- Coming up on "IGI", we are honored to have Kansas Secretary of State, Scott Schwab with us in the studio taking an in-depth look at the voting process in Kansas, stay with us.

(electricity buzzing) (bright music) (upbeat music) Hello and welcome to "IGI", I'm your host LeTiffany Obozele.

The general election is nearly here and we will soon be casting our vote for candidates of choice.

How can we make sure our voice is heard in this world of election misinformation?

Every state has their own set of election laws that spell out the requirements for registering to vote, mailing in a ballot, and voting in advance.

What can we do here in Kansas to make sure our vote counts?

Here today with us to spell out election policies and procedures, and our rights as voters in Kansas, is Secretary of State, Scott Schwab.

Secretary, it is a pleasure to have you here today and I wanna start talking with you about voter registration.

- Yes.

- What do people need to know?

- Well, so the voter registration deadline is passed and so, if you're not registered to vote you're just not gonna be able to participate in this year's election.

However, there's other ways you could participate if you wanna be a poll worker or something like that, that's fine.

You could be as young as 16 in the state of Kansas to be a poll worker and we always like to encourage those.

'Cause younger folks grew up in the dig digital age.

- Yeah.

- And as we use more technology to provide additional security, they bring a nuance that really helps our older poll workers know how to use that technology.

So, but we always encourage folks, even though the voter registration deadline is passed, while you're thinking about it, go ahead if you've had a name change, an address change, go ahead and register to vote and so you can participate the next time, 'cause you don't wanna miss that deadline.

- Okay and where can folks go if they want to change their address, register to vote?

- Yeah, so our website is votekansas.gov and you can click on Voter View to check your information.

And there's just so much good information on that website.

And we also let folks know, if it doesn't say.gov it didn't come from us.

So there's a lot of other election and campaign oriented folks that have.org.

We don't know what they do with your data.

- Okay.

- So you know, if you go through a .org to register to vote, we can't guarantee it's actually gonna get to that county level.

But if you use the vote kansas.gov, it'll get there.

- Okay, well I wanna turn our attention now to the advanced voting process.

And so tell us a little bit more about that.

The date to register has passed but folks can advance vote.

- Yeah so we're a no excuse early advance vote state, so you don't need to reason to vote in advance, but you still have to apply for an...

Apply for the ballot.

There's several reasons for that, one is that gives... We're voter ID state so that's where you're gonna put your information to make sure you are the voter.

And also it updates information for us so you could be registered to vote and if you have... You know, perhaps we had your name spelled wrong or something like that, it's just, we're constantly doing list maintenance and making sure that our data is accurate and so that helps.

And then also make sure we're sending the ballot to the right place.

And so you'll wanna again, votekansas.gov, you can fill that out there and you can also find out who your local office is.

And then you can also click on...

If you click on Voter View, you can track to see if they've received your application, if they've mailed your ballot and if your ballot has been received by the election office.

So there's some tracking measures as well, if you're going to vote advance by mail.

But we recommend use the drop box.

- [LeTiffany] Okay.

- Don't use the post office unless you absolutely have to.

There's a lot of challenges with the post office right now and ballots are showing up late and so we don't...

I mean you're gonna have to vote early if you have to use a post office but we recommend just, you can drop it off at a county drop box.

- [LeTiffany] Okay.

- You can drop it off at the county election office, any in-person advanced polling location, and then any polling place on election day.

So there's other ways to make sure that advanced mail ballot gets counted.

- And if somebody was wondering exactly how they found those drop boxes?

- [Secretary Schwab] That's all on that website, votekansas.gov.

- Okay.

- That's a new feature we did this year, is make sure we let folks know where those drop boxes are so they know where to find them.

- Okay awesome.

You also talked a little bit about the mail-in voting process and you're saying there's other ways to do it, and the post office is having some issues.

What kind of provisions are in place right now to verify the legitimacy of people's advanced mailing ballots?

- So first off, it's you can't print a ballot off on your computer.

So you don't have to worry about somebody printing off a bunch of ballots on their laser computer and fill, you know... Their computer and filling it out.

I always tell folks, you know if I filled out a ballot and put it in the drop box would it count?

No, because it's gotta be the certain type of ballot and paper and it's got a code on there, so we know that ballot's for that election, it was actually from the election office.

- [LeTiffany] Okay.

- So let's say you're that good and you're able to hack that, and you put it in a drop box, does it count?

No, 'cause it's gotta be in the security envelope.

- [LeTiffany] Okay.

- So if it's now, does it count if it's in the security envelope?

No, still doesn't count 'cause you gotta put a name on it.

