Announcer:
The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production. You’re watching “Here & Now” 2024 election coverage.

Tony Evers:
Folks, it’s a new day in Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:
New voting maps are officially signed into law. And the U.S. Senate race finally has a Republican challenger.
I’m Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here & Now,” new maps and a new Senate candidate has the state revving up for the November elections. The State of The Tribes address looks at victories and challenges ahead for 11 tribal nations in Wisconsin. What early absentee ballot counting would mean for communities of all sizes. And how artificial intelligence could be used in political ads. It’s “Here & Now” for February 23.

Announcer:
Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:
Wisconsin electoral politics are changing course because as of this week, there are new voting district maps. Senior political reporter Zac Schultz explains the implications.

Zac Schultz:
With the stroke of a pen, Governor Tony Evers ended the future of a Republican supermajority in the Legislature and gave Democrats a path back to the majority.

Tony Evers:
This will become Act 94.

Zac Schultz:
With the threat of a new liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court choosing maps even more favorable to Democrats, Republicans in the Legislature took the governor at his word when he said he would sign his proposed maps into law. Fearing a trick and a federal lawsuit, Democrats in the Assembly and Senate largely voted against the maps and some encouraged the governor to veto his own maps and wait for the Supreme Court. Evers says he talked with those with concerns but never considered a veto.

Tony Evers:
Last week, Republicans passed the maps I submitted to the Wisconsin Supreme Court and those are the exact maps before me today. They’re my maps, nothing more and nothing less. To me, the decision to enact these maps boils down to this: I made a promise to the people of Wisconsin that I would always try to do the right thing and keeping that promise to me matters most, even if members of my own party disagree with me.

Zac Schultz:
After the signing, Democrats celebrated the new maps but Republicans promised they would continue to win legislative majorities in the fall.

Tony Evers:
Under these maps, we’ll see more competitive contested races by making it more likely the legislative districts will flip from one party’s control to another when voters’ preferences change. Every vote matters and that’s also good for democracy.

Tim Cullen:
I was a hundred percent, if not more, that the governor should do what he did. I’m really proud of him.

Zac Schultz:
Tim Cullen is a former Democratic state senator and long ago served in Republican Governor Tommy Thompson’s administration. He remembers the days when bipartisanship was the norm and says fair maps will help bring that era back.

Tim Cullen:
It just does one simple thing: it means the votes in November matter again. All that’s mattered for the last 13 years is the primary votes and how do you avoid a primary? You stick with your base, Democrats and Republicans. What does that mean? You don’t work together. If you work together, you get called a compromiser or a moderate or something, you will get a primary.

Zac Schultz:
Most analysis of the new map shows while Democrats have a chance at winning the Assembly this fall, it will likely take four years to have a shot at the state Senate simply because only half the seats are up each election. But Evers says a more balanced Legislature could mean it might be possible to find compromise on issues like expanding Medicaid.

Tony Evers:
I have to believe there is at least one Republican in the House or the Senate that agrees with us on that and then maybe we can find a solution.

Zac Schultz:
Reporting from Madison, I’m Zac Schultz for “Here & Now.”

Frederica Freyberg:
Next up, the state Supreme Court consideration of a lawsuit over congressional maps. Meanwhile, in the statewide election for U.S. Senate, Republican candidate Eric Hovde announced his run this week. “Here & Now” reporter Steven Potter has more on that race.

Steven Potter:
Republican and millionaire real estate developer Eric Hovde says there are a number of reasons he’s running for the U.S. Senate.

Eric Hovde:
I promise you I’m going to go after in fixing our economic issues. We have to secure our southern border, and immediately, and end the humanitarian crisis that is going on right now today.

Steven Potter:
A 59-year-old Madison native, Hovde is looking to unseat Democratic U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin who is seeking her third term in office. This isn’t the first time Hovde has challenged Baldwin. He ran for the same seat back in 2012 but lost in the primary election. Baldwin calls him an outsider.

Tammy Baldwin:
California bank owner, multimillionaire is going to enter the race. It seems to be the playbook these days. So, you know, you hear a lot of talk about him in Washington, D.C. Not as much here in Wisconsin.

Steven Potter:
Nationally, this race is one to watch as Democrats try to hold onto a very thin majority in the Senate. For “Here & Now,” I’m Steven Potter.

Frederica Freyberg:
Also this week at the Capitol, the State of The Tribes address was delivered before the full Legislature. Forest County Potawatomi Chairman James Crawford described issues impacting all tribes like access to nutritious food, affordable housing, good jobs and healthcare.

