Prescribed by those you elect, and we have in obligation to show you how were doing that. So to that end, i wanted to answer questions that we had been receiving in our office the last few days and updates. Namely, lets discuss the unofficial turnout numbers, election day registration, and the mechanics of a recount. We have alao put out a press release with this information and encourage you to share the facts with others who may have questions or concerns about the election process. So when it comes to voter recount, unofficially, wisconsin voters cast 3,929,374 votes for president. That is the most ever in the state of wisconsin, exceeding the previous record of 3,071,434 set in 2012. That makes the unofficial turnout percentage of wisconsin, which has a voting age population of 4,536,417 voters the unofficial turnout percentage of that is 72. 67 . Note, andimportant to ive heard many questions about this, that some jurisdictions choose to report their unofficial turnout as a percentage of registered voters. So for example, if the city has 100,000 registered voters as they headed to the election, 10,000 new Voters Registered using election day registration, those jurisdictions will sometimes report 110 turnout. The state reports turnout of eligible voting population, which is that unofficial 72. 65 of wisconsins 4. 53 million eligible voters. So i think thats an important distinction, because again, these are unofficial results. And different jurisdictions are using different equations to come up with that percentage of unofficial voter turnout. But we use eligible voter population to make our unofficial determination. By law, the state of wisconsin, again, has election day registration. This means that voters who may not have registered previously can register to vote on election day. This increasess the number of Voter Registrations. When Voters Register on election day, they have to provide personally identifiable information and a proof of residence document. Their address is also verified by sending them a mailing. The local Election Officials are now in the process of certifying the election at the municipal, county, and then state level. Part of that process is double checking that every Voter Participation entered has a corresponding and valid Voter Registration. So in short, i am so proud of wisconsin voters, not just for the record numbers they turned out to participate, but for the peaceful and civil way they did so. I am proud of our local Election Officials and all workers. They followed the law. They were incredibly professional despite enormous pressure. The next question i would like to address is, did my vote count . Many voters are visiting our website to check their records. As allowed by state law, it can take up to 45 days for local clerks to record paper registrations into the electronic system. So please do not worry if you dont see your participation recorded right away. Your local election official is entering it and is double checking everything as part of the canvas and certification process right now. If you voted by absentee in the state of wisconsin, you can track your ballot on wisconsins website, myvote. Wi. Gov. You will not see it until after the canvas and certification has been completed. And again, state law explicitly spell out local Election Officials have up to 45 days to complete this process. All of the data as part of the election is required to be made available in the paper artifacts of the election and are required to be maintained as part of the documents retention laws. Next, a reminder to all of us to seek out official facts about elections. Please do not help to perpetuate rumors. I know everyone is very passionate, as they should be, about the election. We have an obligation to engage with the facts. I understand your right to vote is sacred. There is a very robust system that protects your vote and makes sure only valid ballots can be counted. Wisconsin voters and people across the country have questions about how wisconsins unofficial Election Results are reported because of the closeness of the results and the time it took for some of our municipal clerks to complete the counting of absentee ballots. The answer to this question is, because we followed the law. And the law says that absentee ballots have to be received by 8 00 p. M. On election day to be counted. And counting cant begin until the polls open at 7 00 a. M. On election day. The law further says that every valid ballot has to be counted. Theres no cutoff time. And with almost 2 million absentee ballots that had to be counted, Election Officials took the time necessary to count each ballot in accordance with the very specific requirements of the law. And ill repeat this point again because i think it is so important. Every step of the election process is publicly observable and is transparent. This includes voting at the polls on election day and the counting of absentees. It also includes the canvas and certification of the tally that is happening right now in municipalities and counties across the state. Every ballot cast in the state of wisconsin has a paper audit trail. Every Voter Registration and absentee request is maintained and available during that public process. And to address some of the questions headon, wisconsin does not have more votes than registered voters. There were no absentee ballots found in the middle of the night. There were lawyers and observers from