Here & Now

UW-Madison Prof. On Elections Comm. Turnover

Frederica Freyberg:

Taking a closer look at the upheaval in the state Ethics and Elections Commissions now with UW-Madison Political Science Professor and elections expert Barry Burden. Thanks for being here.

Barry Burden:

Glad to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:

When you see what’s happening with the administrator position at the state Elections Commission, what’s your reaction?

Barry Burden:

Well, it’s alarming. This is a commission that was designed to have some independence from the state legislature, to foster stability and competence and expertise. Mike Haas, who’s now I guess the outgoing administrator there, has been in that role for a couple of years and has been involved with state elections, someone I think is trusted by the clerks around the state and by election officials in other states in fact. To me it’s worrisome that the state legislature is essentially meddling in a personnel matter in that agency.

Frederica Freyberg:

Well, how might this upheaval, though, as we’ve described, affect the administration of elections as we come into this election cycle?

Barry Burden:

The timing is not great. Here we are at the beginning of a long election season. We have elections coming up next month in February, again in April, again in the fall with the primary and with the general election in November. Wisconsin is a state where elections are complicated. Every city, town and village in the state has its own clerk which runs elections. That’s over 1,850 individual election officials, plus the 72 county clerks. They really depend on the state Elections Commission to be a source of information, a place to get resources and help, with the design of ballots, with purchasing of machines, with issues and implementation of the voter ID law or other complications. The timing is just not good in terms of thinking about the elections that are on the table.

Frederica Freyberg:

The chair of the commission says administrator Michael Haas is a nationally-recognized, as you pointed to, expert in elections and cybersecurity and the commission’s only staff member with this kind of security clearance from the Department of Homeland Security. How concerning is his departure, given that, in light of what the chair also calls online security threats from foreign governments and non-state hackers?

Barry Burden:

We know that the Russian government tried to infiltrate voter registration systems in a number of states. They apparently tried to do that in Wisconsin, unsuccessfully. They may have actually targeted the wrong agency. But there were attempts there and there’s still an interest on the part of the Russian government and other actors to do that. Officials here, including Mike Haas, were briefed by federal officials about that in the lead up to the election and since then. And Haas has gotten this special clearance to be involved in those discussions at a higher level of security. If he’s gone, there’s then no one available in the state to have those conversations. I suppose someone else, maybe a replacement administrator, could get those clearances, but you’d have to find someone you trust, who’s going to be a stable force at the top of the agency. Right now stability is not the thing that is happening.

Frederica Freyberg:

You just described the ongoing threats, but how real are those?

Barry Burden:

Oh, I think they’re quite real. The intelligence community has said the Russian government is interested in meddling in American elections, maybe favoring one side, but mostly just trying to cause some turmoil. A lot of these systems are online and they’re attempting to get access. In a couple of states it looks like they actually were able to see the files and download files. That happened in Illinois. I think also in Arizona. We have a new online voter registration system that just went into effect at the beginning of this year, so that’s a new phase of voter registration in Wisconsin that has an online component that I think needs to be monitored this year. There are just a lot of things to watch. And having somebody at the helm who understands those issues and has been in the conversations with federal intelligence officials would be really helpful.

Frederica Freyberg:

Have you as an expert in this world reached out to anyone who’s in the midst of making these kinds of personnel decisions in the state of Wisconsin?

Barry Burden:

I've not. I’ve been watching the back and forth essentially in the public between commissioners, the six, three Democrats, three Republicans, state senators who have been at least on the Republican side critical of Haas and others who had served in the GAB before these commissions were created. And I think we’re all watching from the outside that showdown go down and to see what the legal status of the commissioners is in terms of picking a new administrator.

Frederica Freyberg:

Is this making a buzz nationally among experts like yourself?

Barry Burden:

It is, in part because it’s surprising. Wisconsin had been a state that had been held up as a model of good government when it comes to elections. Most states have a partisan elected secretary of state who runs elections. That’s true in probably over 40 states. Some states have also boards of elections, but those can have a partisan taint as well. Both the Government Accountability Board and these commissions that followed afterward are either nonpartisan or bipartisan, had been viewed around the country as a model for how to run elections that emphasize expertise, continuity and independence in a way that other states have not.

Frederica Freyberg:

Given, though, that now it seems to be that politics have kind of been inserted and inflamed in the midst of all of this, in your mind would there be a better way to run and regulate elections in Wisconsin?

Barry Burden:

Well, there’s no ideal way. I don’t know if we created a system from scratch today we would decide every town and village should have its own clerk for example. Or that we would design the ballots the way we do. There are a lot of things that have just crept up as part of our history and I think voters and election officials have become used to them and it would be difficult to change. But having some sort of nonpartisan competent agency at the top of this hierarchy that can serve the clerks around the state, that is not subject to the daily whims of the state legislature, whether it’s controlled by Republicans or Democrats, that has its own budget authority, so it doesn’t depend on making those legislators happy in order to fund the next budget would be really helpful.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. We leave it there. Barry Burden, thanks very much.

Barry Burden:

Glad I could be here.