(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to Journal.

I'm Steve Kendall.

Ohioans will be going to the polls on August 8th for a special election, kind of an unexpected August election, and there are some changes in how this election will work.

We're joined by Julie Baumgardner, Deputy Director of the Wood County Board of Elections, to kind of fill us in on August 8th and then basically how all of this works, how elections get run, because a lot of people have a lot of questions it seems, and maybe we can allay some of their concerns and maybe deal with some of the misconceptions.

First of all, Julie, thanks for being here.

Appreciate you being here.

Talk a little bit about the structure of the Board of Elections so people know a little bit behind the scenes on who's actually there and the people that are running this and taking care of our elections.

- Okay, well first I'm gonna thank you for having us here.

I appreciate it.

We always like to get the word out, so the Board of Elections is structured, we have Dems and Republicans and we're divided equally.

So, and everything that we do, we have to have a Dem and a Republican do it.

So when we take voter registrations in, a Dem and Republican look at it.

When we go out to the drop box to pull out whatever people have put in there, a Dem and Republican have to go.

When we change paper on our voting machines, a Dem and a Republican have to go.

So our structure is, two people do everything in the office.

- Yeah, and that's typically how the board, most board, all the boards work.

[Julie] Yes, all the boards work that way, yes.

- They're required to do that, so, because a lot of people think, oh, you know, shenanigans can happen, but there are two sets of eyes on everything, representing both, opposite parties.

[Julie] The opposite party, right.

Right.

- So when you look at that, and we're gonna get into how things are handled once people start to vote, but talk a little about this special election, because we thought, you probably thought you were out of the August election business.

(Julie laughs) That's the way it was back in December of '22, hey, we're not gonna do these anymore, there's low turnout, nobody, people miss them, it's a lot of work, usually there are issues that are on there that are very narrow in focus and so you get low turnout, people aren't aware of them, that sorta thing, but we have this special 8th election, August election on August 8th.

It's got one issue on it, so talk about how that's gonna roll out and your preparation for that.

Yeah.

- Okay.

So the state legislator voted to have the special election and the only issue that is on the ballot is to change the constitution to make it so that an amendment has to have 60% of the vote instead of 50 plus one.

And so that is why we're having it, is for just one issue.

So when you come into the ballot, that's all you're gonna vote for.

So right now, what we're doing is we are recruiting poll workers.

We need over 300 poll workers for all of our locations and so we are currently in the process of recruiting all of those.

We're doing fairly well, but we can always use volunteers.

We always ask.

So if you wanna be a poll worker, call our office.

We have two people.

We have a Republican and a Democrat, and we will get you to the right person and we will get you in.

You will go through training after that.

We are also getting, we have the ballot ready to go.

We had to have the ballot ready to go a couple of weeks ago because military, overseas citizens, [Steve] Oh that's right, yeah, they get those to them [Julie] yep.

- [Steve] so they can get them back in in time.

[Julie] Yes, because they have to, they are the only people that can email it to us but they also have to send it by mail, and so we need that time to give them, to get the ballot back to us 'cause they do have, there is a time limit to get it back to us.

So we are processing overseas citizens right now, and then we just started early vote a couple of days ago.

So that started on Tuesday at the Board of Elections, so you can come into the Board of Elections and start early vote.

We are getting all of our supplies ready.

Every polling location gets one or two bags of just supplies.

So all of the styluses, the voter stickers, all of that information, they're getting all of those.

We have done L&A which is logic and accuracy testing on all our ICX machines, so all of our voting machines or ICX machines have all gone through testing where we've put our hands on every single one of those to make sure that they're recording it and then when we upload the ballot count, that they're counting them correctly, so we've done all that.

When you sign in, we have, in our county, we have what we call poll pads where we check your ID and we make sure that you're registered and we double check your signature, your address, all of that information.

We have also done logic and accuracy testing on all of those.

So we've done all of those (Steve laughs) little bits and pieces that we need to do to be ready, and so we are ready because we've already started voting, but we are ready to, yep, yep.

