Here & Now

Local Clerks and Trust in the Voting Process

Frederica Freyberg:

Election clerks across Wisconsin are gearing up despite current uncertainty over legislative district boundaries. And they have taken to the airwaves with an ad campaign featuring local election clerks to impress upon state voters they can trust how elections are run in the state.

Cindi:

Your friend is an election official.

Lisa:

Your family member is a poll worker.

Cindi:

We trust our local elections because our friends, families, and neighbors run them.

Ellen:

We trust our elections because we trust them.

Frederica Freyberg:

Local government associations partnered to create the ad following two years of distrust in the electoral process by unfounded allegations of widespread fraud. The League of Wisconsin Municipalities sponsored the spot whose executive director is Jerry Deschane. He joins us now. Thanks very much for being here.

Jerry Deschane:

Thank you for inviting me, happy to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:

Why did you feel it was needed to air ads featuring local clerks to instill trust in our elections?

Jerry Deschane:

Well, Frederica, two fundamental reasons. The first one is people — a lot of questions are being raised about elections, and people’s faith is being shaken, if you will. And we wanted to start from the reminder of hey, folks, you can trust elections, primarily because you know who is running them. For the most part, these are people that you recognize, you have seen in the grocery store. So we wanted to start with that message that hey, look, you know these people, you know you can trust these people. They are your neighbors. The second reason to be perfectly selfish about it is clerks are under a lot of pressure and in this job market there are a lot of things they could do that don’t come with the same pressures as this, so we wanted to give them an atta boy, and say look, we know you are doing a good job, keep it up.

Frederica Freyberg:

What are examples of what clerks have been facing from the public after the high-profile investigations into the 2020 election for the last two years?

Jerry Deschane:

Well, I think we have all seen news accounts. There have been some death threats. On a more day to day basis, we hear from clerks all over the state who are getting all sorts of accusations thrown at them at the local level that frankly they just never saw coming, from people that they know. And what we want to say to people is, look, it’s ok to have questions, but the best source of information is that clerk. Go and talk to him, go and talk to her, and get your own concerns resolved at the local level and frankly we’re pretty confidence if more people would do that, there would be fewer questions out there.

Frederica Freyberg:

On top of that, what kind of pressures are clerks facing when courts make last minute changes to things like drop boxes, absentee ballots and district boundaries?

Jerry Deschane:

I don’t think anything is going to be quite as crazy as the pandemic was, to be honest with you, when they had to reinvent an election on, what was that, about four weeks’ notice. But nonetheless, last minute changes are probably the worst thing you want do because the clerk has to train poll workers. They have to be certified, you know, we have to be sure of the law, which is not all that black and white these days. So we ask legislators. We ask a lot of policy makers, go ahead and debate the issues, we think it’s fundamentally healthy, but try to time that so you are not doing it right up against an election because frankly it can be chaotic and as you know, when the public is confused, there’s a last minute change, that in itself will breed distrust, which should be the opposite of what we’re trying to do.

Frederica Freyberg:

Are the number of local election workers waning in the midst of all of this?

Jerry Deschane:

The numbers are not waning because — well, we need to have at least 1832 of them. That’s how many towns, villages and cities there are in Wisconsin. Every one of them has to have an election clerk who is trained and certified. What is happening is the great retirement. Clerks are walking. I can’t quantify it for you with statistics but anecdotally, we are getting more than a few clerks saying I just don’t need these headaches, and you know, there will be new people coming in, that’s great, but we are losing a lot of institutional knowledge, and that’s a concern, too.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Jerry Deschane, thank you very much for joining us and talking with us about this.

Jerry Deschane:

Happy to talk about it. Thank you.