This is a special presentation from Civic Media News.
From our Civic Media Studios in Madison and across the state of Wisconsin, this is Special
coverage of Wisconsin Decides 2024.
Here are your hosts, Todd Alba and Pat Critello.
Welcome to the World Headquarters of Civic Media, a block off the capital square in downtown
Madison.
This is it.
The polls are closed in the state of Wisconsin, but a great reminder from our friend,
Jim McNair and Pete Swabba, if you are listening to us on the Civic Media app, and if you're
not, why aren't you?
You can download it right now at the Apple or Android device.
Simply go to your app store, Civic Media and it's free.
It takes less than a minute.
It's a great way to get your news all even long.
If you're in line in Wisconsin right now, stay there.
Our great lawyer and co-host Maggie Don tells us as an attorney, it is your legal right
to vote if you're in line right now.
So do not go anywhere.
Stay in line.
Be a voter because your vote still matters.
And stay right here all evening long as I welcome by the host of Updorth News Radio every
morning from six until eight on the Civic Media Ready Network.
Our friend, our colleague Pat Critello, Pat Good evening.
Good evening and happy no more political ads to all those who celebrate.
I'm sorry, now I'm seeing the first state Supreme Court ads are going to start running
here in an hour.
They've all been good.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves.
We're done with this cycle, except for the county.
Yeah, they certainly are.
It's going to be an interesting night, Pat.
Of course, many polls have already closed across the country.
We're going to get to that little while.
Lots of races, not just the presidential one, Pat, congressional races and also the state
legislature up for grabs of Wisconsin.
And I can't wait to talk to Dan Schaefer about that, but spoiler alert, it's because of
all those new maps.
Everybody who showed up for the Janet Pro say what Supreme Court election has made this
night possible.
It was going to be election night anyway, but for a more competitive and maybe more productive
legislature for those folks who might not be following along the current legislature
has been on a nine month paid vacation to do nothing.
You might have made a change in that today.
Absolutely.
You spoke of Dan Schaefer.
The wonderful Dan Schaefer, our political editor here at Civic Media, birthday boy, the
birthday boy Dan Schaefer and the founder of the Recombobulation area, Pat, I did by
homework.
I printed off.
I guess I killed a couple of trees.
You printed the internet.
This is this is the great comprehensive guide to every state assembly in state center
race.
That's the guy who put this together.
Dan Schaefer.
Like silver thesis there.
That's right.
Let's head over to our Recombobulation area.
All evening long, Dan.
Welcome aboard.
Great to have you with us.
What are you looking for tonight?
Good evening, gentlemen.
Happy to be here thrilled to be part of Civic Media's election night coverage with the
both of you.
We're going to be looking at everything up and down the ballot in the Wisconsin state
legislature for the first time in more than a decade.
There is a realistic chance for Democrats to win control of the state assembly.
So we're going to be looking at all 99 of those races throughout the night.
And then in the state senate, we're also going to be looking at those races.
But only half of the chamber is up there up this year.
So it's not really a realistic opportunity for Democrats to flip that chamber.
But every race in the assembly is on the ballot right now.
We're going to be looking at every last one.
Are you going to keep us chill and cool all evening into the early morning because when
things get tense, just recombobulate, right, Dan, chamber?
Exactly.
Exactly.
That's what we're here for.
We're going to recombobulate Wisconsin tonight.
We nicely done.
Absolutely.
Look at that, guys.
He's a pro at your broadcast.
He already packed right low.
We said one of the big races that is consequential to Donald Trump and Kamala Harris and the presidential
race tonight, North Carolina and Pat, I know what are your colleagues that career new
services standing by to update us on that important race?
Yeah.
For folks who do not up north news is a separate entity from civic media.
Career newsroom is our parent company with newsrooms all across the country, including
the pivotal swing state of North Carolina and one of the founding editors there.
My friend, Billy Ball for the Cardinal in Pine, the name of the publication out there
is joining us from North Carolina now to tell us how things are like out there.
Billy, how are you?
Hey, y'all.
I'm doing all right.
Every time someone says North Carolina, you got to raise the roof.
That's what we do.
It's good to see you.
How has the day been like overall there?
A lot of enthusiasm about voting?
Yeah.
You know, most of the folks in North Carolina, it became clear we're early voting this
year.
So actually quiet, I would say, after all the noise of the election season because so many
people are early voting, election day kind of shows up and it's a little bit quiet.
It's a sort of makes me nervous when I just want to see long lives.
Everywhere, but most folks are early voted.
What was the role of Haleen coming through on voting?
So we're still figuring that out right now.
I mean, the numbers are just now coming in.
I think one thing that's really interesting that I just saw and this could play a big
part in however North Carolina ends up going at the end of the night in the presidential
race.
But you know, about 70% of vote in in Bunkham County, which you might recall, was one
of the most devastated areas by Haleen.
That's Asheville.
It's really the progressive Western North Carolina Center and Harris, Harris's margins
in that area were huge compared to what we saw from buying four years ago.
So if if Democrats are looking for exciting news to see in North Carolina, they're going
to look there in Asheville, but generally what we're hearing is that people still turned
out to vote, regardless of where they were in Western North Carolina, they got there.
