And we are rolling. So, first of all, there are some pretty basic steps for what people have to do to be able to vote.
And one is that they have a form of ID that will be accepted and tell us a little bit more about what's required about.
Yeah, so for almost everybody that's going to be Wisconsin driver's license.
And it can even be expired usually by about two years.
So that is the primary form of identification people will be able to use.
You can also use a military ID, a passport.
So there are a lot of options. Sometimes the tricky part can be the student ID, not all of the student ID's work.
A lot of them do some don't. But for almost everybody, it's going to be their Wisconsin driver's license.
Which are the student IDs that work well? What sorts of things do they have to have in order to be accepted?
Well, you know, the key is how when the expiration date is on it. So the state law said it can't have an expiration date past four years.
And the larger universities tend to have longer expiration dates on it for reasons that I don't understand they haven't changed that.
So for example, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Milwaukee.
They can't use you can't use your student ID. You can at most of the other campuses.
Okay, well, the next step I understand was to get registered to vote in Wisconsin. That's a pretty simple and straightforward process.
Yeah, we have one of the better registration laws in the country.
So you can decide at the last second that you want to register and vote.
You can do that on election day at the polls.
You can do it in advance as well.
So, yeah, it's a pretty simple process so you can go right now. If you wanted to register now, you can go to my vote dot W I dot GOV.
Fill out the process there. You can click on the right boxes and then you'll just need to attach something that has your current residents, like a utility bill, at least, bank statement, things like that.
So that part is pretty, pretty easy in Wisconsin.
I'm about for absentee voting and registering online.
What I see here looks like you have to have do that 20 days before the election.
Yeah, once you get inside that 20 days, you're going to really look to doing it in person with the clerk or on election day.
A lot of people do it on election day. It doesn't take that long. So that's an option.
You can also go in person during office hours.
Okay, talk to us a bit about the process of applying for an absentee valid.
Yeah, no, I think it's a, you know absentee is a really easy way to vote.
You're going to go into my vote dot W I dot GOV and I'll keep saying that website. We have a really good state website for this.
You can also check where you're pulling places, what's on your ballot, all kinds of things. So everyone should bookmark that site.
But yeah, you would go in there, request an absentee ballot. You can actually request it for the entire year, although we're down to one election.
This is it. But and you'll want to attach your photo ID. It'll ask you to do that. So I always tell people use your phone when you're doing this and take a picture of your driver's license or your passport.
Because it's way easier than being on your laptop to do this part of it. And then, yeah, you'll attach that.
And you can, and if you're going to be somewhere else, you can have a forwarding address, you know, a lot of people here in Dane County might be studying abroad or be somewhere temporarily and they can not my kids in Ireland. So he's already returned his ballot from Ireland.
They forwarded it there. So yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty simple. But I would say do it as soon as you can because the mail isn't as good as it used to be number one.
Two, we're just starting to run out of days here. So if you want to vote absentee, I would urge you to do it as soon as possible.
The other by mail, the other way to do it. And I strongly recommend is going in person. And there's some real advantages of that. There's two weeks generally before the election.
Madison, for example, all libraries are places that you can vote early. You know your ballot got there because the clerk took it from you.
But the witness was correct. And there's no problems because the clerk did it. And you can pick the time. And you never know what's going to happen on election day. Do you know, you could be sick.
It could be pouring rain. Who knows. So you got a whole two weeks where you can pick a good time lines will be short. So I think, you know, we have that ability and Wisconsin people should take advantage of it.
Yeah, you're making a really strong case for that. What sorts of things do you need to make sure that you have on that absentee ballot because they won't be counted in some cases if there's even one little thing a mess.
Well, I mean, in Wisconsin, typically you as a boulder, the key thing you need to do is fill everything out. Make sure you've signed it. Your witnesses signed it. The address is on there.
The court has gone back and forth on what all the elements need to be on there. Now they're basically it's back to more of a common sense. Like if you missed a zip code, they're still going to call it.