both parties on site and involved the entire time. That even includes at 4 00 a. M. When ballots were still being counted and polls were being posted. Clerks follow the law and they counted every ballot until they were done. I think its also worth noting, and we talked about this yesterday, that in wisconsin, there are 39 municipalities, including many of wisconsins largest cities that use the process outlined in the law known as central count to count absentee ballots. This process is where all absentee ballots are counted at a Central Location rather than at each individual polling place. In these jurisdictions, you will see results from polling places posted while central count ballots are still being tallied. Only when central count is complete and every valid absentee ballot has been counted, can they post the central count numbers. This is why youre going to see a spike in ballots reported late in the process. Again, central count is publicly observable and representatives from both parties observe the tally of these ballots, including the verification of the results that were posted on Election Night and into wednesday morning. And the last topic id like to cover is recounts. According to the unofficial results from the county clerks website, the margin of victory between the past two president ial candidates is 20,470 votes, or. 62 . And that makes that race eligible for a recount. Because the margin is more than a quarter of a percent, the requesting candidate must prepay the estimated cost at the time of filing a recount if one were to be filed. A candidate cannot request a recount until after the last county has reported the certified results to the state. The deadline for certified results is november 17. And for president ial recounts, the candidate has just one day to file for a recount. And i have to apologize, too. Yesterday, i misspoke. The Wisconsin Legislature changed the deadline from three days to one following the 2016 president ial recount. If a recount is filed, we will provide a cost estimate and the candidate would be required to pay the estimated cost upon filing. Once this happens, the Wisconsin Elections commission would then order a recount. From there, the county Election Officials would have essentially 13 days to complete the recount and to submit the certified recount results to the commission. Ion. The commission within certify the election based on the results of the recount. While no recount has been requested at this point, our office is always preparing. Right now we are actively preparing that possibility and we will continue to coordinate with wisconsins 72 counties and clerks it would be primarily responsible in the event of a recount. I think that covers everything we wanted to address today and making sure we were addressing headon any questions or concerns about the process because i think we as Election Officials have an obligation to make sure voters concerns are addressed and they have facts to answer their questions about how elections work in the state of wisconsin. With that i will turn it back over to reed and asked for any questions. Thanks, megan. Before we start with the questions i want to let you know i am sorry i have not gotten back to you if you emailed me or called me in the last 24 hours. I am working my way through the stack but there is an awful lot of them. I will get back to you as soon as i can. For questions, first we have can you hear me . Yes. I have two questions. I know Milwaukee County is doing their canvassing, started their canvassing this morning. Do you have a sense of how many counties usually tend to start at the same time or are waiting for municipalities . If you could give us more details about how the wisconsin Election Mission is preparing the recount, or a possible recount. Thank you for those questions. Those would be about the canvas process and the noticing process. That is a process established by each of the 1850 cities, towns, and villages and each of the 72 counties. They have to post notices. They dont report those notices to our office. The progress is conducted by the municipalities and by the counties themselves. They would be the best source for the information. In terms of details about the recount, we are always preparing for anything that might come our way. 2020 is the year we have seen everything that can happen in election administration, our way and we have been prepared for that. I think laying out the timeline, making sure we understand exactly what the timeline is, especially since the law did change a little since 2016. One of those tasks on the list is estimating cost. Working with local Election Officials to find out what their estimated costs would be to make sure we are covering all the categories that might potentially come up. There are things we will probably have to figure in in terms of large enough spaces for social distancing. Things we did not have in 2016. The law changed so our office can ask for costs associated with the recount. That is probably the other piece we are working on now, to understand how we would collect the information and try to get as accurate as we could. Looking back at 2016, we had some recent experience with and a lot we can do also. Reed next is pat followed by mary. Thanks for doing these. You touched on one of my questions but i was curious to know if you have any sense of what the cost is going to look like. If not, do you remember what the cost was