So what about what about that governor's race with Mark Robinson, the Republican who
said things like, you know, some people just need killing?
Who you chose one of the many quotes, you know, there are a lot of quotes that we can't
say on the air.
Exactly.
It's a family programming.
You know, I think that, you know, no big surprise that that this race with Josh Dining
Mark Robinson was called very early in the night, we can tell already by looking at
the results that a lot of people went and voted in the presidential race and for Trump
and then just said, I'm not going to vote at all with Robinson race, they're clearly
sending it out and, and, you know, I think that was something that we expected.
And then finally, you two, like in Wisconsin, you have a non-citizen referendum on the ballot
today?
We do.
We do.
A non-citizen referendum that is mostly symbolic because it was, it was, there's
it was brought out by folks who were trying to juice up the vote from conservative folks
who were concerned about non-citizens voting, which they're not.
And it's already in our state constitution that can't, it's in state law too.
So, you know, a triple redundancy, if you want to call it that, with this referendum.
So yeah, we're watching that as well, but really it's just an attempt to get people out
who are scared about non-citizens voting and they shouldn't be.
We have that same kind of nonsense going on here, but we appreciate the update hearing
some good news about the governor's race there.
We'll continue to follow the presidential tally.
And so, so glad we got a chance to talk to you, Billy.
Thank you so much from the Cardinal and Pine in North Carolina.
Thanks, y'all.
All right.
We'll see you.
Pat, great insight there.
And great to have the resources of Career News Services this evening to bring us this
national exposure through all of Wisconsin.
Yeah.
We're going to be talking in the next hour with one of my colleagues from Pennsylvania,
Michigan, Arizona, and then key of a keel, our national correspondent out in Los Angeles,
who gets to stay up until the Wii Smalls will keep us updated on a national perspective.
Sounds great, Pat.
Appreciate it so very much.
We mentioned Dan Schaefer talked to him a little bit earlier, but let's go back over
to the recombobulation area, civic media's political editor and the founder, the recombobulation
area.
Dan, help us to put this into perspective.
Lots of states have already been called and projected to be called so far as I look
at the national call right now.
Donald Trump has 120 electoral votes to Kamala Harris's 99 with so many states yet to
be called.
Some results partially.
And of course, Wisconsin polls just closed reminder, if you're in line and you're listening
to us, stay in line.
But first of all, how are you seeing this national race shape up so far?
Some of the some of the early states, right?
I think, you know, we're going to expect some of the early calls in some of those deep
red states.
I think the two really to focus on early in the night here are North Carolina and Georgia.
I think we know that Pennsylvania, obviously a key swing state, but like Wisconsin, they
are not able to pre-process absentee ballots until the day of.
So I think the two states to really key on for results right now are North Carolina and
Georgia.
And then we'll get into, you know, once now that polls have closed in Wisconsin, we'll
start seeing some of the results here.
We'll start seeing some of the results in Michigan and some of the other key swing states.
It was as we get into the night.
We look here at the Badger State Dan and you're from Milwaukee area.
You know it well.
Milwaukee County, the biggest county population wise, most number of available votes out there
in the state of Wisconsin.
If you just go county by county earlier this evening, there was a little bit of a discrepancy.
It seems more as being made out of it by the MAGA Trump folks that really should be
help us understand what happened in Milwaukee tonight and what's being done to cure it.
Yeah.
So we're still getting some reporting and some updates on what exactly happened here.
But what it sounds like is there are about 30,000 absentee ballots that were counted, but
there was an issue, you know, with some of the, some of the equipment there.
So they're going to have to recount 30,000 of those ballots.
I believe they're bringing in members of the Milwaukee Fire Department to help with the
process right now.
It's really tried to get that moving.
So I think even going into the night, we were expecting something, a late call with those
absentee ballots from Milwaukee, Milwaukee is one of many communities in Wisconsin that
uses central count.
And so we're going to get those, those results at the end of the night for places like
Milwaukee, Green Bay, Kenosha, but really because of the size of Milwaukee and the volume
of the votes there, you know, those are really have the, have the power to tip the scales
in a state that is often decided by 10 to 20,000 votes at the end of the day.
But let's be clear that on these tabulator machines, the problem was in as innocuous
as it gets that there was a little door on each machine that hadn't been closed and locked
all the way where the power switch was, but nobody monkey with it because otherwise the
machines would have turned off.
They did not Democrats and Republicans on the scene told local media they didn't see
anything, you know, nefarious about this.
But I regret to inform you that Ron Johnson is again doing Ron Johnson things and has shown
up at the central count facility to, you know, make some noise about a problem that will
probably not have any real impact on the count, but will again feed the, the, the beast
of conspiracy theorists like Ron Johnson.
Well, that's my grandma used to say at the farm, make sure the lids on the garbage can
do this.
The council come call them at night.
So I mean, it's one of those things.
Dan Schaffer, we always appreciate you, keep recombobulating, let's keep us honest
as the evening progresses.
We thank you so very much.
We'll leave you to your tabulations and be back just a little bit while longer.
But another big race that we're looking at tonight and following all of our listeners
and viewers.
