It’s often said that America is as politically divided as it has ever been. This week’s show explores the data from two different groups that study American attitudes. What they discovered challenges some common assumptions about the current state of US politics, and offers a sense of context missing from noisy ‘us versus them’ type arguments.
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Election integrity: How Georgia ensures safe and secure voting
Oct 18, 2024
While elections work differently depending on where you live, all states have security measures to ensure the integrity of every vote. With that in mind, The Fulcrum presents a six-part series on how elections work in swing states. Created by Issue One, these state summaries focus on each state's election process from registration to certification.
Our freedom to vote in fair and secure elections is the foundation of our system of self- governance established under the U.S. Constitution. As citizens, we have a voice that many people around the world do not.
Because the majority of elections are run at a local level, the voting experience can be very different depending on where a voter lives, but all states, including Georgia, have verification processes in place before, during, and after votes are cast to ensure the integrity of the election. Whether you cast your ballot in-person or by mail, early or on Election Day, your vote counts.
Here is what you need to know about how elections work in Georgia to make sure that your vote is kept safe and secure and is counted with integrity.
Registration
To ensure their eligibility, all voters must register to vote in order to cast a ballot.
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- The voter registration deadline in Georgia is October 7, 2024.
- You can register online, by mail, or in-person.
- For more information: https://sos.ga.gov/how-to-guide/how-guide-registering-vote
Ways to vote
Once registered, a voter in Georgia may either vote in-person or through an absentee ballot. Both options have transparent processes to ensure ballots are kept secure and counted accurately.
Vote with mail-in absentee ballot:
- Voters may request an absentee ballot anytime between August 19, 2024 and October 25, 2024
- Valid absentee ballots must be received no later than 7:00 PM on Election Day to be counted.
- For more information about voting absentee, see here for details: https://sos.ga.gov/sites/default/files/forms/ Absentee_Voting_In_Georgia_Rev_3-30-22.pdf
Vote early in-person:
- Early, or “advance” voting, starts October 15, 2024 and ends on November 1, 2024 the Friday before the election. Voting occurs at the location established by the County Recorder’s office.
- Voters must bring a valid photo ID to vote early in-person. See here for details: https://sos.ga.gov/page/ georgia-voter-identification-requirements
Vote in-person on Election Day:
- Election Day is Tuesday, November 5, 2024. Polls are open from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM.
- Voters must bring a valid photo ID to vote on Election Day. See here for details: https://sos.ga.gov/page/ georgia-voter-identification-requirements
- Find more information about voting on Election Day: https://georgia.gov/vote-in-person-election-day
There are also options for military and overseas voting, more information is available here: https://sos.ga.gov/ page/military-and-overseas-voting
Track your ballot: https://mvp.sos.ga.gov/s/
Securely counting every ballot during the voting period
Before, during, and after ballots are cast, Georgia has procedures to review and verify election processes. Counting of ballots at tabulating centers and precincts, post-election audits and recounts are open to the public, poll watchers, and nonpartisan observers.
- Georgia is one of 37 states that require a traditional post-election tabulation audit, involving auditable paper ballots.
- All voting equipment in Georgia must meet rigorous security standards and can be audited.
- Voting systems are never connected to internet-facing networks. Every county inspects and tests voting equipment before an election.
- Absentee ballots may only be counted once the identity of the voter is verified. Absentee ballot return envelopes are printed with an oath which must be signed by the voter. A voter must also provide the number of their driver’s license or identification card. Election officials confirm the oath was signed and compare the voter’s driver’s license number or state identification card number to the voter’s registration information. Ballots with missing information or information that does not conform to the voter’s record are rejected.
Polls close and reporting begins
- Counties typically begin reporting unofficial election results shortly after polls close. Counting absentee ballots takes extra time since they require a signature verification process to ensure the integrity of every vote. No reported results are considered final until the election is certified.
- Be patient for results and know news media reports are only projections and not official.