in 2016 . Can you ballpark what the traditional cost would be when you factor in your office costs as well . Meagan i really dont care to speculate ever about things like that because that is work we need to do to make sure we understand what the costs would be. All the information from 2016 is posted on our website. You can find our cost estimate and what the final actual cost were in categories. We are thinking through what are the other categories that might be different from 2016 to now. When they came to mind for me was things like renting larger spaces, potential for things like livestream of the recount because there might be limitations on how many observers can safely be there. They cant really be looking over someones shoulder but they were able to in 2016. There will be some differences but if you look back at that data from 2016, you will see a pretty Good Foundation we can now build upon to get more accurate estimates. If i could follow up real quickly on the mechanisms on prepaying of the recount, how does that work . Do they make a payment to you based on the estimate and then you guys authorized the counties to go begin the count . Is that roughly how it works . Meagan yes, with the filing they would have to submit paper to our office by the deadline. Upon receiving the filing and the prepayment, the commission within authorized the recount to start. From there i believe the counties have three days to put the process to start working on that. Thank you. Reed next is mary, followed by dakota. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. The Trump Campaign raised concerns about irregularities in several wisconsin counties and today said ballots were being found overnight. We are trying to check and see. Have any formal complaints or any specific concerns been raised to your agency about anything like this . Meagan thanks for that question. No, we have not received their word of any irregularities. I know there were questions. I take this question seriously. When people see a spike that concerns them in the ballot totals being posted thats because of the central count. They all have to be counted until they are finished in the have to be reported at once. And that is where you see some of those spikes. There have been no problems reported to our office, no complaints filed with the office or any irregularities. Thank you. Reed dakota, you are next, followed by hannah. Absentee voting is pretty new for most people this year. The president has raised concerns over the validity. Can you go into it more . How these ballots are certified and checked to make sure they are accurate . Meagan thank you. Thats great. I love those types of mechanical questions about the process. Let me give this a try from the start. First, they voter has to be registered to vote. Before you can request an absentee ballot you have to be registered. When you register you are affirming you are and eligible voter of the state of wisconsin, providing personal identifiable information, providing proof of residence document or matching data fields with the dmv. Registration is where you verify you are you and we verify you are you and we put you into the system. There is maintenance that goes on all the time. If somebody becomes ineligible, they become a felon or deceased, they are deactivated from the registration system. That happens every day where we keep up with those records. That is a really important piece of it. You have to be registered and a lot goes into registration before you can request an absentee ballot. Then, if you want to request an absentee ballot, and wisconsin all voters have three options for casting their ballot. Absentee by mail, in person absentee, or at the polls on election day. If you choose absentee by mail, you have to make a request. When you make your request, you have to provide information to your local Election Officials so they can find your Voter Registration record and make sure you are lawfully registered to vote. Then you have to provide a photo id. That is kept on file as part of your record for the absentee process as well. From there it minister pahlavi has a clerk. We have 1850 cities, towns, villages that register absentee. When your request goes, he goes to a person in your community that is checking to make sure you are lawfully registered to vote. Making sure you provide all the information, photo id, checking the requirements. They intentionally the decision if you are eligible to get absentee ballot. If you are, you are sent an absentee ballot. From there the voter can cast their ballot by absentee in the presence of a witness. The voter has to sign the certification on the absentee envelope. They also have to include their address. Your ballot is sent back to the clerk. I should say during the transition process we have barcodes on the mail process so you can track your absentee ballot. We in the system can take a look to make sure everything is reaching the milestones it should. If not, we can work with the voter to make sure they get a replacement ballot as well. On the local Election Officials receives your ballot, they have to check into the system that it has been received. The information is part of your record. The clerk estimate sure you are registered and see that theyve already had an absentee request on file. On election day if you going to vote in person and youve already received a return to absentee ballot, he would not be eligible to