And remember, if you're listening to us on a terrestrial radio stations across the
state of Wisconsin, that's fantastic.
That's lovely.
But if you want to see a forward television anchor with a great head of hair and a middle
age guy with a bald head of hair, tune into our streaming services on the either YouTube
Facebook Twitter, which is now called X, of course.
And you can take a look at it as well, Pat.
But look at how you shamed me.
I have not worn a suit coat since I was a TV anchor a million years ago and had to go
pick up something today just to keep up with you for me, just for you, buddy.
The Ron Burgundy collection.
That's exactly it.
I've kind of I've grown the Ron Burgundy collection.
That was a few sizes ago.
You look fantastic.
They're all serious.
There's another great big race here tonight.
It's the United States Senate race.
Yes, there is.
And there's some concern there about potential ticket splitting because again, mentioning
Ron Johnson earlier.
There were people two years ago that voted for Tony Evers and Ron Johnson.
And now will there be people in Wisconsin who voted for Kamala Harris and Eric Houghney?
One of our reporters, Elizabeth Montemarrow, talked to Tammy Baldwin about that.
And she said, let's just focus on the issues here.
And Savannah Tome Olson is over at the Baldwin campaign to tell us more about that.
Pacific Media assistant news director Savannah Tome Olson, you are standing by Savannah.
Thank you so very much for joining us via phone.
What's the feel in the room?
How are the Baldwin people feeling after the polls have closed at Wisconsin?
Hey guys, I wish I had more to tell you, but so far it's mostly just us reporters in the room.
They just opened the doors here at eight o'clock.
We have maybe two dozen people who have been letting so far.
And it's a long process.
As you can imagine, they're being tight with the security.
I had a lot of gear.
So did many of my journalists friends, but it took a solid five minutes to get through.
A metal detector has them all through all your bags, every pocket, all that fun stuff.
So I imagine it'll take a minute for people to really start to file in.
That you can hear Steve Cornacchi behind me.
They've got the screen on at this point.
They've got the lights turned down.
So at least things are starting to get rolling earlier in the day.
Tammy Baldwin did a string of campaign stocks.
She rapsed up at UW Madison's library mall.
When I've been talking to her staff, they've really been projecting confidence.
They say Baldwin has support from really diverse groups,
from abortion rights advocates to some Wisconsin farmers.
And that's really what they're banking on going into tonight.
That's such a big part of reporting from these election night parties
is being able to tell you what the vibe feels like in the room.
I can't really tell you that yet.
So I look forward to being able to tell you how supporters are feeling.
I'm sure at some point will have tears of things are called for Democrats here on TV,
but we're just not there yet, guys.
We're just getting going.
We're getting going.
Thank you, Savannah.
To be also the assistant news director for Civic Media News.
We appreciate you so very much, Savannah.
We'll check it with you very shortly.
Right now it is 14 past the hour of eight o'clock.
And we have a civic media projection.
At this time, we can tell you that civic media is projecting the state of Ohio
with all 17 electoral votes has gone for former President Donald J Trump.
Again, the Associated Press calling it just a moment ago.
This is the area of Pat where there was some really 10 gentle outside hope
after that Iowa Seltzer poll came out over the weekend that maybe if, you know,
as an outside chance, there's a big Senate race in Ohio.
We're going to talk about that with Scott Clude coming up.
But, you know, again, maybe it was just that tangential hope.
Yeah, maybe I'm just getting too old and crusty, but I would never buy an
into it.
You look at the map.
You know, Ohio has gone for Trump West Virginia has gone for Trump.
Florida, there's always the hope for Texas.
Texas has, you know, has gone as well.
So a lot of things have gone through to form.
The swing states are what we thought they would be and they're not going to be,
I don't think any surprises from anything that was, you know, well,
it could possibly maybe lean this way.
It's not going to be that kind of an election is, it is that close across the
country.
What it really means is we'll have to watch, like you said, that that
Senate race in Ohio and a Senate race in Texas.
Those have, you know, a little bit more potential to, you know,
flip one way or the other than the presidential one.
Closer to home pack, quite low here in the state of Wisconsin, again,
a number of school of revenues.
I know that you folks at up north news radio are in conjunction with the
Wisconsin Public Education Network.
You have them on your show all the time.
Lots of referendums.
Let's touch on that quickly before we move on.
Well, very, very simply, people will wonder, well, why are there hundreds of
school referendums?
I will not 100, well, there have been hundreds this year across all of the
different elections.
And the, the shorthand for this is that folks hopefully voted yes on the
referendums and know on the legislators who set up the conditions to need
this many referendums because they're not holding up their end of the
state aid that's supposed to go to public schools.
And instead they're kicking the can to school boards, making them look like
the bad guy to have to go to local property taxpayers.
It's a, it's a terrible system.
And it's what led to all the referendums that Jimmy Costco has been
following for us.
Speaking of Jimmy Costco, civic media is very own.
It happens to be a school board member as well.
The Southwest was constant in basketball.
Jimmy, thanks for joining us via phone.
What are you hearing?
What do you see to the school referendums early on?
So the big thing is that we're looking at over $4.2 billion in
asks from school districts from local taxpayers just in this November
election.