Certifying the election
- The governing body conducting the election must meet to verify that the initial results reported in each precinct or election district are accurate. Final results are only declared after election officials verify the count, checking for accuracy and resolving any error. During this process, known as canvassing, election officials count every eligible ballot cast, check for duplicates, verify voter status, and give voters a chance to rectify mistakes that might otherwise disqualify their ballot.
- County officials canvass local election returns and transmit results to the Secretary of State no later than November 12, 2024.
- The Secretary of State must canvass and certify election results no later than November 22, 2024. https://sos. ga.gov/page/election-calendar-and-events
- In close elections, a candidate can request a state-funded recount if the margin of victory is less than or equal to 0.5%. The request has to be made within two business days of the results being certified. https://georgia.gov/ election-recount-rules-georgia
Meeting of the Electoral College
- Georgia’s slate of electors meet on December 17, 2024 to send their certified votes for president and vice president to Congress.
Resource
For more information on how elections work in Georgia, visit the Elections Division of the Secretary of State: https://sos.ga.gov/elections-division-georgia-secretary-states-office
For additional national and other state-by-state information, go to https://www.howelectionswork.org/
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The world depends on a strong American democracy
Oct 17, 2024
Piccone is an advisor to the Club de Madrid, a forum of democratic former presidents and prime ministers from over 70 countries, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Tannon, a partners at DLA piper, is the board chair of the Club of Madrid Foundation.
The United States, as the world’s oldest and wealthiest democracy, continues to inspire people around the world who strive for greater freedom and prosperity. For that to continue, however, the United States must overcome its increasing polarization and dangerous slide toward populist nationalism.
As the American people face this pivotal election, we can revitalize the fundamental values of America’s founding — that all humans are born free and equal in dignity with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These are the same principles now reflected in constitutions and treaties across the planet. Unfortunately, some political candidates are behaving in ways that fall far from this ideal, stoking greater division and cynicism.
If voters fail the stress test up and down November’s ballot, democracy in the United States and around the world will suffer. Tyrants from Moscow to Tehran will rejoice.
Causes for concern
As they have for centuries, people fleeing repression and poverty flock to the United States in search of a better life. Indeed, the U.S. economy, powered by dynamic entrepreneurs, the rule of law, technological breakthroughs and an influx of ambitious immigrants continues to surprise experts with its resilience and strength.
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Yet our high levels of inequality and discrimination, foundering educational systems, polarizing social media, and slow and expensive legal processes signal weakness and stagnation. Rather than forging consensus on tackling these issues, politicians and malicious foreign actors exploit these weaknesses.
The alarming levels of dysfunction within the U.S. political system are of even greater concern. The list of structural defects impairing the U.S. model is long, from partisan gerrymandering and election administration to thinly regulated torrents of campaign money to factional control of legislative processes, such as the filibuster. It is not surprising, therefore, to see the United States backsliding on multiple indicators of political rights and rule of law compared to other countries.
Beyond these longer-term challenges lies a more immediate problem — the rise of leaders determined to pursue campaigns of grievance and antagonism. The rhetoric often borders on encouraging violence, instead of offering creative solutions rooted in consensus building.
As the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection revealed, America’s critical guardrails to protect against repeated attempts to undermine and disrupt constitutional norms and the rule of law are fragile or absent. Continuing to deny the outcome of a free and fair election after multiple failed legal attempts to challenge it is particularly grievous.
One can easily imagine the situation becoming worse, depending upon the outcome of November’s election and its aftermath. Some even promise the false virtues of a “strong man” above the rule of law, a conceivable prospect in light of the recent Supreme Court decision granting breathtaking immunity for “official” presidential acts and adding a presumption that all actions of a president are official. This is fundamentally dangerous to preserving the democratic principle that no one is above the law.
Americans of all stripes, and their leaders across our society, must determine how to confront such challenges. An awakened and educated citizenry, informed by independent media and aware of these historic choices, will be essential for American democracy to stabilize and reform.
