Here & Now

Noon Wednesday with guest Scott McDonell

Marisa Wojcik:

Welcome to Noon Wednesday. I’m Marisa Wojcik a multimedia journalist with Here & Now on Wisconsin Public Television. So you may have heard, the idea has been floated that lawmakers want to move the date of the next presidential primary election which is set for 2020 in the spring. And there has been some opposition to this especially from election clerks. So joining us today is Scott McDonell. He’s the Dane County clerk, and he’s here to tell us a little bit about why he wrote a letter to lawmakers saying I don’t think this is a good idea. Thanks so much for joining us.

Scott McDonell:

Oh, thanks for having me.

Marisa Wojcik:

Let’s start with, how are the elections currently scheduled? That no changes have happened yet, and then what are the proposed changes?

Scott McDonell:

So when we have a presidential preference primary, they choose who’s going to be the Democratic nominee for president, or the Republican nominee for president. That occurs in the spring prior to the fall election. And it has been synced up with the spring primary for the last several cycles. Before that it was on the February primary but it was always on an existing election date in the spring. One, to maximize turnout, but also to simplify the process of voters coming to the polls, it’s already set up to run that.

Marisa Wojcik:

And can you give a little bit of an idea of what the time frame would look like, the number of elections in the number of months.

Scott McDonell:

Well the proposal would be that there would be a February primary for the spring ballot. So those would be mostly local races, non-partisan races. And then what the proposal would be there would be an election for the presidential primary sometime in March, we’re not clear when. And then again in April there would be another election. So one in each month, that would be the general election for the non-partisan local races. So that’s what they’re proposing. We don’t know, we haven’t seen a draft of the bill, I don’t know any of the specifics but the concern of the clerks, and I mean across the state, Waukesha, Brown, Ashland, you name it, Fond du Lac, you name it, the universal concern is that we’re not sure how we would actually pull off having overlapping elections. Which essentially, I know people think there’s an election day and that’s it. But you have to have absentees go out, you have to design the ballots, you have to have poll workers, you have to have trainings. All sorts of things go into making sure an election turns out properly, that there aren’t problems with it. And that takes time and we struggle right now honestly, just with the normal February to April cycle. If you think about the fall election, there’s and August election, then there’s two months before November. February, there’s one month, so already we have half the window to be able to turn around the work that we need to do. And putting one in between is kind of a recipe for disaster.

Marisa Wojcik:

So part of the justification for wanting to do this is concern over mixing non-partisan elections with partisan elections. As a county clerk is this something that you’ve seen as an issue having partisan and non-partisan elections on the same ballot, is that confusing for people?

Scott McDonell:

It hasn’t been a problem before, we’ve run it this way for as long as I can remember, it’s been on that same ballot, the software can handle it easily. So what’s confusing is when people think, trying to make them come back and back and back. A good example of what problems could arise from this, people will be receiving absentee ballots at the same time. I mean there might be a week or so delay but they might get two ballots. They could return it. I’m just trying to figure out what we would do if someone tried to put both of their ballots back in one envelope and mail it back. I don’t, which one do we count? Which one don’t we count? I mean it would start to look like Florida if we don’t step back and think about how this would play out. If there were a recount for the presidential primary that would tie up all of our resources, our election media. I mean we don’t have duplicative equipment lying around that we can just use. It could grind the presidential or the April election to a halt.

Marisa Wojcik:

Some of the figures, there’s no official number as to how much it would cost, but there’s some figures of previous spring primary elections running around six or $7 million, does that sound accurate? I mean that’s a lot, are poll workers being paid, are they volunteer? Where is that money, what kind of resources are going into all of the things,

Scott McDonell:

Yeah, no, it would–

Marisa Wojcik:

needed?

Scott McDonell:

Definitely be six or $7 million in that range. A lot of the expenses for elections are sunk, we have already bought the equipment, the scanners. We’re not counting that. All we’re counting is the cost of poll workers, the cost of producing the ballots, mail, all of those associated costs that go into any election that are not sunk costs, and that would be six, $7 million. I guess legislature doesn’t care since that would be borne by local property taxpayers not them. But we don’t have that budgeted.