Oh well, that's now you put a name on it but they're not a registered voter so it still don't count.

Oh, you put a registered voter's name on there.

Does it count now?

No, it doesn't count now because they never asked for that ballot.

- Okay.

- Okay so let's say you get the list, you do all that and say, "Does it count now?"

No, because you gotta put the driver's license number on it and I don't even know my driver's license number.

So these are the measures that the state has put in policy-wise to make sure that it's one ballot per voter.

- Okay, hearing those and we've talked about mail-in, is there any way for anybody to advance vote in person?

- Yes in most counties...

Most counties will start that the day after voter registration ends.

So that's normally that'll be Wednesday, last Wednesday it'll start.

Some wait a little longer, because we don't wanna say you must advance vote in person at these times.

'Cause some counties in our rural areas don't have the resources to staff an early advance in person voting for two weeks.

Especially in some counties we have is less than 5,000 people who live there.

You know, you could go three days and nobody comes in yet.

So but the bigger counties will start and start Wednesday.

- Okay and if they go to that website- - VoteKansas.gov.

- Yeah.

- All that information's there and you can reach out to your county election officials.

So if you have concerns like, well what about this, what about X, Y, Z?

You can just call them, they're more than happy to help.

- And when you go on there, is that also how you're gonna find your polling place?

Do you advance vote at your polling place or somewhere else?

- You can so advance in person voting, there'll be certain locations you can go, I think there's only one in Shawnee right now.

We'll discuss about maybe doing more with them but that's a county decision.

But that will be there and you can vote at any of those advanced voting places that are listed in your county.

On election day, you will have a particular voting polling place to go.

And make a plan, make sure you know where that is.

'Cause I get it, I like to vote on election day it's fun.

Sometimes I got a 21-year-old so I'll bring him with me, although he sometimes makes fun of me and that's a whole different family dynamic.

But if you like to vote on election day, just make sure you have a plan 'cause several counties have expanded the number of polling places they have.

So that should, that shortens wait time but where you voted last time may not be where you vote this time.

So that's just more information you wanna make sure you have before you go vote so you're not scrambling at the last minute.

- Okay and then, you know, it sounds like voting here in Kansas is very accessible.

You've thought of lots of different ways.

How do people make sure that when they go to vote, they're following those federal and state laws so that they can have a plan?

- Yeah, so just make sure you have your voter ID and the rest of the legal burden is on the election workers and me.

So that's the system's made so that it's simple to vote and then we have the security stuff so it's very challenging to try to cheat and whatnot.

So just go up, enjoy the experience, you know, if you want to bring your kids, let them see you vote so you're teaching that next generation that hey, someday this is gonna be your community and you get to do this.

And so I always encourage, bring the kids if you can.

I know sometimes they're in school and it's not feasible, but it's still enjoyable especially as a... To go as a family, "Hey, we're gonna go vote together as a family."

And make a memory of it.

And then it instills in the next generation that this is an important and a positive activity.

- That sounds great.

I also wanna talk with you about obviously the time to register to vote has passed, and you mentioned how being a poll worker is a great thing, which we'll talk about in a little bit.

But what are some disqualifications that need to be aware of from them being able to show up in person and vote other than not being registered?

- Well dead, you know.

- Okay, right?

- Dead people don't vote.

(LeTiffany laughing) And then, and we really are starting to communicate this more.

If you're a legal resident but a non-citizen don't vote and that can affect your pathway to citizenship.

And these are the folks that want to become US citizens.

This is the type of immigration generally all Americans embrace the people who are migrating here and doing it the proper way.

But sometimes you get an aggressive activist that says, "Hey, you need to fill out this voter registration form and you need to go vote."

Well they can't.

And so if you, you know we... And the administration's working with us to give us data because you can have a driver's license if you're a legal resident 'cause you gotta go to work.

But we get those lists to make sure and then we can reach out to 'em, "Hey, have you become a citizen?"

And make sure they're not on the voter rolls.

And that's again, some of the lists maintenance we've just been doing for years just to make sure our data has integrity in it.

- Okay so if somebody shows up to the polling place and someone says, "Register to vote today."

Not happening.

- That's not gonna happen.

We do not have same day voter registration for multiple reasons.

But there was a state senator and his concern, and it was from the minority party was legitimate.

What if somebody fabricated a video about a candidate that's complete AI generated the day before the election said, "Hey, go register to vote now you can vote them out."

Well now it's what's like rage voting or protest voting.

You're voting somebody out on based on false information as opposed to what the campaign's been saying for several days.

And it allows us to make sure we're set up to go on election day to have that runway.

And that's why we have the voter registration cutoffs when we do.