Now over the course of the full year, school districts have sought over
$6 billion total and increasing from local taxpayers.
So what we're seeing this year is pretty clear that districts are, are, are, are
trying to find ways to patch holes in the budget, the pace of, of re-immersor
from the state to state aid.
That has not kept up with the cost of, of having a school open.
And you're starting to see the disparity this year, especially with the
expiration of federal dollars.
So a number of factors going into it, but the, the low amount of state aid
combined with the loss of the federal pandemic dollars is really created
a situation for some schools that this referendums cycle is really about
keeping the lights on and keeping operations going.
A very critical referendums in many school districts and highlighted,
perhaps by the $607 million asked by the Mattis Metropolitan School District
across two referendum questions today.
And let's recall that I didn't emphasize enough that these referendums,
these are like you said, to keep the lights on.
These are not building new gyms and computer labs and all that.
It is for ongoing costs.
And when you say four to six billion dollars in referendums,
it occurs to me, the state budget surplus this year was somewhere in that
four is six billion dollar range.
And I'm not saying the legislature should have spent it all,
but they decided to do basically bupcus for it.
They worked out one deal that basically helped a whole lot of voucher
schools when there's so much more that could have been done for public schools.
Well, Jimmy, you're standing by.
I'll keep watching this and we'll report it in throughout the evening.
Oh, thank you so much for all your great hard work.
Thanks for being a school.
I hope I remember, of course, Trigby Olson and I from the Lincoln project
were up doing our statewide tour.
We stopped to solve paddle along the way.
We ended up with the Green Bay Fox Valley area pat had people on that
were doing these referendums in the pier and Ashwabanon.
That's a huge issue in the Fox Valley.
It could, could play an issue in these legislative races as well tonight.
I would hope so if people understood what the situation was like and who
actually caused, you know, that situation to take place because of these competitive
races. Maybe we won't have that issue after the next eight budgets.
Speaking of Trigby Olson, our friend and ongoing contributor.
He has finally gotten back to his home base out at Washington DC.
He joins us now from StreamYard Trigby very quickly.
How are you doing?
I'm good, gentlemen.
How are you?
We're great.
Thank you so very much for asking.
Fine, but I mean, isn't it past your bedtime, their old man?
I mean, I could go to bed regularly.
It's a regular feature of who launches the old age joke.
First, from these two people that are roughly the same age, that's right.
But it was a heck of a lot of travel around the state.
You're going to be a late pad.
And, and, and then I'm looking like it's going to, it's going to be going till
your get up time.
That's true.
If, if that's the way it's got to be, thank goodness, we've got some great
reporters out there who are going to follow that and fill me in when I get
back here at 559.
Trigby, stand by where to come back here.
Just one second stay on the line.
We're going to include you the discussion of Pat right now.
I want to roll in.
What are your great people from up north news radio?
What was happening in Milwaukee?
Elizabeth Montgomery was standing by at the Central Count Facility in Milwaukee,
where, again, this is where a lot of the activity is going to take place later
on as, again, as a Central Count Facility, all the ballots are brought
there to be counted, unlike other municipalities where they're done in each
ward, this things go along.
So, Elizabeth, let's start first with, you know, what the situation looks like over
there. Good evening.
What, what can you tell us?
Good evening.
Overall, I would say it's been relatively calm and, you know, election
officials are saying that this has been a pretty uneventful election day,
aside from the recount of the absentee ballots that was announced earlier
today, there was no like evidence of tampering or anything.
This is just the process working.
So I hate to say a little bit forwarding, but we did have a little bit of
activity in here recently.
Well, and I think if you're going to have activity, again, like Anne Jacobs,
the chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission has tweeted several times
here, the process has worked.
You find a mistake, you fix the mistake, and then you rectify it.
You run all those ballots over again.
And from media reports, I've seen that they're well past 40,000 absentee
ballots counted now.
They clearly must have re-racked the 30, 31,000 that they were at when they
discovered the problem with the tabulators.
So this will continue on and on, but it will somewhat delay, you know,
what the final results are going to be coming out of that central count
facility. But again, Elizabeth, that's by design.
It's a big city takes a while to count all those votes, right?
Exactly.
And they did call in an all hands call to be able to walk you employees
to help with the counting of ballots, which seems to help them get
over back on track a little bit.
So they're not expecting as big of a delay as they were originally
anticipating.
So we're just going to sit and watch.
Elizabeth, I appreciate you being there.
Stand by if you will, just for a minute, because I want to bring back our
colleague, Trinky Olsen, senior advisor at Lincoln Project, Washington DC.
Trinky, you have a unique perspective.
You grew up in River Falls, Wisconsin, for those that might not be regular
listeners or viewers.
You worked on campaigns such as John McCain's in the past.
And then you went around and fought autocracy around the world.
You've seen these things.
We have reports tonight, Trinky, that yes, good old Senator Ron Johnson is
personally on his way to inspect this was happened here at the central count
in Milwaukee.
Again, by Elizabeth reporting and others, there is, it was just a simple mistake.
There's no discrepancy.
There's no weirdness in the voting.
But, but these mogul folks are not going to miss an opportunity to make a
mountain out of a molehill, molehill.