James Crawford:
The recognition of tribal sovereignty is one of the most important tenets of native peoples. Tribes have been governing how their own people live, act and rule for countless generations. And each tribe in Wisconsin is its own sovereign nation and has its own distinct challenges and opportunities. Tribal sovereignty is not something we have been granted; but is something we have always inherently held. This inherent sovereignty is what tribes continuously work to preserve, protect and enhance for our future generations. The perspectives brought by Wisconsin tribes in collaboration with the state have accomplished positive things for all of us. For example, healthcare. Healthcare is one of the most important and costly services that tribal governments provide to both their people and the greater community. And because of tribal health centers — and because tribal health centers serve large populations that are Medicaid eligible, their continued operation is essential.

Frederica Freyberg:
Tribal nations in Wisconsin want to build an adolescent recovery and wellness center in Oneida County about an hour north of Wausau. The Youth Recovery Center would be a 36-bed residential facility for teens aged 13 to 17 with substance abuse disorder. Board members of the town of Cashen where it would be located oppose it, citing safety and reduced property values, among other concerns. The recovery center has been on hold because of local government opposition. Meanwhile, the opioid crisis has overtaken Native American communities in Wisconsin where overdose deaths are three times the state rate. The Menominee tribal chair saying our nation is in crisis. The Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council is building the center. We sat down with its CEO, Brian BainBridge, following the State of The Tribes address. So describe for us what that opioid crisis looks like among tribal nations in Wisconsin.

Brian BainBridge:
Well, the opioid crisis looks like any other community throughout Wisconsin, not just tribal. As we move forward and the tribes are seeing the crisis and needing to react, we need to make sure that we have a place, safe place, safe space where we can have an opportunity to save our kids, save other people’s kids throughout the whole state. And so as this facility is planned, you know, over 20 years in the making, the thought and moving forward and the need, you know, it’s — it’s really about, you know, making sure someone has a good place to go and, you know, it’s — with just about any type of trauma or incident, there’s a background, there’s a story to that, for each individual. We need to have a place where they’re comfortable telling that story in order to move them forward.

Frederica Freyberg:
What do you think about the concerns on the part of the local government?

Brian BainBridge:
Well, I respect their concern, and even through — from the beginning after we purchased the — the tribes purchased the land, that was the first thing I did was reach out to the local government, the town board and said, hey, I want to be a good neighbor. I would like to share what we’re planning on doing here with this project and even invited the chair to my office. She showed up and we talked about it. I had conceptual drawings of the facility because there was some fears of thinking it was a detention center or a juvenile prison-type setting and the purpose isn’t that. It’s for individuals that really want to be in a place and get to a place of wellness. And it’s not meant to be institutional, because that’s not conducive to healing. You know, the stigma is already there and when someone is going through it, having a problem with substance use or even mental health, we really want to de-stigmatize that and keep those elements out of the property. So, you know, moving things forward and explaining just that, too, when we talk about concerns of the local government of making sure they have that understanding of really what the project is and the efforts that the tribes are putting forth, not only for our tribal member children and families, but for non-tribal as well. If there’s a need and it’s only 36-bed with very limited resources and facilities within the state, we want to make sure if there’s — if there’s a place and someone has a need, no matter who you are or where you come from, that we’re going to try to help. And we want to do that in a way to really set the gold standard.

Frederica Freyberg:
Did it surprise you, the opposition?

Brian BainBridge:
It did a little bit, but with anything, any new development, without all the information, you know, people speculate and that goes through the community, and I wanted to get ahead of that. We’re actually going to do things as we develop to bring resources to the community with upgraded broadband. We’ll need that for our facility. Upgrades in the power. And upgrading the roads. Those are all things that benefit everybody within that township, that community.

Frederica Freyberg:
When a child comes out of this recovery and wellness center, what is the hope for that person?

Brian BainBridge:
The most important part is to acknowledge the person and let them know it’s okay to be vulnerable for a second but get past that vulnerable point to be able to function and do good. And as we’re working with them inside the facility, we’re also preparing for that true wrap-around service. So when I say, what is our hope, you know, that is truly what we hope for, is to give a person an opportunity to define their own success and what that means.