The free world relies on America
As voters weigh their decisions, they should also consider the wider global context. Authoritarianism is on the rise in every global region and at its greatest height since the end of World War II. This movement is led by two countries dug into their own narrow agendas for regional and global superiority.
Vladimir Putin has made no secret of his ambition to recover the glory of “mother Russia” by attacking Ukraine, its sovereign and democratic neighbor. If Putin succeeds, other democratic neighbors of Russia would be his next targets.
In parallel, Xi Jinping seeks to protect his and the Chinese Communist Party’s grip on power at home, as well as reshape global institutions in the party’s image. Other autocrats cling to power by rigging elections, repressing the media or eliminating opponents, as in Belarus, North Korea, Syria, Iran and Venezuela. America’s calling should be to resist such authoritarian regimes and offer the world a viable democratic alternative.
In the face of hostility from neo-authoritarians, the contest for a rules-based international order demands a committed coalition of democratic states that includes a healthy and reliable United States. The world sought by the neo-authoritarians is one riddled with human rights abuses and impunity to repress and pilfer.
In contrast, the world built by democracies is more open, more cooperative, and more inclusive of diverse ideas and cultures. It is also founded on positive societal practices within borders, in which people are encouraged to create businesses, respect the law and pursue their dreams. In short, to live in dignity, peace and freedom, to solve problems rather than to perpetuate them
The continued progress of the American experiment in self-governance will be crucial to upholding the vision of a world in which rules matter and human rights are respected, where individuals are citizens and not manipulated subjects. Without America’s political, economic and military power — and the inspiration of its example — other democracies around the world will struggle to stave off authoritarian challenges.
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Canceling votes from overseas troops? It’s in the GOP’s 2024 playbook.
Oct 17, 2024
Rosenfeld is the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
In 2000, when Democratic and Republican party lawyers fought over recounting Florida’s presidential votes, Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, declared that mail ballots from overseas military voters should be given the “benefit of the doubt” and counted, even if some arrived after Florida’s deadline.
At the time, some Democrats cringed because military voters often leaned Republican. While these votes were not decisive in the election’s outcome — the Supreme Court halted Florida’s recount, elevating Republican George W. Bush to the presidency — Lieberman’s patriotic stance is a striking contrast with today’s Donald Trump supporters.
In Pennsylvania, Trump activists andfive Republican members of Congress have separately filed lawsuits to disqualify ballots from overseas Americans, including military voters. InNorth Carolina andMichigan, the Republican National Committee and the state GOP filedsimilar suits to block the children of military families and civilians living abroad from voting.
“Military voters and their family members … must have valid IDs that can and must be matched to data in government databases to verify identity and eligibility,” the Pennsylvania activists’suit declares. “These overseas ‘covered voters’ may never have resided anywhere in the United States, let alone North Carolina,” said the RNC’s suit in that state.
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These lawsuits are among the more eyebrow-raising examples of pre-election litigation in 2024’s general election — and not just because Republicans slammed Democrats in 2000 for seeking to disqualify ballots from some military voters and civilians abroad.
These particular suits, which seek to nullify decades-oldfederal law protecting overseas voters, were mostly filed in early October after Republicans had already filed “over 120 lawsuits across 26 states,” as Reuters reported. This larger wave of partisan litigation is targeting every stage and key decision points in administering 2024’s election.
An examination of nearly 70 suits in presidential battleground statesfinds claims that are challenging the supremacy of federal law, the authority of state officials, voting technology and procedure manuals, the accuracy of voter rolls and voter registration requirements, and the minutiae of voting with, and counting, mailed-out ballots. Other suits target post-Election Day protocols, including certifying -– or not certifying — results.
While Democrats have filed dozens of suits to benefit their voting blocs, and genuinely nonpartisan groups also file suits to protect their constituents’ voting rights, 2024’s Republican efforts are more extensive, especially in presidential battleground states.