Well, it's certainly is Ron Johnson's right to go down there and see what's
happening.
I suspect that Ron Johnson mostly is going down there because he wants to be
able to get on Fox News and basically blow his own horn.
So yeah, yeah, I mean, listen, elections are human endeavors.
Somebody forgot to lock those switches.
All they're going to do is run the run the ballots back through the
optical scanners and Ron Johnson and my buddy Scott Walker had a bunch of
outrage on Twitter.
You know, they're just a bunch of clowns that want to be somebody and are
trying to take advantage of this.
I'm pretty sure Scott Walker's made some mistakes.
If he hadn't, he'd still be governor of the state of Wisconsin.
But he got beat by Tony Evers.
Well, remember to win, it's a win win for them because they can either say,
oh, we've found this terrible discrepancy or they'll say we went down
there and we were assured and we can give our blessing that things are fine.
Either way, it's more a publicity stunt than any kind of a safeguard.
Oh, it's been so much for being there.
We're going to let you go.
But please stay.
We'll check back in with you a little bit later.
Thank you so much for being there.
And great, Elizabeth.
Great reporting Elizabeth on the ground there.
Trigby where run up against the clock are literally have 40 seconds here.
Give us your take so far nationally.
Uh, I've said this the first time I was on your show.
I'll probably be saying it the rest of the night.
The race was always going to be about Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
This is civic media special coverage of Wisconsin decides 2024.
Once again, Todd Albaugh and Pat Crightlow.
Good evening, everyone.
From downtown Madison, a block off the capital square.
The civic media world headquarters welcome to Wisconsin.
Decides 2024 along with Pat Crightlow, guest or co host.
I should say tonight and the host of up north news radio.
Every morning on civic media from six until eight Patrick.
Uh, it's been a busy night.
So far I can tell folks quickly if you're just tuning in,
Donald Trump leads in the projected keyword projected electoral college race.
178 to 99 lots of states still voting.
If you're in line in Wisconsin, I know there's very
reports that some very long lines.
If folks are still in line, Wisconsin, do not get out of that.
You're entitled legally to vote.
So make sure people stay in line.
And of course, the Wisconsin right now, the polls are technically closed.
Some of those results are coming in already.
And right now with 10% 10% of the votes in in Wisconsin,
Donald Trump leads 53 to 45%.
But the important part, Pat, what is the significant part of that?
What does it mean?
Nothing really.
Because because if you look at where those votes are coming from,
uh, a lot of them is a walkie-shock County is, uh,
is my granddad would say pertinor half counted almost halfway there.
Uh, and Dane County only has 18%.
So lots of lots of votes to go.
Right.
This is not a sports event where we're somebody's going to score more.
All the votes have been cast.
Yes, we're just counting them and it's, it doesn't matter till they're all in.
Speaking of breaking news, Pat, Donald Milwaukee, you've got some.
Elizabeth Montemore will join us again from the Central County Facility at the
Baird Center to give us an update on Elizabeth.
What's new, uh, well, we had, uh, Senator Ron Johnson, uh,
peer with the state Republicans chair Brian Schimming, uh,
little bit ago, um, they are just here as observers,
but they did request, um, it appeared that they seemed to request, uh,
to see what was going on with the absentee balloting count earlier today,
which the Milwaukee election commissioner reminded them that there is a formal
process for open records, and this is not the appropriate place for that, um,
and also reminded Senator Johnson of Wisconsin state law that by law in
Wisconsin, we cannot start counting absentee balls prior to election day.
So it was just a friendly reminder to some, uh, election observers.
Uh, to put it mildly, to put it very kindly, Elizabeth, uh, thank you for that.
So let's emphasize a couple of things.
Again, Ron Johnson doing Ron Johnson things, not knowing what the law is, uh,
making the case that something had had been a miss when it was Republicans in
the legislature that stymied a bill that would have allowed these ballots to be
processed one day earlier, and I cannot let this go without mentioning that
Brian Shimming and Ron Johnson were part of a fake electors plot who overturned
the 2020 election.
They're not bringing a truckload of credibility to this process.
So they claim to be observing.
We're going to observe them and their messaging and not over amplify anything
conspiratorial that they want to bring up without any form of, uh, evidence,
whatsoever, who always brings a truckload of experience and credibility is
civic media's own Terry Barr award winning journalists.
She is there on location at the victory or we'll see if it's a victory party or
now they always call the victory party.
Pat, what are you going to do?
Yes.
She is there for Eric Hubby's party tonight for the race for US Senate.
Terry, good evening to you.
What's the room feel like there for the Hubby event?
And what do you know?
Well, Todd and Pat, the doors as, uh, I think we're all saying this really just
open.
There is a small gathering at this point.
Eric Hubby is here at the edgewater in Madison.
He did walk around and shake a few hands with his volunteers to thank them.
As you mentioned, he is running for Senate as the Republican candidate.
It's another attempt after losing the nomination to former governor Tommy Thompson.
And of course, then Thompson went on to lose to Senator Tammy Baldwin.
Now, one of the big personal issues for Hubby is his wealth with the GOP recruiting
Hubby to run because he could largely fund his own campaign.