So, but, but generally, you know, fill it all out. There's nothing wrong with making sure everything's on there. And then on your ballot, make sure you follow the directions only vote for one candidate for president. I can't tell you how many people try to vote for like the green party and the democratic party or something like you can't do that.
So vote for one office and then vote the whole ballot. There's a lot of things on there. And as you know, local races often to make more of an impact on our lives, maybe not this time, but in general.
And, you know, make sure you flip the ballot over vote for the constitutional amendment that's on there vote for the local offices.
So the ballots been cast and dropped by now we get to election day and you're counting the votes walk us through that process, please.
Okay, so it's a little different from place to place. I would say the vast majority of Wisconsin, what happens is your absentee ballot or your is going to be open and processed at the polling place that would have been your polling place on election day.
Okay, and fed into them to the scanner and then all the people who come in in person, same thing, they go into the scanner, you have to sign the poll book.
So this one thing I always have to remind everybody, there is a signature for every ballot. I never understood these like they're going to stuff the ballot box like, well, where are they going to get these extra signatures from their has they just have to match up.
So you'll sign the poll book, you'll get a ballot, you'll show your ID, not in that order, but you get and then they'll allow your ballot cast it on election night, then at the end, they'll close the polls and total those amounts and then send those results to the county and then the county is where the totals for for all of the different municipalities and words and that in that county are added up and you can see the results there.
The county is supposed to post them within two hours of receiving them. There are some places where they're in like Milwaukee is a good example, Jamesville, there's a central count location just for absentees, so all the absentees go to the county or the city.
They're totaled there separately, you can watch that process and people do trust me and then the results are loaded from there, so that there's kind of two ways of of doing it, but for the vast majority of people it's all at the polls.
And Wisconsin ballot county is not centralized above the county level, is it there's no state clearing house for the sort of thing.
No, in fact, there's no single website that the state host that has the total results, it's literally the AP pieces it all together and there was a long debate about that at the election commission where they should have the results on a central website and they were kind of worried you could get hacked.
And I will say, I mean, it would be a lot of effort for the Russians or someone to go through and total all these, so I guess that's some sort of defense, but yeah, it's all at the county level.
You touched on this a little bit, but I think it's important to talk about and that is some myths that persist from people who want to or need to believe that stuffing about boxes is easy or widespread.
How clear up some of those misunderstandings for us and how hard is it really to do that.
Yeah, I mean, we've never seen it. I've never heard of it. I've never seen it. And the reason is that the ballot that is cast has to come from the clerk's office.
So we has to have our initials on it, the city clerk's initials on it, we send it out, we with the envelope that it comes back in, for example, for absentee, we know that which envelope it is, it's got a bar code, the envelope does not the ballot.
And we total, we acknowledge that receipt of that. And then again, on election day, the person coming in to vote, if to show an ID, if to state their address, and they should be in the poll book, if not, they got to prove they live there.
And so when you have all these checks and balances on the system, that's the reason why you don't see it. And I mean, when you when you hear, well, there's never been any proof of this voter fraud.
It's, it's, it's all the layers of security that exist, prevent it. There's been voter fraud in the past. I mean, you see those old movies where, you know, in Boston, the Irish are shaving the mustache and voting twice or whatever, you can't do that anymore.
So yeah, it has happened in the past, but there's been so much security added to it over the years. It's, it's, it's really, really, really difficult for even just to handful people to do it.
And it's a felony. You know, I said the one thing that, that the one thing you do see sometimes is someone votes in Illinois and then they vote in Lake Geneva because they have a house there or something.
And a good caught. I mean, we check those voter days and days against each other. So that one vote is going to probably cost you a year in jail or more. So that's why you don't see it.
Very good. Scott, those are all the questions I had, unless there's anything we talk about, you think we ought to know because then, then we'll dilute the good message. So I think we're good.
All right, I appreciate that. If I have any fireworks, could I get a hold of you again? Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Absolutely. I appreciate your time. Yep. Bye bye.