cast a ballot on election day. It plays through even at the polls on election day. On election day your absentee ballot easier sent to your polling place or sent to a Central Location where you are assigned a voter number. Your name and your address are publicly announced. People have an opportunity to challenge ballots if they have firsthand information that the voter is not eligible. Then the election inspector will go through that certification and make sure you filled every thing out. Before the ballots are sent down they have to check the registration record to make sure you are eligible to cast a ballot. If something changed, they would not count that ballot. At the polls they will check certification to make sure everything is good to go. Davids missing information, developed if it is missing information, the ballot ballot the ballot cant be counted. In the event of a recount, if we were to have one, that is material to have to maintain and go back and double check everything happened how it should. Thank you. Reed all right. Next is sean gallagher, followed by kia murray. Thank you for doing this. I have a question about provisional ballots. I think it was yesterday you mentioned an atypical race maybe you will have 1000 across the state. Are you getting those numbers back and expect them to be higher . How could that impact the election . Meagan thank you for that question. The state of wisconsin i love to get into the weeds of elections. We dont have a lot of provisionals because we are exempt from the national Voter Registration act. There is really only one scenario where you can be issued an absentee ballot in wisconsin. In other states there are a lot more. It is only if you have had we dont have a valid photo id you need to vote on election day. There is a provision if you dont have or are unwilling or unable to provide your drivers license or id number when you register to vote. Very limited opportunities. We pulled the numbers recently to see with the clerks had entered. Please correct me if im wrong but i believe it was around 900 that are issued. A small amount. Those voters have until friday at 4 00 p. M. To bring back the information and have their ballot counted, but it is a very small amount. I know you said missing information on ballots and some other things would nullify having the ballot counted. Any idea of the numbers on that . Meagan last week checked prior to the election we will have reconciled data. Any data im giving you is unofficial. The unofficial data before the election, clerks had looked at the envelopes before they sent them down to the polls and put information to the statewide system. When clerks put information in the system it can be displayed for the voters. If they missed providing their signature or their witness signature was missing, they can flag that for voters on the website. We saw there were less than 1000 ballots marked with some kind of prior to election day. They had an opportunity to correct those problems. If they were not corrected by election day, the ballot could not be counted. A pretty low number. Wisconsin typically sees low ballot rejection rates. Reed i dont have any numbers from those but i can check and send those out later. Next up is kia. Thank you for doing this. I apologize in advance. My question is pretty long. I have a source from the Trump Campaign that says their legal volunteers saw ballot workers cure absentee ballot information with a red pen or marker. Where poll workers and not voters either corrected or added information. This was to the ballot itself and they claim it happened to at least 15 to 20 of absentee ballots, typically in milwaukee. Is that true . Can you speak to the curing ballots . Im not familiar with it. Is this normal and legal . Meagan thank you very much. Thats an important question. I dont to speculate. I can talk a little bit about what may have been occurring. There are so many things in elections that are not familiar to people. When they see them they are not sure what is happening. We work with local Election Officials to make sure they are describing the process and people know what they are doing and have an opportunity to weigh in or challenge as well. Its a important, healthy, good part of elections. Like you said, they might have been curing the ballot. There might be a couple of scenarios. Lets say the voter returned their absentee ballot in the witness signature or witness address had been missing. They could alert that voter and the voter could bring down their original witness and have the witness sign the information. Another option, they are able to add the witnesss address if it is missing. If the witnesss signature is missing and the witness does not come down, they cannot cure that another way. But if the address is missing. Lets say they got two ballots back from a husband and wife and they see the addresses right there. They were able to add that address but not the signature. Lets say during in person absentee, almost 7000 in person absentee ballots issued. If a ballot was issued, that has to be the clerk staff. During in person absentee, they are issuing that in realtime out of the statewide system. In some cases, lets say that the witness missed signing it, again, they have the opportunity to come down and cure that on election day. They actually know definitively that witness was and can cure that in the system. Not to speculate, but i think those are some of the things