[Steve] For that day on August 8th.

Yeah, and I think sometimes people understand that it isn't just people show up the day before and set all this stuff up.

There's, this process is underway right now and began even before, you know, you were preparing for this.

And the, again, the checks and balances through all the machines, all of the processes, every piece of paper gets looked at by multiple people and people from both sides of the aisle so that there's no question about what's being done, what's being distributed, what's being told to people, that sort of thing, to make the process as clean as possible and as clear as possible to everybody.

When you look at poll workers, and you said, you know, you're recruiting 'em, obvious, too, talk a little bit about the training because I think some people are like, "Oh, I don't know, "that seems like that's pretty scary "and it's probably complicated.

"I don't know if I'm up to that."

So talk about what the training's like, if I said, "I wanna be a poll worker," what's the process then after I sign in?

- Okay.

So once you sign up to be a poll worker, then we do bring you in for training for new poll workers.

We have about a two hour training.

There are a lot of pieces that you have to kinda know.

But you know, we talk about the voter ID rules.

We talk about, you know, somebody who comes in and their address is different, what do you do with those?

There are what we call provisional ballots.

Sometimes you cannot vote a regular ballot.

You have to vote a provisional, and that's only because maybe your address is different, or maybe you moved from one county to another county and you didn't have a chance to update your voter registration before the deadline, then you'll have to vote a provisional ballot, so we go through all of those parts and pieces.

We also lock all of our machines, and so we talk about the locks that have to go on and how you have to keep a record of those.

And so we just talk about what you do during the day.

I will say, it is a long shift.

It's from 5:30 in the morning until about 8:30 at night, (Steve laughs) yeah, right, right.

- Until you get everything, yeah, completed and signed off on and then ready to take down to your office to get to the state, yeah.

- That's probably the hardest part because it is such a long day.

But we just go through the whole day with training, and so our new training is about two hours.

For experienced people, we will usually do about an hour training because they've already done it.

They've seen it, yeah.

[Steve] Yeah, most of what they're, yeah, not as much it hasn't isn't all new to them.

A lot of it stays the same.

[Julie] Right, right, and when you're a new poll worker, if you've ever heard the term voting location manager or voting location [Steve] Yep, VLM, yep.

[Julie] deputy manager, that's not what you're gonna do.

Usually those are our experienced workers.

They've worked for, you know, [Steve] multiple, multiple, you know, [Julie] Multiple, multiple elections, yep.

- they've been there for three, four, five years.

So as a new poll worker, you're gonna have at least two experienced people with you, and they know the election inside and out and they will help you, and we have a great set of poll workers in the county.

I mean, they get along, they know they're gonna be there all day.

You know, some people even bring food in.

And so, yeah, so it's more of a camaraderie for people too.

- Right, yeah, and the thing is too, and we've got just a second here, I think in having done that, and I do it in Lucas County, everybody there wants to make sure they get everything right.

Nobody's there to like, you know, cut corners, do whatever, and I think people need to know that, that the people are there are there because they want to make sure things run correctly and they're doing everything they can, and it is a certain amount of pressure there because you wanna make sure everybody's vote gets counted.

It's, first of all, voted, you know, they get a chance to vote correctly, and then you're handing it off to the people then that do the tabulation.

So we come back, I wanna talk a little bit more about, a little bit about that and what happens when people walk in, the different ways you can vote.

Back in just a moment with Julie Baumgardner, Deputy Director, Wood County Board of Elections, here on The Journal.

Thank you for staying with us here on The Journal.

Our guest is Julie Baumgardner, Deputy Director of the Wood County Board of Elections, and we're talking about voting process in general, but also too about the August 8th election that's coming up.

One of the big changes this time is people will see a change in how they identify themselves to vote, because in the past, you come in and you could maybe show like, your utility bill that proved where you lived and then your identity, that kinda thing.

You didn't necessarily have, you didn't have to have a photo ID.

