By Tom Still
MADISON, Wis. – We live in an age of skepticism. It can range from distrust of science to doubting the value of a college degree; from lack of faith in religion to believing all news media are biased; and from questioning whether climate change is real to falling for “deep fakes” in social media.
Is it any surprise that today’s mood of suspicion – even cynicism – would extend to how U.S. elections are managed and verified?
Going behind the curtain to explain how elections are administered in Wisconsin, from registration to casting, counting and certifying votes, was the topic of a Wisconsin Technology Council luncheon Oct. 22 in Madison.
It involved leaders of the bipartisan “Pillars of the Community” project, which is working to build election confidence across the country, as well as state and local officials on Wisconsin’s front lines.
Early voting is underway in Wisconsin and elsewhere, with about 30 million votes cast nationally by mail or in-person in the first few days alone, so the discussion was timely with the Nov. 5 election on the horizon.
Republican Ben Ginsberg, who advised former President George W. Bush and U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney in his 2012 presidential run, and Democrat Bob Bauer, who was legal counsel to former President Barack Obama, spoke first at the event. They were co-chairs of a presidential commission on election administration a decade ago.
Ginsberg directly took on a question about the 2020 election results, which former President Trump continues to challenge.
“We have seen no evidence that suggests that there was anything amiss with the 2020 election,” Ginsberg said. “I got together with a group of conservatives, three retired federal judges, federal appellate judges, a former solicitor general of the United States, an ex-senator, we have all worked in Republican politics for a long time – and only in Republican politics. None of us voted for Joe Biden in 2020. We looked for fraud, we looked for problems, and at some point you have to be honest about the evidence, and the evidence simply is not there to justify the notion that our elections are inaccurate, and certainly not that they’re rigged.”
In fact, as Ginsberg, Bauer and three Wisconsin election officials agreed, the decentralized nature of voting in the United States is a major reason why it’s nearly impossible to rig anything.
Each state has its own systems and rules, Wisconsin included. Elections in the Badger state are administered by 1,850 clerks and thousands of poll workers who volunteer and are trained to look for fraud and errors. There are systems in place to keep non-citizens from voting, to prevent felons from voting if they haven’t completed all terms of their sentencing, to keep college students from voting at home and school, and to prevent the hijacking of votes from nursing home residents.
Photo identification is required to register at Wisconsin polls – some states do not force that – and voter rolls are cross-checked against various databases.
Voting machines in Wisconsin are not connected to the internet, which means they cannot be hacked, and each machine vote generates a paper record for audits and recounts. Cybersecurity systems are in place to protect state databases.
Is it a perfect system? No, but panelists agreed it is designed to be as fair and accurate as possible.
“It’s a complex system, and mistakes are going to occur in my experience,” Bauer told the crowd. As election administration has become more professional, he added, “those mistakes are anticipated, planned for, learned from, acknowledged and corrected.”
Rock County Clerk Lisa Tollefson and representatives of Wisconsin’s election commission agreed when they spoke, noting they aim to be as transparent as possible if people have questions and concerns.
In an age of skepticism, efforts such as Pillars of the Community and similar groups in Wisconsin will not dissuade the nation’s most non-trusting. However, they are helping many people learn how the system works from start to finish and perhaps building trust in democracy through transparency.
Still is president of the Wisconsin Technology Council. He can be reached at tstill@wisconsintechnologycouncil.com.