that could potentially happen. The other thing to add is that they are not curing the ballot itself with the persons votes. It is the certificate envelope that gets cured. Meagan great distinction. These are all about the certificate envelope covered not the pallet itself. There is also a remaking process, this happened in a county where they had a small scratch on one of the timing marks. The law outlines a specific process where there will be representatives from each party where they keep the original ballot, remade ballot, and they can tie them back to each other to make sure it is done correctly. They can remake the ballot so it can be counted by the electronic voting equipment. There is a distinguishing number on both the original and remade ballots. That is in the event of a recount or any questions that they need to verify that the remake was done properly. Thank you. So, we are seeing other states are still counting their ballots and may not have results today. Meanwhile, wisconsin was able to count all of theirs and get results out. I wonder if you can speak to how Election Officials handled this election and how it looks with wisconsin being done with results, of course unofficial, with those being counted at this point. Meagan thank you for that. I have the utmost respect for Election Officials around our country. We are lucky to have all of them at the helm of how various states. Each of us have a different set of laws we are working under. Wisconsin has wisconsin state laws which outlines how we have to conduct our election. Each state has come up with completely different laws in terms of how that process works. In some states, they have an extended return period. In wisconsin, our ballots have to be back by 8 00 p. M. On election day to be counted. In some states, they have as many as eight days for balanced come back as long as they were put in the mail on election day. I think the fact that it is taking longer in those states says nothing of the election official and is simply a construct of their laws. If i can just quickly followup. Mentioned how our laws stop us from accepting absentee ballots after 8 00 p. M. On election day. I am wondering, will you do an audit of ballots received after election day . Meagan all the data in our statewide database comes from our 1850 Election Officials. Clerks are working on recording participation. They also track things like ballots received after the deadline. They will enter in ballots that are rejected with the missing witness, or put in ballots that are received after 8 00 p. M. On election day and show that pallet needs to be counted. All of those are maintained and tracked as well. That is always available as part of our postelection dataset. There are things like federal reports that we have to complete that go into this really nuanced data. Savanna is next, followed by brett. Thank both of you for doing these, as always. There has been so much misinformation about every state in the country throughout election day and then in the days afterwards. The big one, the number of ballots cast versus registered voters. We know that that information is incorrect, but how does that impact you guys . How do we fight that misinformation and how does that impact our election system one there is doubt like that . Meagan thank you. There certainly were a lot of calls to our office. I have an incredible staff. They have been patient and helpful on all of these calls. I dont blame voters when they are confused or have questions about the process. I believe it is my job as an election official to explain how it works, point them to the information and the data. I think that the more people know about the process, the better they feel about it. I really wish people would check the facts, share things like our press release, i know it is not as flashy as some things you share on social media. But share the facts. Once people know the facts and the mechanics, i think they understand the process. I do not think we are always as good as we should be in providing approachable information to the voters. I am not going to lie, i was tired today but i think it is important to do more of these to get information out. We have been doing these calls every week for months now and i think it has been really important and helpful. I think you all play a really Important Role for this in just getting the facts out there. We are doing things like this, talking to folks to make sure that they know where to go to get the facts and understand how elections actually work. Brett is up next and will be followed by ben jordan. Thank you for doing this. Two questions along the same line. How long has that 45 day window been in place for voters to verify that they voted in person. What do you say to someone who did vote in person on election day to reassure them that their vote was in fact counted . Obviously, it will be past the window after the canvas for them to know that. Meagan there is actually not an opportunity to sort of correct Voter Participation at this point. When they are going through that double check. But the 45 days has been, for a president ial election, it has been around as long as our statewide voter database has been around. I believe it was 2005. 