Collectively, the GOP filings are alleging that many states do not have clear laws, rules and procedures for conducting legitimate elections, which legal scholars say is not true.
“The mere fact that a lawsuit is filed hardly means it’s meritorious,” said Edward Foley, who directs Ohio State University’s election law program and specializes in election disputes. “The basic expectation is, and should be, that the election will be conducted based on the law as stated in the relevant statutes and administrative regulations — not on the basis of lawsuits.”
Other election law scholars said the Republican litigation is staking out turf to challenge close results — in the press and in court — should their candidates lose.
“I think these suits tend to serve two purposes: to promote Trumpist claims of elections being marred by fraud or irregularities, and to serve as placeholders in the event of a very close election for lawsuits that might come after the election,” said Richard Hasen, a UCLA constitutional scholar and curator of the nationally respectedElection Law Blogg.
Microtargeting election administration
The lawsuits targeting military voters, their families and civilians abroad fall under an umbrella that alleges there are masses of illegally registered and ineligible voters. These suits claim overseas voters’ identities are not sufficiently vetted; thus, their ballots should be disqualified. (Such claims of massive voter fraudhavebeen disproven.)
Strategically, the lawsuits are targeting sizable voting blocs that could matter if 2024’s results are very close — several thousand votes or less. In 2020, Pennsylvania had 35,600 overseas ballots, of which one-third were from military voters, according to federal data. In 2020, North Carolina had more than 33,000 overseas voters, of which 55 percent were non-military. Michigan had about 27,000 overseas voters; 75 percent were non-military.
Most of the suits have not yet gone before a judge, where factual evidence must be presented to prove the claims. However, Foley said that status and the volume of ongoing litigation does not mean that judges won’t act should real issues arise.
“The fact that lawsuits are pending but unresolved shouldn’t, by itself, be taken as any reason to think that the election is not being conducted pursuant to the applicable rules,” he said. “Also, judges have a good understanding of when they need to expedite lawsuits, especially last-minute lawsuits, and when they don’t.”
On the other hand, the Republican lawsuits are announcing what they will say in the press and seek in court if results are close — a playbook that includes targeting military voters.
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Meet the Faces of Democracy: Julie Wise
Oct 17, 2024
Minkin is a research associate at Issue One. Clapp is the campaign manager for election protection at Issue One. Whaley is the director of election protection at Issue One. Van Voorhis is a research intern at Issue One. Beckel is the research director for Issue One.
Julie Wise, who is not registered with any political party, has more than 24 years of election administration experience. Since 2000, she has worked for the board of elections in King County, Wash., an area that includes Seattle and is home to about 1.4 million registered voters. In 2015, she was elected the director of elections in a nonpartisan race, earning 72 percent of the vote. She was reelected in 2019 and 2023, when she garnered 84 percent of the vote.
King is the most populous county in Washington and ranks as the 13th largest in the country. In 2011, Washington became the second state in the nation, after Oregon, to conduct elections nearly exclusively by mail ballot, meaning Wise supervises election administration processes in one of the largest vote-by-mail jurisdictions in the country.
A passionate advocate for increasing voter accessibility, Wise has pioneered numerous initiatives and reforms to remove barriers to voting. She has added four non-English languages to King County’s full-service language suite, increased the number of ballot drop boxes from 10 to more than 75, and successfully advocated to the state Legislature for prepaid return postage for Washington’s vote-by-mail system. She has also testified to the Legislature about the importance of the re-enfranchisement of Washington residents convicted of a felony.
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Additionally, Wise has worked to expand voter outreach and education through the Voter Education Fund, a first-of-its-kind, public-philanthropic partnership that provides funds and training to community organizations in King County doing nonpartisan voter registration and education work in historically marginalized communities.
Over the years, she has earned numerous awards and accolades for her work, including the Washington chapter of the Korean American Coalition’s Rocky Kim Pioneer Award, the Election Center Democracy Award, the 2019 Fix Democracy First Elected Official of the Year, and the Voter Outreach Award from the Washington secretary of state in both 2017 and 2021.