Now, the latest polls at least are showing that it's a toss up.
And Hubby is saying he's feeling pretty optimistic.
Take a listen.
My race is going really well.
We're charging hard.
If we win in Wisconsin, they're done.
I got into this race for one reason.
I love our country, but what has happened in our country the last four years?
Think of the craziness that's happened into our country.
What is right has become wrong and what is wrong has become right.
All right.
And I want to mention to you as you kind of alluded to earlier to watching the numbers
come in and all we can do is sort of report to what we're seeing as these numbers
come in.
Right now, there is a small percentage 12% of the vote from across the state in
and Hubby has 50% of that vote.
Baldwin is sitting at 47% and there isn't independent in the race.
His name is Phil Anderson.
He has 1% of the vote.
So we'll keep track of everything going on here.
Any reaction, any excitement, but again, a very, very small gathering at this
point and in a very quiet crowd as well.
Terry Barr is always a pleasure to have you along with this respect.
You appreciate you.
Thanks for being there tonight.
We will check in with you throughout the evening at the Hubby event at the edge
water and Madison.
Thanks, Terry.
Thank you.
Always a pleasure.
Let's bring it in.
It's Trinvier Olsen still with us out there in Washington DC.
And it's Trinvier.
There he is.
Trinvier, I want to bring you in to give us a little context and perspective.
This is something that you and I talked about as we traveled around.
Met Pat up in the in the Chippewa Valley and then went over to the Fox Valley.
This Hubby Baldwin race explained to folks a little bit how the Transphobic
ads against Baldwin may have affected this race and where the Evers Johnson
voters of a couple of years ago may end up.
Yeah, I mean, the big thing of that ad and it wasn't about the policy
and in trance as much as it was if you think about it, the narrative.
And the most important piece of that ad was the first three words.
Trinvier Baldwin has changed, I guess that's forward.
And then it went into the issue and of course, the the issue being,
you know, all the narrative that's been built up.
So that ad really left a mark.
She was winning pretty comfortably at that point.
But you know, Wisconsin's going to be close.
You know, the exit polls, I was doing some numbering, crunching, you know,
the exit polls basically show 49.6 for Harris, 49.2 for Trump.
Why so four tenths of one percent?
That would be pretty in keeping what Wisconsin elections have been in the past.
I think Biden was point, you know, five tenths of one percent, something like that.
You know, right on or just above or just below the recount threshold.
Now that's the exit polls, right?
So, you know, Wisconsin could go either way, although Harris would seem to have a very small
being slightly better state.
Yeah, I mean, that could change.
Yeah, stand by trivia.
Let's bring in once again, a recabobulation area of our great studio here.
Civic media is political editor and founder of the recabobulation area.
Dan Schaefer, Dan, those exit poll numbers.
Does that say anything to you?
What's your first take of that?
You know, the exit polls is not really typically what I'm looking at first and foremost.
But I think we do have one interesting data point to take a look at in the early going
here. And that is the votes being count in Waukeshaw County.
Obviously, it's been a crucial county over the years, almost to the point of being
its own meme of crucial Waukeshaw County.
But the New York Times and App is currently showing that 65% of the votes in Waukeshaw
County have been counted in the presidential race.
Donald Trump leads 59% to Kamala Harris's 40%.
Now with that, 40% number is the key one to look at for Waukeshaw County.
If she reaches 40%, that means she will have done better than Joe Biden did in 2020.
And then, you know, there's a lot of votes in Waukeshaw County, 400,000 people live in
that county.
It's the third most populous in the state.
So if you're looking at certain benchmarks to examine early in the evening, if Kamala
Harris does any little bit better than Joe Biden does there, that's a lot of votes that
are going to come to the Democratic side.
But that 40% really has been like the holy grail of the Waukeshaw County Democratic party.
And there were conservative outlets on social media that were really gushing today about
the turnout in traditionally red areas.
And I'm looking at that going, yeah, the turnouts higher in those areas.
But you don't know who they're voting for as we've seen in all of the red states that
had abortion rights on the ballot since the Dobbs decision.
We don't know how many of those folks are turning out and traditionally Republican areas
and not voting for Donald Trump this time around.
High turnout does not mean high, high Republican output.
Yeah, certainly the case.
I just want to check.
I think I believe Maggie Don, the Maggie Don show is going to be joining us here at the
studio shortly.
Is that correct?
So very good.
We're making way for her here at the desk, always a pleasure to have Maggie with this from
the legal perspective.
But Dan, from your perspective, looking at the numbers crunching them, you know the state
better than anybody else.
Any other results that you're seeing thus far, what are we into it?
40 minutes after the polls close, anything else that our viewers or listeners should be
aware of thus far?
Results wise, we're very early here in most of the counties.
Waukeshaw seems to be ahead of most of most places around the state in their counting
ballots.
And one of the things that I'm going to be looking at throughout the night is which
cities have central count, meaning that they report all of their absentee ballots all
at once and which communities do not.
So, you know, some of the central count communities that we'll be focusing on later in the evening,
that includes Milwaukee, of course, but that also includes places like Green Bay and many
other brown county communities, Kenosha, Kenosha County communities, a couple other places
throughout the state.