Now you have to have that, so talk about what qualifies as an appropriate voter photo ID so that if I walk in, I'll hand you something that will allow me to vote, just through the process, yeah.

- Okay.

So now, the appropriate voter IDs are, of course, the driver's license, that's always been there, the state ID, you can use the state ID.

The new ones are, you can now use a passport because it's got your photo on it, right, okay, - [Steve] Got a photo on it, mm-hm.

- and then the military ID is a federal military ID.

It's not the one that is issued by like a county recorder or a local veteran's office.

They do have, [Steve] It has to be the federal one.

- Right.

Ohio does have some of those, [Steve] The US.

- but it's gotta be a US military ID.

So those are the ones that you can use.

As you said, you can no longer use a utility bill or check, a paycheck or anything like that.

It's gotta have your photo on it.

Now, I will say this, your address on it does not have to match [Steve] Match.

- where your registered.

We're looking at your photo now, not necessarily the address, so that is the big difference.

- Yeah, big difference, and if someone comes in and let's just say that I walk in and I don't have a photo ID, what happens to me at that point?

I know that I live in that precinct, I voted there for a hundred years, okay, and one of the training that happens, I know with the poll workers is, you're taught how to deal with people who are, you know, maybe not thrilled by the fact that you're not gonna let them vote because they don't have the proper identification, so what happens in that case?

I walk in, I say, "Well I've got my, I've lived here "for 50 years, I've always voted here.

"You're not gonna let me vote," how do you handle that and make sure that they understand that, look, we don't make these rules, we simply have to apply them?

How do you, what's the best way for people to, (Julie laughs) because you know it's gonna happen.

Somebody's gonna walk in and say, "Well I've done it this way forever.

"Nobody told me I had to have a picture."

Yeah.

- (laughs) Right.

And what we'll do is you will still get to vote.

We have never turned anybody away from voting, so that, and your vote will count, so that's the other thing.

But what we'll do is we'll explain to you that we do, there are, there's the law, we have to follow it, we need a photo ID.

But you don't have your photo ID, so we are going to send you over to what we call the provisional table, okay?

You're gonna fill out a provisional envelope, you're gonna give us your name, your address.

You're gonna give us last four digits of your Social Security, your, whatever you have, and then fill it out, sign it.

That's gonna get returned to us, okay?

If you don't have the photo ID and you have to vote provisionally, then what you're gonna have to make sure that you do after Election Day, if you voted on Election Day, you're gonna have to come into our office and show us one of the valid, right.

- And then your vote, then you can take that provisional ballot and count it.

[Julie] And, yes.

- But if I fill that all out and then don't bother to come down to see you after that, that ballot just gets set aside and it doesn't get counted.

[Julie] Yes, yes.

- Okay.

- But you will still get credit for an action by the, [Steve] Credit for voting, for, yeah, yeah.

- so your registration will not, [Steve] Will still stay in place.

Yeah, okay.

- stay in place, so just, but the most important thing is you have four days after, and we are open that Saturday after, we have hours.

But you have to come in if you did not show your voter ID.

That's the only time.

If your address has changed and you had to vote provisionally, then you don't have to come into our office at all.

That provisional ballot, once we check it, if-- [Steve] If everything, yeah.

- If everything is fine, then we will count your ballot.

You will not have to come into our office.

So it's only if you do not show your ID to the poll workers, yes.

[Steve] ID to, yeah, to the poll workers, yeah.

Now the other thing is too, you can still vote and we have this happen where I do this, you can still vote a paper ballot.

And some people do, [Julie] Yes you can.

Yes.

- they believe that's a more accurate way, secure way.

[Julie] Secure way, yes, mm-hm, mm-hm.

- And there's a process for that.

But they can request a paper ballot.

[Julie] Yes, they can.

- I mean, obviously you'd like them to use the regular, standard route of going using the machines, but that process is very clear.

Poll workers know how to do that and there's a separate place for them to do that paper ballot as well.

[Julie] Right, and there's, it's not a provisional envelope.

We have an envelope, [Steve] Another envelope, yes.