Wise — an avid hiker and self-described “farm girl at heart” — has been part of Issue One’s Faces of Democracy campaign since 2023, advocating for protections for election workers and for regular, predictable and sufficient federal funding of elections.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Issue One: How did you end up in this profession?
Julie Wise: Like a lot of election administrators, I ended up in this profession by happenstance. In early 2000, I was going to university, and I needed a job. I saw the county was hiring for that upcoming presidential election. They needed help answering phones in their phone bank. I was immediately hooked.
I loved the opportunity to be of service to my community, and I also saw an opportunity to streamline a process. I am a big geek when it comes to improving processes that could be more accessible for voters and easier for election administrators.
I also fell in love with the people. This industry really attracts some of the funniest, smartest, giving people, and that really drew me to this work. I started in 2000, and 24 years later, I have not left.
IO: Which part of the election administration story, in Washington specifically, do you think is not told enough or widely understood enough?
JW: The people who run our elections are professionals. Election administrators are trained and often certified on the state and national level. It’s really important for folks to realize that election administrators are not volunteers. These are individuals that are passionate about their careers and about counting every single vote. They are nonpartisan civil servants who are drawn to this work because they want to make sure that the voices of their community are being heard.
Also, election administrators are members of the community. They are the folks that are in line at the grocery store with you. They are in PTA meetings with you. They are your mothers, your grandfathers, your brothers, your sisters. Sometimes that gets lost, that we are human beings, and that what drives us to this work is a passion for democracy. We're trained, professional, certified election administrators that really believe in democracy.
We believe democracy is at its finest when all voices are heard. Our goal is always to increase access, meaning that we're removing barriers because we want you to be able to use your voice. We don't care how you vote. We just want to make sure that you do vote and that you show up. Accurate, secure and transparent elections and at the core of what we do. I think sometimes that gets lost in the narrative, especially as of late.
IO: How are you working to bring more transparency to the world of election administration?
JW: At King County Elections, we believe in radical transparency, and how we live that is by providing ultimate access.
When a voter puts their ballot into a mailbox or into one of our secure official ballot drop boxes, there's sort of this void of not knowing what happens next to the ballot. There are so many detailed steps and processes that happen to the ballot after that critical moment of a voter submitting it that we want to make sure that people have transparency around.
If you're going to buy into the election system, you need to see and understand what that looks like. We’re removing the curtain, if you will, as to what's happening during ballot processing. We do this in many different ways.
We were one of the first counties in the country to provide web cameras to live stream our staff hard at work at each of those key processes and steps of when the ballot gets back to the elections facility. We've also provided radical transparency to our media. We welcome our media into our facility. We provide real access to all of the operations.
Another key component is our observer program, a nationally award-winning program that we're very proud of. We have a program where we provide ample opportunity for both of our major political parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, as well as a nonpartisan observer program that's run through the League of Women Voters to ensure that we've got observers here in our elections office watching the process.
Another thing that I just absolutely love is that when we designed our facilities, our headquarters for King County Elections, we thought about transparency. We have a literally transparent, Plexiglass loop where folks can come in and watch us processing ballots.
We have nothing to hide, and we want people to be able to see their elections at work. You can give yourself a self-guided tour. We've got touch screen units across that fifth-of-a-mile loop so voters can understand what's happening at each step of the process.
We also love to provide tours ourselves. These transparency measures really help make things click for people about the election process.
IO: How many voters are on the roll in your jurisdiction and what are the main challenges of a jurisdiction of that size?
JW: King County makes up about a third of the voters in Washington, at about 1.4 million registered voters, and we have some of the most diverse ZIP codes in the entire country. We have over 180 languages spoken here in King County.
One of the opportunities and challenges that we have in King County is making sure that our voters have access to the key critical election data, material and information. We provide translated materials in seven different languages. Pamphlets, ballots and any correspondence will be in their preferred language. We also provide a host of other brochures and forms and online voter registration access in dozens of languages. Making sure that folks can understand the election process is really critical, especially if English is not your first language.