Those will be later in the night.
And I think earlier in the night, we're going to be focusing more on places in and around
Madison, Southwestern, Wisconsin, and in that, you know, in and around that third congressional
district.
Obviously, some very swinging regions in Wisconsin will be able to kind of get a sense
of where things are headed based on some of those early returns there.
Dan Chaffer, keep re-combobulating.
We'll step back with you in just a moment, but right now joining us here at the Civic
Media, Wisconsin, decides 2024 desk, our very own host of the Maggie Don show every afternoon
from two until four.
She is also an attorney.
She is a wonderful person and insightful as ever, Maggie Don, welcome to the desk.
How are you this evening?
Excited, nervous, but very thankful for the lovely introduction Todd.
It's great to be with you and our colleagues here at Civic Media, what an exciting evening
this is.
It is.
I help us understand what's happening down Milwaukee County is a lawyer as an attorney
who knows Milwaukee, like the back of her hand, is there anything to what's happened
down Milwaukee with having to retabulate or re-scan some of these ballots down there?
Listen, in every election, there are these sorts of issues that occur.
The type of particular issue that occurs from election to election will change, but I
would be remiss if I did not quote from what was the federal supreme, excuse me, the federal
district court decision from the 2020 election.
And in that case, the Trump appointed judge said this about what I'm going to call election
issues that occur every cycle.
The existence of these sorts of issues and the implementation of a large election are
hardly surprising, especially one conducted statewide and involving more than 3.2 million
votes.
But issues of mere administration of a general election do not mean that there has been a, not
been a general ballot or a general election.
What this artful language from the court means that these sorts of issues are not unusual,
though again, the issue from election to election may change.
None of this ultimately impacts the validity of the count or the ultimate count, call of
the election.
So I think it's really important for people to keep in mind.
There are always these sorts of may I use the word glitches.
Yes.
And they're always have been.
Yes.
In every election.
And the whole reason this is called, you know, the big lie is that everybody, everybody
knew that these things happened.
But somebody, after losing an election, decided to lie about them and say, these glitches
are clearly indicative of something wrong.
No, these are the things that happen when you're counting 100, tens and hundreds of millions
of votes around a country.
Pat Maggie, standby, going to come back in just a moment.
I want to get some breaking news here, but also before we go to Stewart Wattles, Stewart
J. Wattles in our news bureau as well.
According to Reuters here this evening, there have been a number of hoax emphasized this hoax
bomb threats, many which appeared to originate from Russian email domain, a domain's weather.
We're directed this afternoon in this evening at polling locations in four battleground states,
including Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, and right here in Wisconsin as election day voting
is underway according to the FBI, quote, none of the threats had been determined to be credible
thus far.
Let me repeat that.
None of the threats had been determined to be credible thus far according to FBI in
a statement.
We will update you this as this breaking news carries out, Pat, but certainly disturbing
as we see this.
All right.
With us now is a member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission and the keep our keep our
Republic Wisconsin Advisory Council to tell us a bit more about, you know, what we can
take in from the elections and what we can glean from it.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's a large with us on the on the stream.
We are now.
Yes, she is.
All right.
Very good.
March.
How are you this evening?
I'm fine.
Thank you very much for inviting me on.
It's our pleasure.
Tell us of what you're seeing as a Wisconsin Elections Commissioner is particularly
what happened to Milwaukee this afternoon this evening.
Anything that worries you or caused you concern?
No, I think Maggie was exactly right.
I think things just happened and I appreciate the fact that the clerk was quick enough
to say we're just going to run them all again so that there's no question that those ballots
were counted appropriately.
I live in a small county, so today I drove around to six of the municipalities within
the county to find out what was going on.
How are they all doing?
And everybody was very busy early in the morning.
There was a very large turnout.
There was many new registrations.
There was a large, large absentee ballots that they needed to count throughout the day.
But everyone said that everything was going very, very well in spite of the kind of the
increased volume of not only absentee ballots, but actually the people coming in and coming
in early but having a line at the time that elections started.
So I thought everybody that I talked to was doing very well and I think the entire state
is going that way.
Commissioner, Hang on just one moment.
I want to come back to you if you have a minute.
But first of all, I want to go to our news reporter down under WRJN in Racine and Kenosha.
Stuart Jane Wattles, a standing by via phone.
You were always doing a great job following those things for us.
Give us your sense of you've been following tonight for us.
Voter turnout in Wisconsin.
We heard in some municipalities it could be near or exceeding record highs.
What do you have for us, Stuart?
Yeah, it's high and in a lot of places, but those early votes that were coming in weren't
at those levels that they were from four years ago.
For obvious reasons, that COVID played a part.
So the early absentee ballots as of this morning, the city of Milwaukee had just over
106,000 absentee ballots that's down about 35% from 2020.
So as it was busy today, those early votes that were coming in weren't where they were
before.
And if you're looking at the whole state or just kind of your neck of the woods there
in Southeast Wisconsin, terms of voter turnout for us tonight.
Across the straight the number of return ballots was about 20% lower than it was at this
point in 2020.
Similar percentages in Dane and Milwaukee, some of the bigger ones, but again,
they're not the same early vote numbers that we looked at four years ago.