- another envelope, and you still fill out some minimum information.

We still check you in at our check-in station.

So on our poll, what we have, our poll, what we call poll pads, where you would sign on the poll pad, and then we send you over to the paper ballot table.

And then you vote just normal and we have screens so nobody can see what you're voting for.

It's still a secure vote, but it's on paper.

You put it in an envelope, and it'll come back to our office and it'll get counted, and you don't have to do anything else.

That's different from provisional.

This is just a normal regular vote.

You're just not voting on a machine, you're voting on paper.

- Yeah.

Beause I know when we handle paper ballots, we don't get very many.

I mean, one out of a thousand maybe.

And people, there's a separate box.

You put those in, it's sealed so that once it goes in there, looks like a US Post Office box, nobody opens it up and does it until it gets, yeah.

[Julie] That's right, it's locked and everything.

- Yeah, that goes down to the Board of Elections, they open it up down there.

We don't even touch it at the polling location.

The other thing that I think people get concerned about, and it isn't really as big concern used to be, they'll go, "Well, you know my," because you have to sign, in our case, we sign a little, you know, on the tab, the little tablet or whatever, people go, "Well my signature's not gonna look like the one "that's there."

It's like, well nobody's does because you probably registered, you were 18.

And unless you're only 18 1/2, (Julie laughs) your signature's probably changed a little.

But that's something that's, you'd look at that, but it generally speaking, that's not a dead end kinda thing or a stopper, yeah.

[Julie] No, no, not at all.

Because we're not handwriting experts to begin with.

And you know, and your signature is always going to change.

You know, every year your signature changes a little bit.

The older you get, it changes.

I mean, so we don't, that is not gonna make [Steve] That's not a deal breaker, yeah.

- or break you voting.

[Steve] And people say too, "Well probably when I put that signature, "it was a piece of paper with a pen.

"Now I'm using a stylus on a computer screen "and so it was never," yeah.

So that's something that people don't have to be concerned about.

Once we've gone through that, I've, okay, we've got just a couple of minutes.

We'll be able to carry this over into the next segment.

Once I voted, okay, I go, either I'm going through provisional, whatever, paper ballot, I vote through the machine, I do the whatever.

What happens then, once, at the end of the day when the polling place closes, what happens to all of that, all of those ballots, the machine ballots, the provisional ballots, the paper ballots?

Those are all handled exactly like you talked before, there are two people watching every process that takes place to make sure that the votes are managed correctly, kept secure.

I won't say managed, but kept secure.

Talk a little about that process though.

At the end of the day, when the last person has voted at that polling location, what do the poll workers do next?

How do they make sure [Julie] Okay.

(laughs) - that everything now gets to you guys the way it's supposed to?

- So at 7:30 when the polls close, then all of our poll workers take all, for the machines, they pull out all the USBs or the SIM cards, whatever you have, they pull all of those out, we have a case, they put them all in.

That gets put in a locked bag, they put it in a bag, they lock the bag.

They got a special lock for it.

All the paper ballots that were in the box, they don't come out.

That whole box comes back to us.

And so the location manager and the deputy manager, they're of opposite parties.

[Steve] Opposite parties, yep.

Again, two sets of eyes.

- They get in, that' right.

(laughs) - Yep, okay.

- And they get in the same car and they have to drive it.

They cannot follow each other in separate cars.

They have to maintain control of all of that together.

And so, yeah, so they put all of that in the car, they drive it down to our office, two of our employees go out.

We take all of that, they bring it all back into the office, and then we start uploading all the information from the machines, we start opening those ballots.

If we can't, the provisional's, we cannot open for 10 days, so those have to sit and wait for us.

As I said, there's that four year, four day cure period, right.

- [Steve] Yeah, these other things, yeah, the other pieces have to come in to make those, yeah.

- Right, right.

So the provisional's will not get opened or counted, but all of the paper ballots, all of the machine ballots, all of the curbside, all of that will get counted that night.

- Ah, okay, okay.