2006. Meagan ok. I was not there yet. I believe that requirement of them being able to have time to take the paper process that is election day and turn it into electronic data has been around. For those voters, you can reach out to your local election official. Many of them working to hire additional people. They are also facing the possibility of a recount. But they do have the whole book, po poll book. Information they use to put the information into the statewide system. In wisconsin, you can find the contact information. They are working to get that in as fast as they can. They have all those records, they are just in paper form right now. Next is ben jordan. There was a lot of talk and concern about voter fraud before this election. The Wisconsin Elections commission kind of sent a stern warning not to vote twice in this election. Is there any evidence that might have happened . If so, how many cases and where . Meagan we do an audit after each election. In a general election, we do an audit where we compare that data not just in wisconsin but across the country, to make sure that if someone votes twice, they are prosecuted. We always have that Information Available on our website. Again, this 45 days. After it is all reconciled is when that audit is done, and after that is when we do the other comparison. Anyone who committed a crime can be referred for prosecution. You see all of those referrals on our website. It is something we are able to do and post publicly. I understand that the numbers are exceedingly small. The warnings would put out forehand were to make sure people did not come down to vote in person if they had not already sent back their absentee ballots. There is a system in place to prevent people from voting twice. We also wanted to make sure people understood what that system is. It is not that this happens often, or at all. Meagan great point. I think it is just that absentee was new to so many people that we wanted to make sure they understand the rules. Thank you. Next is chuck. Chuck i am wondering who physically does the recount . Is it strictly the staff of the municipalities or did they call in all the poll workers since it is going to be so much more counting, done hand by hand, do they need more people to come in . Meagan recount for a statewide contest, these are done by the counties. They conduct those for their municipalities. In the event of a recount, a lot of them do bring in the clerks to conduct the recount at the county. We work with them. If you look at 2016, we look at those, the certification of any reporting unit comes in, and any of those numbers were posted on our website. Each of the counties is responsible for conducting that. Chuck, you might want to talk to the Lacrosse County clerk jimmy dankmeyer. As well. Dankmeyer meagan i would agree. She is great and really knows this process well. Next is Adam Brewster from cbs. Thank you for doing this again. You mentioned at the top, no recount has been filed. Have they reached out to you in any capacity or have you heard from them at all . We certainly hear from the campaign regularly as they are asking questions. I am not aware that we have received any communications about a recount. Scott bauer. That was actually my question. Is it surprising to you that you havent been asked to gather meagan no, i never speculate. That is not my job ever. But i think that we have a lot of information about a recount. We have a recount manual. We have a memo and a manual for everything in elections. We have a lot of information about how a recount works. I dont know that i find it surprising that we have not seen anything else at this point. They really cannot make a request until after we have the certified canvases from the counties. Next is ellie kaufman. Thank you so much for doing this. The first question, what happened in the town of willow . Meagan i think they are doing ok. I did not mean to send the whole nation their way. Shortly after we talked yesterday, they posted on official results. I think it was just a matter of communication. That is now posted on the county website. You can see their 300 votes. Thank you. Adriana diaz, followed by alexa. I dont see her. Alexa is next. I was curious when you think you might have some data on the number of ballots coming in after election day, after the deadline . Meagan there is no specific statutory requirement or deadline. It wont be until after they record participation, they conduct recounts, they then go through and report. We do have reports that we have to file, federal reports about the data on the election. After all of the jurisdictions have entered their data, we have the fun of getting to call 850 jurisdictions and make sure that their numbers make sense. We have 1850. We have to work with them to make sure the data is entered and all of that will be available in our system on badger voters. Next, we have riley, then i will go back to the people who had previously asked. Thank you for doing this call. I wanted to ask about absentee ballots and when we will know kind of a final number or a reportable number on how many absentee ballots were counted in the election. It is my understanding that the count you generate each morning, i am also wondering how many absentee ballots were mailed but arrived after election day and so were not able to be counted . Meagan in terms of the numbers returned and reported in terms of participation, that would be after the 45 days. If there was a voter who asked for an absentee ballot, they were someone, then were told to go to the polls on election day, that will get officially recorded as part of the voters official