- Okay so how do we encourage at large voting?

And what I'm saying is voting by diverse groups like minorities, elderly, students, peoples with disabilities.

How do we get everybody out to vote and encourage that?

- Well so we always encourage it but what drives voting up in increased participation is compelling issues and compelling candidates.

This year you know, the primary was low turnout 'cause we didn't have too many contested races.

And it's one of the weird years that we don't have a US Senator on the ballot this year and we don't have any state wides on the ballot.

So it's just legislative races in some county races like sheriff and DA and such so in a lot of...

Many of those issues aren't compelling to voters.

So if it's like (Secretary Schwab groans) you know, there has to be a reason for somebody to vote.

Some people vote 'cause they always wanna participate.

That's great and there's other folks that just, they don't want to.

they either they don't like the candidate choices or there's just not enough contest.

I mean this last election there were some ballots that had only one name on there.

And so at that or you know, a House member and a Senate member and that was it.

Or maybe a county official but there was no contest.

Well, if I'm not changing...

If it's already pretty much decided why go vote?

So those are some of the dynamics there.

But with the presidential election, clearly there's gonna be an uptick.

Presidential elections always have a higher volume and more stress for our poll workers, but they handle it very well and we expect to go... Well I say this election's gonna go even smoother than 2020 'cause we're not in the pandemic.

We've taken that, you know X factor off the table just makes the election run smoother anyway.

- Okay and since we're talking about getting people to go and my next question's gonna be about precincts, what are people's hours to vote and do jobs have to like accommodate folks for= - They don't have to accommodate, but we've never found a situation where a job didn't accommodate.

- [LeTiffany] Okay.

- And that's why we've never put it in statute because well if if it's not an issue, why spend the money to pass a law?

But it's seven to seven on election day and then often the in-person advance polling places are also seven to seven.

So if you've already know who you're gonna vote for, if you've already decided the candidates you got from president on down, you've done your homework on the judges, and which to retain and which aren't and you're just good to go, then go.

Just get it out of the way and then you'll get less phone calls and less texts.

That's true.

(LeTiffany laughs) - We get a lot.

(LeTiffany laughs) Okay so the next thing I wanna talk to you is just about precincts.

You've talked about how folks can go online and figure out- - [Secretary Schwab] Their polling places.

- Yeah their polling places and if they've gotten their voter card anytime recent, it usually has your polling place on there.

And so what if somebody goes to the wrong voting precinct?

They thought they knew but maybe it changed or maybe they forgot to look.

What could someone do, if that's the situation?

- Okay so you can always...

This is why we say have a plan and know ahead of time and we can't shout that loud enough.

But you'll end up always having somebody who shows up to the wrong place.

If there's time to go to the right place, they will direct them and they'll say, "Hey, here's where you're gonna go."

I've even had anecdotal stories of folks that say, "Hey, I typed it in their phone for them."

So that they could get there, which is different things we can do to help.

But if you're like, "I don't have time to go to the other polling place.

I'm in the wrong polling place."

Whatever would still be on the correct ballot still counts.

So if president obviously is still gonna count, but that State House Legislator may... You maybe you're in the wrong district now, that's not gonna count.

So that's called a partial ballot that will be a provisional ballot and the Board of Canvassers will determine which contest you actually count in and which ones legally cannot count.

- And some people may have heard of provisional ballots, but what's a provisional ballot for someone who doesn't know that's watching?

- Yeah so this actually former Secretary of State, Ron Thornburgh was a President of the National Association of Secretary's of State during Bush V Gore.

And so out of that whole lawsuit and contested presidential election, came the Help America Vote Act, which allowed us to improve technology, and improve poll books, and also change the way voters access.

It used to be, "Hey, you're not on the voter registration thing, get out."

And nobody likes to be told no, you've been denied.

So what they do is they give you get a provisional ballot.

That ballot may or may not count.

You show up to the polling place and you forgot your ID, you're gonna get a provisional ballot.

They're not gonna tell you no you can't vote today 'cause you don't have your ID.

And then they're gonna say, "But if you bring it back, if you come back with your ID, then that ballot's gonna count."

So that's what it's provisional it's like it's going to count if we can adjudicate some things.

You know, for example is this happened often in the pandemic, they did an advanced mail ballot but they didn't know if it got returned or not.

Because we have the three day grace period after the election so they went and voted in person anyway.

Well that's a provisional ballot 'cause you were given a ballot.

"Well I lost my ballot, I couldn't find it."

Okay, well if your mail ballot shows up it counts.

If it doesn't, then the provisional ballot counts.

- Okay.

- So it's just a way to make sure people have an opportunity to reflect their will as it relates to how they want to vote.