Frederica Freyberg:
In more election news, they should just count their ballots faster. That’s the sentiment of the Wisconsin senate majority leader in explaining how his chamber does not have the votes to pass a bill that would allow municipalities to count absentee ballots the day before an election and require it in Milwaukee, especially since the pandemic, early absentee voting has been on the rise, leaving election clerks sometimes swamped with opening envelopes well into the night. That can cause swings in results like what happened in 2020 when Donald Trump falsely claimed vote dumping in Milwaukee. For an election clerk’s take on this, we turn to Lisa Tollefson in Rock County. Thanks very much for being here.

Lisa Tollefson:
Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:
What kind of increases have you seen in absentee voting?

Lisa Tollefson:
So in 2020, we had over 60% of our population voted absentee. Prior to that, it was 20 to 25%. It has not gone down to that rate of 20, 25%. I’m expecting to see a lot more in this coming up election and in November. We might not reach 60%, but it’s going to be definitely higher than in the past.

Frederica Freyberg:
So what do those kinds of numbers mean on Election Day as far as counting the results?

Lisa Tollefson:
So absentee ballots take a lot more time to process. You’re having two people review everything. You have to open it, you have to log it. There’s a whole process that’s an extra step throughout, and all of that takes time, and you don’t want anyone to rush. You want them to be accurate as possible. When people come in to vote in person, they’re doing all that work for you. They sign the poll book, they give them a number, they get their ballot, they put it in the machine. On Election Day, if we’re doing your absentees, you have two people doing all that work for that voter. It takes a lot of time.

Frederica Freyberg:
And so kind of the increase and the crush of this is not just difficult for locations like Milwaukee?

Lisa Tollefson:
No. It increases for everyone. Everyone either has more poll workers on. We had municipalities buy extra machines just to handle that extra volume to make sure that they could get them processed. You can’t expect something that takes longer to do in the same amount of time that you already have. You can’t double it, double your time. It doesn’t work.

Frederica Freyberg:
What would it mean, then, to be able to be count absentee ballots the day before the election?

Lisa Tollefson:
So there’s a couple of advantages is that you can get those ballots done and you can take your time to make sure everything’s processed and double-checked. Then all you would have left to do are the remaining or just the ones that come in on Election Day and then you can focus on taking care of those voters that come into the polls on Election Day. But the results coming in sooner is the biggest plus. If you can get everything done as close to 8:00 as possible, all the results come in early, there’s not as much confusion and it’s a lot clearer as to the results before those many, many people go to bed before it’s finished on election night.

Frederica Freyberg:
Can you imagine how there would be any issue with election integrity if these ballots were counted the day before?

Lisa Tollefson:
There are so many security pieces in this, and in our whole system, we lock everything down. There are security seals. Everything has a check and balance throughout the whole system. It’s in our system now. It’s in place with this new bill. This would — I don’t see that as being the issue. Every ballot, every absentee ballot is tracked the entire way through the system, when it’s issued, when it’s mailed, when it’s received, when it’s counted. Everything is tracked.

Frederica Freyberg:
So interestingly, the Republican Party of Wisconsin is now encouraging early absentee voting, calling it banking your vote. Do you expect there to be even more interest in this for the November election because of messaging like that?

Lisa Tollefson:
Absolutely. I am definitely ordering more absentee ballots so we’re ready to go.

Frederica Freyberg:
What else are clerks dealing with this election cycle?

Lisa Tollefson:
We are looking at all different things. You’re looking at AI. What happens if we get some — that artificial intelligence could get some messaging that could be confusing. We are looking at safety protocols we’ve never looked at before to make sure everything is safe for our voters and our poll workers. There’s a lot of things in the background we are prepping for to make sure we’re ready.

Frederica Freyberg:
What are those kind of safety protocols that you’ve never done before that you’re now doing?

Lisa Tollefson:
Lots of contingency plans. Lots of contingency plans. And some of them, I don’t like to talk about so everyone knows what they are, but making sure that if we need to move, if we need to secure something differently, there’s — there’s pieces there that we are definitely prepping for to make sure we’re ready.

Frederica Freyberg:
What about staffing? Is that an issue? I mean, it’s an issue for everyone everywhere. Right? But is it an issue for you and other clerks?

Lisa Tollefson:
I don’t see it right now, but I have a feeling as we go closer to November and we see a lot more absentee ballots, we’re going to need more staff. And as in everywhere, we’re having trouble hiring. Poll workers — we need more people to step forward to help. So anyone who can, think about it, become a poll worker. More absentees means more work, more checks and balances that need to go through every one of those absentee ballots.