Marisa Wojcik:

In your letter you talked about the large demands of a county like Dane County. There are 200 tabulators each election, designing the ballot, coding the machine. Is that the same for a rural area, what are the kind of squeezes of demands and resources if you’re in a large county or in a county with a large population versus a county with a small population?

Scott McDonell:

Well it would be hard on everybody and that’s why the clerks across the state, rural, urban, republican, democratic, they’ve all opposed this. For a large county we tend to do more of the work in-house. Some of the smaller counties would outsource that maybe to the vendor. The primary vendor in Wisconsin is called ES&S. I don’t know what would happen if ES&S suddenly had this huge demand on them all at once, which is what would likely happen. I haven’t talked to them about that. But for counties that do this stuff in-house, it becomes a real strain. And we just don’t have the media. And then part of what happens is, the scanners take images of every ballot. Which is a great thing because we can audit using that, we can recreate if something, a town hall burned down. I can recreate the election. But I have to download those images, that takes days. I mean each thing, the window is so tight especially February to April. I’m just struggling, and I know the other clerks are trying to struggle how we would turn it around for March.

Marisa Wojcik:

Is there a higher likelihood of inaccuracies and issues around that if things are overlapping?

Scott McDonell:

Well there would be tremendous voter confusion. I think voters would be confused. What election am I coming to, is this the election for local races, why isn’t it on there? There’d be a lot of frustration on that end of it. There could be confusion about registration so, you have to live in the state 10 days. When you’re doing absentee ballots, this is going to be different even though they’re going to have two different absentee ballots arriving at their home if they’ve requested that. So I picture there, and if it’s a close election this is going to matter. You’ve seen it around the country when you have maybe two or 300 examples of this that really matters in a close election. And I anticipate that would happen for sure.

Marisa Wojcik:

Has Wisconsin seen something like this before? Have we had to logistically plan for elections quite this close together?

Scott McDonell:

I’ve never seen it and I’ve been, either I’ve been clerk or I’ve been on the County Board. And so I’ve been paying attention to elections for 30 years and I’ve never seen three elections in a row, and state wide. I mean I just, I can’t. So we’re all struggling with this and we’re hoping the legislature will listen. And if they need to move the date there are dates where this logistics would not cause the same problem. But we haven’t heard from them at all.

Marisa Wojcik:

Yeah moving the date, it there other alternative solutions that aren’t putting three elections in three months but is still allowing the presidential primary to be, and a non-partisan election and partisan elections be on their own track?

Scott McDonell:

Well it used to be in February. So they moved it from February to April, so February would be an illogical time. You could do it a couple months after April. We don’t have a fall election this year, oh next year. But in 2020 you would have a fall, I keep thinking it’s 2019. But in 2020 there’d be one, but you could do one in June. Personally none of this came up from any of these people two years ago when the Republican presidential preference was going on. I didn’t hear a word about it. What I did hear, when the special elections were forced by a judge recently a few months ago for Keith Ripp’s district and Lasee’s district, that Republican leadership didn’t want to waste the money on an election. Exact same thing here except in reverse. So suddenly they don’t mind spending $7 million on an election that’s unnecessary.

Marisa Wojcik:

It’s largely Republicans that are proposing this?

Scott McDonell:

I think it’s only Republicans.

Marisa Wojcik:

Is any of this, for you and your opposition to it, is any of it political? Or is it purely from a logistical standpoint? And it sounds like you’ve been speaking to other county clerks around the state. Are there any county clerks that you’ve talked to that are okay with it, or they’re for it?

Scott McDonell:

I have not talked to a single county clerk who’s okay with it. I’ve talked to my republican counterparts across the state they’re equally outraged. So for us this is just about good elections and having that integrity. You know when the attorney general declined to request a recount even though he could, he cited the fact that he believed in our system that it worked, that the votes were counted accurately. We’d like to hold on to that. And having one election three months in a row would put that in jeopardy.

Marisa Wojcik:

All right, well Scott thanks so much for joining us and telling us little bit more of the backend of how this all works.

Scott McDonell:

Thanks for having me.

Marisa Wojcik:

If you want to see more from Here & Now and Wisconsin Public Television, visit wpt.org and thanks so much for joining us on Noon Wednesday.