Here & Now

Don Millis on Certifying Wisconsin's 2022 Election Results

Frederica Freyberg:

While the unofficial votes were tallied last week, counties have until next Tuesday to deliver their official canvas. Then the chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission has until December 1st to certify the election results. The future of the commission itself was a political hot potato throughout the mid-terms. For an update we turn to the chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission Don Millis. Thanks for being here.

Don Millis:

My pleasure.

Frederica Freyberg:

You told us in July when we last spoke with you that your job is to “look forward and try to enhance the public’s confidence in elections.” So just off the November 8 election, did you succeed?

Don Millis:

Well, I think we did in many respects. The election went off, I think, better than many expected. I know there were press accounts of concern about controversies and conflicts at polling places. There was one very unfortunate incident in West Bend where someone, perhaps a troubled individual, had a knife. That’s — I don’t know much about that other than what I’ve read in the papers. There were some press reports but I think for the most part, it went very well. I talked to staff the evening of the election, the next day and they thought it went very well. We haven’t had — I have not seen any accounts of grand conspiracies about election being stolen in Wisconsin. And so thus far so good.

Frederica Freyberg:

So breathing a sigh of relief?

Don Millis:

A little bit. I think that both parties, leadership of both parties tried very hard to make sure the election went really smoothly. Both parties invested a lot of money in training partisan poll workers and partisan election observers. I think the staff at the commission did a good job assisting clerks and I think the first line of defense in Wisconsin are the local clerks and I think they did a very good job.

Frederica Freyberg:

As to that, how did the commission do in providing guidance to those election clerks, which you call the commission’s primary responsibility?

Don Millis:

I think they did a pretty good job. I think they — we talked about how to deal with problem situations. We educate them on the law. We certainly have constraints on what we are allowed to do. The courts have ruled at various times what we can and cannot say, which is fair. That’s the court’s role. But I think within those constraints, I think the commission staff did a very good job of educating clerks and providing them with the tools to make sure the elections ran smoothly and transparently.

Frederica Freyberg:

In your mind what’s out there that still needs addressing?

Don Millis:

I think we still need to have greater confidence in election results because I think it’s still a nagging issue. One of the things that the commission has suggested on a bipartisan 6-0 vote was to propose an office of inspector general within the agency with resources and positions that would help investigate — not so much formal complaints but concerns about the legitimacy of certain practices and also to address public inquiries and the legislature’s inquiries.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now that Tony Evers has won re-election and it would appear the Democrat incumbent also has won the secretary of state’s seat again, do you feel like the threat of dissolving the Elections Commission is past?

Don Millis:

Well I mean that’s really an issue for the legislature and the governor I guess but if anyone who has any awareness of what’s going on, you probably expect that any radical change to the commission is not likely to pass or at least pass and be signed in by the governor. So I think the goal for us in the next two years is come up with smaller changes, changes that everyone can agree upon.

Frederica Freyberg:

Have you spoken with Speaker Vos who appointed you about whether or not he will pursue any kind of more significant changes to election law?

Don Millis:

I have not. I know we’ve had discussions among the commissioners and on staff about smaller — small-scale changes that might find the favor with Republicans and Democrats but I have not had a conversation with the speaker.

Frederica Freyberg:

Can you describe what some of those smaller changes might be?

Don Millis:

Certainly we would like to maybe address the issues with illegal requests for absentee ballots. The recent request for military ballots, there are some things that could be done that I think would be — find favor with everyone. There are — Wisconsin is the only — of the 49 states that require registration or have registration, we’re the only state that doesn’t have military voters registered. We think that’s something we could change that would help solve the problem. We also have the opportunity, I think, to allow electronic voting by military officers by engaging with the Department of Defense and using some of their systems. And so that’s not been tried anywhere else. We’d like to maybe explore that. That would be a wat of making sure our military men and women overseas can vote and can make sure their votes are counted because obviously sending back a paper ballot overseas has time issues and there are only so — we have so much lag time that the federal government allows us to use to count those ballots.

Frederica Freyberg:

So that getting of the military ballots by the person who did it, the former deputy election commissioner in Milwaukee, in your mind that exposed a vulnerability.

Don Millis:

I don’t know if it exposed a vulnerability. In talking to the staff there is a lag time by which those changes, those requests have been logged into the system. The staff are confident within about 2 or 3 days after it became apparent, if it hadn’t become public, the commission staff would have probably picked up on it. It is the number of military ballots are relatively small so it’s something they can get their arms around. So I think that we probably would have caught it but I think in this case it would be better to instill greater public confidence and come up with a better system for handling military ballots.

Frederica Freyberg:

We leave it there. Don Millis, thank you very much.

Don Millis:

Thank you.