- And unintentional double voting for confusion.

- Right.

- Right, okay.

So obviously one of the issues I think going on right now is maybe there's an erosion of trust in our election process.

You just talked about a whole host of reasons why people should trust our voting process here in Kansas and what can happen if they don't understand what's going on or show up with something wrong.

And so what can we do here that we're not already doing to continue to build trust in our election process?

- So when someone says like, "Well there's just all this voter fraud."

It's like, "Okay, well where?"

"Well you just know it's there."

Well you can't argue with that 'cause there's no evidence.

But I always say, "Well go be a poll worker, go show me.

You go do the deal and come back."

And oftentimes when they do it, they come back and they're like, "Wow our system's really, really good."

And likewise we have people say, "Well there's just so much voter suppression."

Go be a poll worker, you be the eyes on that election.

When people attack election systems for either voter suppression or voter fraud you're not attacking me, you're attacking your next door neighbor because it's community driven.

It's your neighbors that are doing the election process.

And to say that they're somehow part of this giant international conspiracy, it's disingenuous to the very people you should... That are in your community, that you guys help each other out.

You know, you go to the store, sometimes you go to the same baseball games with youth and such.

So go be a poll worker and then report back.

- Okay, so you've mentioned a lot about poll workers, you can do it as young as 16.

It sounds like maybe a lot of older folks like volunteer to be poll workers and you just mentioned it's people in your community that are doing it.

So tell us how someone can become a poll worker if they're interested in getting involved and doing that.

- Yeah so again, I'm gonna always pound the website 'cause it's just been so well done.

I really got, I gotta give props to our team on the votekansas.gov.

You can go there, you can fill out the information, we'll get it to the appropriate county.

And coming outta 2020, several of our more seasoned poll workers just didn't come back.

They were concerned of COVID so they didn't do it that year and they just didn't come back.

And now we had several young people and other people fill in those gaps.

So we weren't necessarily short on poll workers, but we lost all that institutional knowledge.

And so we're getting it back as it's been a few election cycles and having that presidential preference primary, which really was a waste of money because it didn't change anything.

But it gave those due poll workers a chance to work in election in a very low stress environment.

And so I'm really excited about November's election, November 5th because they got that extra run and I think we're gonna do really, really well.

- Yeah and is being a poll worker open to everybody?

I know at my polling location I've seen that there's...

It seems accessible and there's all kinds of people being poll workers so.

- Yeah is it 16 on up, you have to at least be 16.

And I really encourage teenagers to do this 'cause you get a day off school, you get paid, and you generally still get credit because you just write a paper and say, "Hey, here's what I learned about it."

And it looks so good on a resume if you're trying to get a scholarship or an a qualified admission university or even just a job say, "Hey, I'm a poll worker."

Cause it's not a political activity, it's a civic activity.

And you're engaging with a lot of different personalities and learning to negotiate that, and you're meeting new neighbors, and it's just, it's a wonderful experience.

And if you're older and you have a teenager, whether it's a child or whether you have a grandchild, you know work together.

You know do it say, "Hey, we're gonna do this together."

It's a neat experience.

- Yeah I think I agree with you, it's so nice when you have welcoming poll workers when you come to go vote so when will...

So I think some folks are probably wondering, when after folks vote, will the election day results be available?

- So the polls close at seven o'clock, we do not release any results before that because nobody wants to know the score when people still can be voting.

We learned that out of the 2000 election, and it's often a little bit later because there are a few communities, far western Kansas that are actually in the mountain time zone.

- [LeTiffany] Okay.

- Not a huge volume of voters but they're there.

And so, you know, it'll be eight o'clock here when they close at seven o'clock there.

And so after that, the first numbers that'll show up on our website, it will be the early advance in person and the mail ballots that have been processed.

- Okay.

- Not all of them will be processed because they're busy deploying equipment and such.

Eventually they get processed afterwards but those are the first numbers you get.

And then oftentimes our counties will just take a break because they're working hard.

Whatever they have counted, they will put that on the website.

- Okay.

- And then when the final numbers come in, that county on the map on our website will go black.

- [LeTiffany] Okay.

- And then it'll have the numbers and that's the final, final numbers for preliminary election results and this is important.

Just because on election night, you're gonna wake up the next day and the numbers are gonna change because they're processing more advanced mail ballots, they gotta process those provisionals, and then coming through the week, normally the kinda Board of Canvassers don't meet for a whole nother week.

And that's where many of the provisional ballots are gonna be decided on and judged.

And our election workers are also in that time trying to do a post-election audit, to make sure all the numbers and the equipment were right.