We come back, we can talk a little bit more about that process too, because you know, some people think, oh, they don't count this kind of ballot unless this happens and that sorta thing, but we can talk about that.

Back in just a moment with Julie Baumgardner, Deputy Director of the Wood County Board of Elections, talking about the special election on August 8th, but just the process so people can feel secure about the casting their ballot in this August 8th election.

Back in just a moment.

Thank you for staying with us here on The Journal.

Our guest is Julie Baumgardner, Deputy Director of the Wood County Board of Elections.

Julie, we talked about process and training and things like that.

You guys, as you said, all the ballots come down to your office at the end of the day on Election Day after the polls close at 7:30.

The poll workers from both parties manage that process, secure it, bring it down to you, you start to tabulate.

Is there an order of how things get counted?

Say, 'cause I know people say, "Well, I use an absentee ballot.

"I know they never count those.

"They only use those unless they have to," or some, you know, some misconception about what happens to ballots that aren't necessarily machine ballots or paper ballots or whatever, so talk about the order of events once you start counting.

What gets counted when and why and that sort of thing, yeah.

- Okay, so the first thing that gets counted are actually the absentee ballots, okay?

So when you come in that month before the election and you vote paper or on the machine, it doesn't matter, those are the very first things that we're allowed to count.

Okay.

We can start getting the ballots open and ready a few days before that.

We usually start like on that Monday, because especially with presidential, we have a lot, [Steve] A lot, yeah, yep.

- so it depends on how many we have.

But we are allowed to open them.

We're allowed to scan them.

We can't count them, we can't run results or anything like that, but we are allowed to open those.

And then when the, early vote actually ends on Sunday at five o'clock, and so we also have all the machines, and so we can start uploading all the machines.

So that very first report at eight o'clock on election night is actually all of the absentee.

- [Steve] Ah, okay, that's good for people to know, yeah.

- It may, right, yeah.

Yeah, within a half hour, - Within, yeah, maybe a couple of, yep.

- we have absentee results.

[Steve]That's always the very first report, yes.

- That's what you're gonna see first, so when those numbers come up first, those are the absentees.

They have been counted.

[Julie] Yes.

- They're the first thing to get counted.

[Julie] They're the first thing, so you'll know - Okay.

- how people voted that very first, that first month.

Then, as the polling locations come back to us, and you gotta remember, they gotta drive to us and bring everything back, so from all over, [Steve] From wherever they are in the county, yeah, yeah.

- Bowling Green, Perrysburg, Fostoria, yeah, all over.

[Steve] Wayne, Bradner, yeah, yep.

- So as they come back, we are uploading all of that information.

And so we are considered a half hour county, so every half hour we have to report results, okay?

So at 8:30, whatever polling locations, usually Bowling Green in our case, are back, those are on.

And so as they come back, we are, so throughout the night, as you see the numbers go up, that means more and more polling.

Once we hit 100%, that means all of our polling locations have brought back everything back, okay?

[Steve] Yeah, everything has been tabulated, yeah.

- Everything's back.

The only thing that we have not tabulated at that point is the paper ballots.

If you've decided to vote on paper, or you were a curbside voter because you couldn't get outta your car because whatever reason, then the next day, then we open all of those and all of those are counted.

- Yeah, all of those that are legal or eligible, [Julie] Eligible to be counted, they'll be counted, yeah.

- meet all the criteria will be counted, yeah, okay.

[Julie] And so the unofficial results, election night, 10:30, 11:30, whenever we're done, they will not contain those paper ballots or the provisional's.

But the official, which is then down road, (laughs) [Steve] Downstream about what, 10 days?

[Julie] 10 days.

Yeah, I believe.

- 10 days, yeah.

- And then all of those paper ballots and then any of the provisional's that have been cured and we can count are also included in the official.

So every vote that can be counted is counted, and we get those out.

So that's the difference between the unofficial and the official, are there provisional's and some paper ballots.

- Because I know people say, "Gee, I don't know.