record. The clerk would say, this voter cast their ballot on election day but they were also sent an absentee ballot that they did not return. That would show as spoiled because they then cast the ballot at election day. We will know that number in terms of participation that is actually counted, around the 45 days is when we will have that data. That is actually not a data point that our clerks have to record. Doing everything required by law, they will also go through and enter information about ballots received after the deadline. There is a category that they can record those so that the voter can see that information. All the ballots returned after election day still have to be maintained as part of the public records retention laws. Those are available. That data would not be available until after the 45 days. When you say the 45 day mark, is that referring to the federal reports, the state canvas . Meagan 45 days is the state law that they have 45 days to record Voter Participation in the statewide database. It outlines when they have to do some of their data entry work. Again, taking the paper process that is election day and turning it into an electronic record. On the recount, is that a hand recount that is required or will they be using machines . The counties have discretion to make that decision. When we look back at 2016, some counties elected to do a hand recount and others had a program to use recounts using voting tabulators. They do have some discretion to make that decision. I think pat had another question. To pick back up on the thread of the Trump Campaign and the issues they are raising about curing ballots in milwaukee, they also indicated that some of the legal volunteers they had in milwaukee were prevented from having what they said was meaningful access all the time. I know that is more a question for local officials. Meagan i think that would be a great question for local Election Officials. One of the things we have to remember for this election is we had to keep everybody safe. We had to keep voters, poor workers, and observers safe. Coworkers were required to have space for observers, but they could set a limit on how many. If they did that, they were advised to make sure that each of the parties to have each one in their to observe. Making sure that people had opportunities that people could observe. That is certainly what happened in some of our jurisdictions. They had to keep people safe. It meant they could not cram 20 observers into an area like four. So each polling place had to make those determinations of how to keep people safe in accordance with law. The law also says that the observers table can be three to eight feet away from the registration table. Under publichealth guidance, they had to be at least six feet away to keep everyone safe. Scott bauers . Lets see. Another bauers, you had question . Lets see. Ellie, did you have another question . No. I am good. I have been slow at lowering peoples hands. Did you have another question . Just a clarification. Before, you said there would only be this curing process to the outer envelope where you find the signatures, addresses, and those things. They would not be a situation then where you had to add information to the ballot itself . Correct. You would not make a change to an actual ballot. There is a remaking ballot process for a damaged or defective ballot where they remake the ballot, they keep the original and the remade ballot that can be paired back together if needed. But there would be no reason they would be making any marks on the ballot itself. There was a county where there was a discussion about filling in the timing marks so those balance could be tabulated on the optical scan equipment. The court said they could not do that and had to remake those ballots. The only other thing, sometimes questions will come up about voter intent. Sometimes, people will draw a circle around an oval or there will be straight marks. Those are decisions that are made by the representatives from each party. They work together, they sort all those issues out in a public way. No one is going and changing things or fixing things. Richard had typed in a question about the difference between Municipalities Holding all of their results to release at once versus the central count. Can you talk about that . Meagan you cant post a reporting unit until it is complete. If a polling place is sending out results, you cant do that until it is complete. In those jurisdictions, the counties puts together a report and they posted on their website. In some counties, depending on how they have the Management System set up, the reports are different. Reporting unit or municipality as it comes in. Reporting in the county before they can pull the results. It is really a function of technology in that county. Each of our venous apologies, all 1850, are allowed to choose the voting equipment they want to utilize based on equipment that has been federally and state certified. There is different equipment in use, different election Management Systems in use on the county side. It is really just a function of that and the differences you will see from county to county and the systems that they use. Next, some other firsttime questions. Jason can you explain exactly what canvassing looks like and what is the intent right now . Meagan i will try. So, canvassing is, simply put, it takes unofficial results and makes them certified results. The