So they can't process all those ballots that night.

Other states like Pennsylvania, they can't start processing them till midnight after Tuesday.

If you remember in 2000 there was this blue curve and then it jumped and then went up.

Well that's that jump was, they counted all the mail ballots at night because they can't count 'em during the day, it's against the law.

They've tried to change the law, but Pennsylvania won't change it.

Similar with Georgia did get theirs changed.

And so and in that election, you have one candidate talking about advanced mail ballots, the other one saying, "Don't use advanced mail ballots."

Well, the one who said use it, most of those ballots are gonna go for that individual and that's why that jump happened.

So just because you see these things, doesn't necessarily mean the system's rigged.

It's just we like to say as Secretary of State, if you've seen one state's election system, you've seen one state's election system cause they're different on the way they process.

And you know, the founding fathers wanted it to be a federalism model all the way down to the local level.

And that's what it is, that's why some results come in different from different states.

And our counties, we should have a general idea by 10 o'clock at night that's our goal.

- Okay.

- Sometimes, you know if there's a glitch, you know like, "Hey, the printer won't print."

Then it may take a little longer.

But generally we try to get it in by 10 o'clock so that you, when you see it on 10 o'clock news, you're done.

- Okay, what you've described seems very comprehensive and like you do a lot of work here in Kansas to make sure that there's good certification of those votes before they're posted.

And you can give people a really good guess at least by 10 hopefully.

- Yeah so it's, I tell folks that's the temperature of the election.

The thermostat is after we certify vote, then that's when it... That is the actual setting.

That is what the actual election is.

This just on election night, you got an idea.

- [LeTiffany] Okay.

- Anticipate changes.

- Okay, okay and so what are you doing to then get them to anticipate those changes and certify the results that they know are final?

- So when it comes to the public, we're talking to you to talk to them like, "Hey, on election night, this is not final."

These will change and if it's close range, it may flip, it may flip back and forth a couple of times.

We saw that in the state treasurers race, some counties were going back and forth as they were processing ballots so anticipate that.

elections often have close races just because you're winning at one hour it might change, these things change.

But when it's certified the following week, then that county's done.

But then all the counties have to send those numbers to us and we have to check those to make sure they're good.

And then the State Board of Canvassers will meet, I think in early December or late November, I can't remember the Thanksgiving always throws a a wrench in it and then State Board of Canvassers are myself, the Attorney General, and the Governor.

And then I'll, we'll make a motion to certify it, we'll sign it, then it's done.

- The only thing that could change it after that is a lawsuit.

- Okay now, I know you've told us why advanced mail balloting is working, why advanced in person works.

What about those, when you go in there, you get a choice between using the voting machine that's electronic or voting by paper, is there... Are those trustworthy as well?

- So the voting machines are actual ballot marking devices.

Every county has paper ballot verification.

You get a paper ballot, you can make sure it says what you put on the touch machine like you're in Shawnee County.

The nice thing about the ballot marking devices, it's clear the voter intent.

Long time ago in Chicago, they'd be like, "Yeah, I'm gonna vote for the President.

Senator, yeah, I don't know who these people are."

And they cast their ballot.

Well people got paid to fill out the rest of that ballot.

And then ink mark is an ink mark.

But when you use the voting machines like in Shawnee County, it actually burns an X in the paper.

So now I say, look, I don't know about these judges.

I'm not gonna vote for 'em.

If somebody goes through and marks it with a pen, that's not gonna count because that's post.

That happened post facto after that ballot was printed.

So that's where it brings in election accountability.

If it is vote by paper and all of a sudden I'm the poll judge or I'm the Board of Canvasers.

And it's like, well, they voted for Trump, but then they scribbled it out and voted for Kamala Harris.

Was that after the fact or was that actually the voter who did that?

That's why these ballot marking devices ensure that your intent of how you want to vote actually gets counted.

And when you're just using a pen, it's you know... You just being nice and neat.

If you check the wrong one, let them know.

They'll shred it and give you another ballot.

Don't scribble on it.

And in some communities, they still vote by oval.

Make sure you use the marking device they give you.

Don't just pull the pen outta your pocket and fill in the oval, don't just put a line across it because again, we want to make sure we have a clear idea what your intent was, don't get sloppy with it.

- Well, Secretary Schwab, thank you so much for being here today and joining us for this really important discussion.

That's all the time we have for this episode of "IGI".

If you have any comments or suggestions for future topics, send us an email at issues@ktwu.org.

If you would like to view this program again or any previous episodes of "IGI", visit us online at watch.ktwu.org.

For "IGI", I'm LeTiffany Obozele and thank you for watching.

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