It's one thing to provide translation and interpretation services. It is another thing to make sure your community knows that those options exist. One of the ways in which we have really worked with getting key information into limited-English-speaking communities is a program that is very near and dear to my heart. In 2016, after I first got elected, one of the languages we were translating ballot materials into was Vietnamese. I went and spoke to a group of about 200 Vietnamese community members, and I asked by show of hands how many knew that we provided ballot materials in their language. One person raised their hand.
King County goes above and beyond. We don't wait for the Department of Justice to tell us what languages we should provide election materials in. We go ahead, and we look at the data from school districts, courts and jails, and we go ahead and add those languages.
One of the things we started was a Voter Education Fund, where we have trusted messengers in the community. How you engage with the Somali community is different than how you engage with the Chinese community — which is different from engaging with the youth, low income or incarcerated communities. You have to have unique plans to reach and engage each of those communities in a meaningful way.
That is a hard lift for election offices to do when their core job responsibility is to run accurate, secure elections. But we must take a step back and empower the amazing community-based organizations we have that have been doing work in their respective communities for decades. King County provides $1 million every two years to community-based organizations to get out the vote, to engage with those communities, to reach out to folks to let them know we have materials in different languages, to demystify the election process and to encourage them not only to vote, but to run for office — because we know that's another key component about engaging in elections.
IO: Many people are surprised to learn the federal government doesn't routinely fund the costs of running elections. What is the price tag of running an election in your jurisdiction and where does funding for election administration come from?
JW: Consistent, reliable funding is critical to running accurate, secure and transparent elections. We're fortunate in King County, for the most part. We've got a budget of about $20 million annually, and we get about 50 percent of that as revenue from the jurisdictions that we run elections for. We have some major players, though, that do not pay for their elections, like the federal government. That impacts all of us, but especially those rural small counties that do not have consistent, reliable funding.
The federal government is the only jurisdiction in Washington state that is not footing the bill for their elections that we are running. There are a lot of grant opportunities, which are fabulous and those are welcomed by election administrators, but grant opportunities are very hard to budget and plan for. When you do not know how much money you're going to get, you're hoping and praying that you're going to be able to get funding to keep staff safe. That's not okay.
Elections are the foundation of our democracy. If we want to make sure that we've got good, consistent, reliable systems — from technology to safety to staffing — we need to be able to have reliable funding.
It's not fair that you have a district with a thousand voters that's paying their fair share of the elections, but you've got federal races on the ballot and the federal government is not paying for those.
IO: What should the federal government do to make sure that they're routinely paying their fair share for election administration costs?
JW: Funding needs to be a regular budget line item. Funding for critical elections infrastructure should not be an afterthought, or just grant programs, or just sporadic funding during presidential elections. We run federal elections every two years. Any election administrator will tell you that as soon as we finish this presidential election, we are right onto planning the next election. It takes that much time and effort.
My No. 1 priority this presidential election is keeping my staff and my voters safe. These are people that are devoted and dedicated to the cause of democracy. We need to protect them. Reliable, consistent funding would really help with that. If we fundamentally believe that everyone has a right to the ballot box, then we really need to put our money behind that.
IO: As the presidential election approaches, there has been a lot of concern across the country from election administrators about the use of deepfakes and generative artificial intelligence spreading false information about the election process. What concerns do you have about these threats, and how has Washington been able to provide resources to curb your concerns about them?
JW: As technology evolves, we’ve got to be preparing and planning. When we talk about AI, and we talk about going into a presidential election, one of the things that we did at King County Elections was tabletop exercises about crisis scenarios. We have also been monitoring information.
There are pros to AI, but I think that we have to be very cognizant and very aware of AI and deepfake activities that could manipulate the election. It is critically important for us to be able to get ahead of it.