municipalities, each of our cities, towns, and villages, they reconvene after the election and have to do some initial checks on the system to make sure that they have voters who issued a ballot and signed the poll book. They have not had some kind of issue, they do those checks to make sure all the numbers line up. Its not happen often that happen oftent that people have been watching. From there, the municipalities send all the material to the counties. They send the counties all the election materials. The counties go through and make sure everything makes sense. Did the we disability get it municipality get it right . Did they have the right number of voter signatures issued . Did all of that match . If it doesnt, they can send it back to the municipality and say, you made a mistake. You have to fix this. Once the county has done the double check, they certify the election, then it comes to the state. We check all of the data they submitted to us. We get all of the data. We do the final checks on all the data and make sure things line up. Registered voters. Do we have the right number of registered voters for ballots that were issued . Is there a problem here . Did something go wrong that we have to process . Once we do our check, then we certify. That is the canvas and certification process. That is how results go from unofficial to official results. We have two more questions. Thank you for taking the time. I know you dont want to speculate, but i wonder if you can walk us through, if a campaign does request a recount, what are they paying for . Is it the staffing, the equipment . What are those costs that the commission will traditionally pass on. Meagan the law has been changed since 2016. We now have to provide estimates for the county expenses and state expenses. County expenses would be things like supplies. As simple as making sure you have tables, pens, that you have the voting equipment. That you are paying the wages of the staff or the chief inspectors coming into help. It could be things like renting a larger space. When we processed nomination papers this year, we had to rent a larger space for social distancing. We do have a list of those expenses from 2016. We are looking at that to see if there are any adjustments needed on the county side. The county clerks time and their staff time. On the stateside, this is new to us, but we can also take a look at staff time and we dont get the actual artifact for our election. It is mostly staff time to advise the local Election Officials. My role in the 2016 recount, was working with each of the jurisdictions as the recount results and canvases came in, working with them to understand if there was a net change in any of the reporting units and to understand why. Why did the numbers change . And then, the numbers from all of the thousands to make sure we are being transparent. Keeping everybody in the loop on that as well. The basics of what the costs would be associated. Rose schmidt. Do you need to unmute yourself . We cannot hear you. Maybe she is not there. Alexis, do you have one more question . I am good. I will lower my hand. Rose, are you there . All right. Well, thank you, everyone, for coming. Shoot me more questions if you have got them. I will try my best to answer but realize i am getting like 10 times the normal volume of questions and inquiries. Just before this, we sent out a news release with many of the things that megan talked about. All of the numbers she gave are in the press release as well. We posted on the website a spreadsheet that has the county by county numbers that are there for the purpose of the recount margin. If you are not an ap member or do not have access to ap data, you can get some of those unofficial numbers. Our staff had to go out and gather that information because the counties do not refer to us at this point. Meagan thanks, everyone. Like we said, there is a lot of information on elections at wi. Gov. If you go to elections. Wi. Gov, but the subject matter in our search box, you will find a memo or manual or two. I get a lot of questions for things that are on the website. Look for that link to the statistics section. There is all the information about the absentee ballots, Voter Registration, all of that stuff is there. Just put in the word recount in the search box. We have a whole page that has all the information from the 2016 recounts. Thank you all for coming. I will send out a link to this video as soon as zoom produces it for me. Cspans washington journal, every day we take your calls live on the air and discuss issues that impact you. Friday morning, legal challenges to the 2020 vote. Foundation. Itage , andwashington journal be sure to join the discussion with your phone calls, facebook comments, Text Messages and tweets. Here is a look at where the ballots and seats stands in the u. S. House. Democrats with 208. Republicans with 193. Leaving democrats 10 seats short of a majority. At this. 34 races remain undecided. Continue to follow the vote counting on cspan. Org election. Use our interactive election map with the current electoral count, popular vote tally and percentage of votes uncounted in declared states. See the results of every house and senate race and the balance of power in congress. Watch statements from President Trump and joe biden. Find it all at cspan. Org election. The Michigan Court of claims denied the trump
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