elections clerks around the country you know

we are typically the smallest department in government we have small budgets and we have a very

big job in terms of administering elections and so kind of monitoring some of that communications

it's happening is really tough I mean what I ask people to do is you know stay off the internet

you know just get some time to be to be out with real people because there's a lot of misinformation

obviously happy on the internet and all of my colleagues including myself if you find yourself

with questions or concerns just give us a call we are happy to answer those questions we will

do what we can to to write the ship the other thing that we do here is to actually depend a lot

on our local media to get the message out to our residents like I said we're a small department and

so talking to people like yourselves and journalists is really helpful for us to get the message out

you know we have social media presence but it's it's a small presence and that's also a place for

people to look we encourage people to go on our website and check out information there so we're

always thinking of ways of how to get the information out but you know the challenges were a small

department in the bots and the bad actors that are out on the online sphere can make a lot more

noise than us so that's why it's so important to stay informed get off the internet for a minute

and talk to your neighbors because one of the things I say is it's thousands of people that

administer elections in their communities and if you start talking to your neighbors and friends

you're going to find a poll worker and they are very knowledgeable and are happy to share

information with you and if they don't know they call me so it's it's all about just trusting

your neighbor trusting your community and reaching out when you have questions anything else you

feel like our listeners should know about elections in Milwaukee as we head towards November 5th for

sure I mean if you have questions call us if you're concerned call us we're happy to answer

please make sure that you're registered to vote you can register now and also on election day

which is important bring a photo ID if you're registering bring proof of residence our website

has all the details Milwaukee.gov slash election if you want to look at where the status of your

ballot is the MyVote website is amazing MyVote.wi.gov additionally we're three weeks out if you are

interested in contributing to your community working the elections is one of the most fulfilling

experiences you'll have with working with your community a diverse population from both parties

we are happily taking applicants so head to our website you can apply and we will get you trained

up and ready to go Well Paulina Gutierrez thank you so much for joining us for Civic Media's voter

special thank you