I'm also really proud of the work that we've done in our state legislature ahead of this. Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs made a legislation request of Senate Bill 5152 this last legislative session. This bill prohibits political campaigns from using realistic but false images, videos or audio to deliberately spread election disinformation.
IO: We have seen a rise in threats, harassment, and intimidation of election officials and election workers this year as a result of the spread of false election information. Earlier this year, House Bill 1241 was signed into law in Washington state, which made it a class C felony to threaten an election worker in writing or in person. How will this legislation help protect election workers? And what more do you believe is needed to protect election workers and election officials?
JW: That legislation was requested by myself and the other local election officials in Washington. We told the Legislature that we really need to be protecting our election administrators — not just the elected folks that run the elections, but all of our election administration staff. We had a great law in place that made it a felony if you harassed someone in person, but we needed to tie up the loose ends to include virtual harassment of people in writing.
Here in King County, last year, we received two envelopes threatening us, and unfortunately both of those envelopes contained fentanyl. It is incredibly important for us to continue to have the help of local, federal and state law enforcement to really make sure that we're helping our local election offices be prepared for scenarios like this or other scenarios that can happen.
Again, it goes back to funding. We need reliable, federal funding to be able to make sure that our elections facilities can handle things like fentanyl-laced envelopes, active shooter trainings and security measures like bulletproof glass in front of our elections facilities. Those are all costly things, but they are critically important to safeguarding our elections, our staff and our voters. We need to see more reliable funding, and we need to see consistent laws across this country about protecting our election administrators and protecting our voters when they're accessing the ballot box.
IO: How are you coordinating with law enforcement to increase the safety of your communities and of elections? And how do you approach communicating about the presence of law enforcement at polling places to your community?
JW: It's such a delicate balance. We want to make sure that voters are safe and that our staff are safe, but we also want to make sure that that doesn't deter people from voting. When we do hire law enforcement, we work with law enforcement to talk candidly about how body language, or the literal physical positioning of where their cars are, can be perceived as more intimidating for our voters. It's being very cognizant of that and being very mindful. We also provide all of our law enforcement with election law books. They are not always dealing with election laws, so we educate them.
Also, I meet every month with what we call the Elections Incident Response Team, which is made up of federal, county and local law enforcement. I'm a subject matter expert in elections. They're a subject matter expert in protecting our community. We get everyone in the room together once a month and talk about what we're hearing at the federal and local level. We're all working together so that we're fully connected.
IO: Given all of these challenges, what has inspired you to stay in this line of work for more than 20 years?
JW: The people. I find joy in working with both voters and the staff.
What also fills my cup is when I talk to community members and a person has just been naturalized, getting the right to vote and getting to see how excited they are to be able to get their ballot and vote [for the first time]. Those sort of things remind me of why we're doing this work and what we're here for.
Also, I'm a person who loves change and continuous improvement. There are always ways for us to do elections better — better access for our voters, more streamlined, quicker election results. All of those things really make me geek out and really interest me.
I joke sometimes that I'm not leaving until I get 100 percent voter registration of eligible voters in King County and 100 percent turnout. Those are always going to be my goals. When you remove barriers to voter access, people will show up and make their voices heard. That brings me to tears. It gives me goosebumps to think that we were part of that.
IO: Outside of being passionate about running safe and secure elections, what are some of your hobbies and what is a fun fact that most people might not know about you?
JW: I am an avid hiker. I absolutely love to be outdoors. I also love my puppy that I got a couple of months ago. I live very close to the Puget Sound, and I love to start my day with a cup of coffee and grounding myself and meditating on the beach and watching my goofy dog chase seagulls.
Something else that people might not know about me is that I'm a farm girl at heart. I know how to show a hog. I know how to shear a sheep. I know how to milk a goat.
IO: What is your favorite book or movie?
JW: I usually have a nonfiction book in one hand and a self-help book in the other. I think “The Four Agreements” is one of the best books of all time. As for movies, my favorite is probably “The Usual Suspects.”
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