"I was way ahead at the beginning and then," but that's the difference between the early voting, absentee voting and then the actual day of voting that tends to be, [Julie] Election Day, yeah.

- can be different.

(Julie laughs) May not be, but sometimes is.

And I think that's where people get concerned.

Well, "Oh, there's a big swing in the number of votes."

Well, and we know from precinct to precinct, that will happen too because some precincts vote, well all the precincts vote differently in terms of who they vote for, what issue, how they vote on an issue, so you can't just with that early voting, because I think a lot of people thought, well, they don't count these things unless this happens, like if they, it's gonna change the election, like the margins, whatever, then they count the absentees, but as you said, absentees are the first thing that you counted so you can be assured that if you did everything correctly when you voted, your ballot's gonna be good.

[Julie] You're good, yep, mm-hm, mm-hm.

- When you look at this, are you getting any kind of calls from people right now about questions about what do I do, how do I do it for this election that have been maybe different than the past?

Or has there been any difference between people looking at this and saying, "Oh, it's another election.

"I know I'm good to go," as far as a voter's concerned?

- I think that there hasn't really been anything different.

Most of the phone calls we're getting right now is to request an absentee ballot, because you have to fill out an application, an absentee ballot application for every single election.

You can't fill one out at the beginning of the year and cover everything.

- That doesn't cover all the elections that year, yeah.

[Julie] No, so you do have to fill out an absentee ballot application if you wanna do it through the mail, and do it that way, then you have to request that for this one.

Now you can also send one in for November, but we have to have one for August, one for November.

[Steve] And one for November, yeah, yeah.

- So just remember that.

- Yeah, and there's, is the deadline to request a ballot, is that August 1st, you have to request an absent ballot?

[Julie] Yes, August 1st, and we are open until 8:30 that day.

We do that week, we're only, we're open from 7:30 to 7:30, but that Tuesday, August 1st, we are actually open till 8:30, so you have a little [Steve] Give everybody as much, so nobody can say, "Oh, - extra time to drop it off.

- "I got down there and they were closed."

Yeah, so gives, so everybody has, I guess the bottom line, people have wealth of opportunities to, you know, to vote for this election, so it isn't as if, "Oh, they didn't give me time to do it, "or I didn't know, whatever."

There's an opportunity, yeah.

- And we do have, we have a drop box right out front of our complex, so you can, it's open 24/7.

And so you can drop your ballot in its envelope in there, you can drop your absentee ballot application, all of that can go in there.

We process that every day.

So.

- Okay, great.

Now, if people want to, have questions, obviously you can go to your website, which is ww.wood.co.oh.-- - [Julie] Actually it's different.

- It's different, okay, I'm sorry.

Correct me on that, okay.

- Okay, it's, yeah, it's ww.woodcountyohio, all spelled out.

- [Steve] All spelled out.

- .gov/boe.

Yep, (laughs) yeah.

- BOE, okay, good.

That's a little easier.

That's good, okay, good.

Thank you for correcting me on that.

Wanna make sure we get that correct, because if people can go there and if they can look at that, maybe it answers all their questions, if not, they, as you said, they can give you guys a call and someone will do everything in their power to give them the answer that allows them to be eligible to vote and actually vote either absentee or the day of the election, so yeah, yeah, good.

- Right, right, yeah, yeah.

And you can go to the Secretary of State's website too and get all the information.

- And look at, and find all the dates and all that information as well.

Well Julie, thank you so much for coming in.

Appreciate you taking the time to do this, and the best wishes on a smooth, eventless election.

It just goes, yeah, which they, you know, if you think about it, they usually are.

I mean, it's rare that there's any kind of, anything really serious that goes on, but you know, it makes for a good story sometimes, find one thing [Julie] Sometimes.

(laughs) - and exploit that a little bit.

So we appreciate you coming in to help clear this up.

You can check us out at wbgu.org.

You can watch The Journal every Thursday night at 8:00 PM on WBGU-PBS.

We will see you again next time.

Good night and good luck.

(upbeat music)