Frederica Freyberg:
All right. Well, we wish you and others luck. Lisa Tollefson, thanks very much.

Lisa Tollefson:
Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:
Is that the candidate’s actual voice and image on the air or on-line, or one generated by artificial intelligence in an effort to deceive voters? This election season, it could be hard to tell. The recent release of OpenAI’s latest text-to-video feature called Sora makes hyper realistic yet complex artificially generated videos. The images are potentially impossible to discern as fake. That’s why states including Wisconsin are moving to enact laws around the use of AI in campaigns. A bill moving quickly through the Legislature would require campaign ads that contain synthetic media, or audio or video content substantially produced by means of generative artificial intelligence to include a disclaimer. That’s a good thing, according to Edgar Lin, Wisconsin policy strategist and an attorney with the nonprofit, non-partisan Protect Democracy. He joins us now. Thanks very much for being here.

Edgar Lin:
Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:
So are there examples that we’ve already seen out there that are artificial intelligence-generated campaign materials?

Edgar Lin:
Yes. The U.S. election season is only in the midst of its primaries and already we have examples of political parties, campaigns and at least one super PAC using AI-generated content in ads, campaign videos and voter outreach. I’ll give you two examples. Last spring, the Republican National Committee responded to President Biden’s re-election campaign announcement with an AI-generated video illustrating the country’s projected future during a second Biden term. The other example that I can give is at the end of last year, Shamaine Daniels, a Democratic congressional candidate in Pennsylvania, launched an interactive, AI-powered political campaign caller for voter outreach. So they are being used. What we’re seeing in the U.S. is consistent with the proliferation of AI-generated content in elections around the world. Elections in Slovakia, Argentina last year, most recently Taiwan and Indonesia.

Frederica Freyberg:
Are they always used deceptively?

Edgar Lin:
Not necessarily. That will depend on the ad itself.

Frederica Freyberg:
So who is making this stuff?

Edgar Lin:
Well, I think — there’s a lot of technology platforms that are creating these types of artificial intelligence technology and there’s a list of them that I think people generally hear about them. There’s ChatGPT, there’s — there’s a whole slate of them.

Frederica Freyberg:
Are they easy or hard to spot for the average person?

Edgar Lin:
Heh. This is a great question. It depends. Now, I will say that it’s an arms race in terms of spotting, in terms of the technology. The bottom line is detection capabilities are developing, but they are and never will keep up with the increased sophistication and realism of AI-generated content. As you’ve seen, we’ve seen photos from maybe last year where perhaps the fingers are a little unusual. But today, that technology has already increased capabilities to a level that we — what we have today is different from last year.

Frederica Freyberg:
So how likely is it that synthetic media would deceive voters?

Edgar Lin:
You know, it is likely, and this is something that we are not used to because historically, we trust what we see and we trust what we hear. That’s video and audio. In today’s world as the technology ramps up at an increasing speed, the detection is very hard and so with that, the likelihood of deception is very possible.

Frederica Freyberg:
So at the very least, how important is it, in your mind, that there’s a disclosure that says the audio or video contains content generated by AI?

Edgar Lin:
You know, it is incredibly important. Voters should anticipate they may encounter AI-generated content related to the election and should not just rely on their senses alone to identify what’s human-generated versus what’s AI-generated. So it is incredibly important in this — but I’ll just say that there is a — this is a portfolio of tools. There is not one silver bullet. Disclosure is one. Detection, you know, journalistic integrity, all these are a host of tools that could be helpful for people viewing these ads.

Frederica Freyberg:
How could this synthetic or AI-generated media cause even more mistrust in elections than already exists?

Edgar Lin:
That’s a great question. So the threats to our democracy, the misinformation, the playbook that people use, they’re still the same. The difference is that AI makes things bigger, faster and stronger. It’s about the accessibility to the public, because you can imagine in the past, we watch movies. There are special effects and they’re very good, but that’s limited to people who can make those. Even if you think of Photoshopping, right? That’s limited to people who know how to use Photoshop well. But with synthetic media, with AI-generated content, now that door has been opened for the public to use and so it’s about accessibility to these awesome technologies.

Frederica Freyberg:
It’s pretty scary stuff. Edgar Lin, thanks very much.

Edgar Lin:
Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:
For more on this and other issues facing Wisconsin, visit our website at PBSwisconsin.org and then click on the news tab. That’s our program for tonight. I’m Frederica Freyberg. Have a good weekend.

Announcer:
Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.