They do exceed the totals from 2008, 2012, 2016.
But again, because of four years ago, we all know the state of where we were at that
point.
Those numbers just aren't there for more.
They were four years ago as far as absentee.
Stuart, thank you so very much for being watching this throughout the night.
Do a great job there at WRJ and in Racine and Kenosha Stewart, J.
Wattles.
Commissioner Bostonlin, hearing that, does that raise, how has the early voting gone so
far?
Has this put a straight on Wisconsin selection system, or do you feel confident about this
early voting and the number of votes cast so far?
I feel confident in what's going on, specifically in talking with the clerks that I talked
to today.
And just hearing the other things that are happening throughout the state, I am very
confident that everything will be counted, municipal clerks will do everything they can
as best as they can to be able to provide the answers.
But I know that they will also be thorough and careful to make sure everything goes
right.
Mark, let me ask you about the role that you serve with the group Keep Our Republic.
We've been talking about that for some time now.
It's one of several groups that have sprung up over the past year by partisan or nonpartisan
groups with a very simple mission.
And that is to reinforce the notion that elections across the country, and especially
here in Wisconsin, are already fair and safe and accurate.
And I wonder, the extent, can you look backwards now and say the fact that there was such a
concerted effort to start groups like this and tour the state and talk to voters, do you
think it made a difference in public confidence in this election this time around?
I think it did.
I think people were listening.
I wanted to be involved because I was a clerk for 24 years.
And listening to the things that were being said weren't true.
And I knew they weren't being true.
And I wanted to make sure that in my confidence as to how well elections in Wisconsin are run,
they're so decentralized, there are the volunteers, the volunteers who work as coworkers are
people who are in our community, is people we trust.
And I just wanted to make sure that I was willing to state that and make sure that people
understood that it is true our elections are fair and they are safe and our workers are
very conscientious making sure they do things right.
Do you know, I think one of the things that resulted from that effort to instill and improve
public confidence is that there's always, it always gets tough to find poll workers as
some retire and opt out of the system and you're trying to get younger people involved
in.
And I just have to think that if it hadn't been for this effort of keep our republic and
other groups, the in already tough situation would have been made worse.
Any chance you agree with that?
Are you still seeing a near crisis it seems in getting poll workers?
I think that some of this is needed to try hard to get people to work.
But I also think that people understanding the responsibility and what they what was
needed through a through things like the presentations that core has done.
I think it was important to help people understand that it was okay to be involved and it was
necessary to be involved.
March Bossalyn, Wisconsin Elections Commissioner and keep our republic Wisconsin advisory council
member.
Thank you so very much for being with us this evening to have a good rest of your night.
Okay, thank you very much.
Our pleasure.
And with that, we are at now nine minutes before the hour of nine o'clock here in Wisconsin
and we have a civic media news projection.
According to our sources, ABC News projects that the state of Illinois, the state of New
York and the state of Rhode Island have all been called now projected to be called for
Vice President Kamala Harris and surprise surprise Pat Crite Lowe, the state of Louisiana
where our very own Jacqueline are our human resource director here shares the same state
as James Carville, which joined tribute I green Bay Louisiana has made Laura how do you
say Louisiana has been called for Donald J Trump.
And it looks like Missouri as well and it's just a reminder that I've seen offered elsewhere.
And again, we'll look to see if anything changes, but so far, every red state that Trump
has won is a state that he won in 2020.
And he still lost the election.
So again, you see a lot of those states, a lot of predominantly rural states, southern
states have gone for Trump.
It is still so early.
Trigby Olson, are you still with this out there washing DC?
Am.
There he is.
Trigby is with us.
See, Trigby, can you hear us?
The Trigby's, he's always inside inside guy.
He's got information.
He's got sources.
He's working the phones.
I envision he's actually doing three TV hits at once and just doesn't know who's talking
about the given point.
Just sitting here looking, I would, you know, the Waukeshaw numbers and the 40%.
It's just going to be, I think it's going to be really close to Wisconsin because the
reality is, Trump is doing a little bit better in a bunch of small places and she's doing
better in places like Waukeshaw.
He's also running about one point behind Baldwin.
I think that the 40% number in Waukeshaw in the past for Democrats probably would be
a winner.
I'm not sure that either way, which way it will go because there's some cities in Dane
County where Trump is running just marginally better and we just have a long way to go.
We need to see more.
I don't think the, I'm not sure the Waukeshaw numbers tell us as much as was being said.
I don't mean to be throwing our cold glass of water on you guys, but I think it's, yeah,
it's going to just be, I think it's going to be really close, closer than maybe if you've
expected.
And we're seeing that in some other places, North Carolina, by the way, I think has been
called for, for, um, Trump.
Really?
Wow.
All right.
Well, that would be certainly news.
We'll keep it right here.
We will continue to talk and trick the Olsen from the Lincoln Project throughout the
night pack.
Quite a lot.
And I here at the desk at our very own Dan Schaefer continues to recabobulate.
We'll back both him after this hour two, at least at nine o'clock hour, we'll call
up with God's designs.
2024 is straight ahead.
You're listening to this.
