(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (air swooshing) - Hello and welcome to "Prairie Pulse."

Coming up a little bit later in the show, we'll see an amazing church restoration project going on in Buxton, North Dakota.

But first, joining me now is our guest, Murray Nash, the Cass County Election Administrator, here to talk about voting in the upcoming election.

Thanks for joining us today, Murray.

- My pleasure.

- As we get started, we always ask, tell folks a little bit about yourself and your background maybe.

- Sure.

I'm, as some people might identify, I'm Australian by birth.

I was born and grew up in Australia.

I had a career in the Royal Australian Navy for about 25 years before I relocated here.

And I'm here because I met my lovely wife while I was stationed in the Australian Embassy in Washington, DC.

We met, shortly afterwards, got married, relocated back to Australia, three children.

After that, my wife was feeling a bit homesick, so I left the service and we relocated here.

I went through the residency and naturalization process and I was very proud to receive my U.S. citizenship in 2018.

And here I am.

- Well, congratulations and welcome to the United States, although you've been here a while.

We're here to discuss voting.

Tell me what it is you do and what's your role in the upcoming election.

- Sure.

I work for the County, Cass County as the Election Administrator and under the broad direction of the Finance Director, I'm responsible for planning, executing, managing all aspects of the upcoming general election and subsequent election cycles.

- Yeah, of course.

Now you're Cass County and I assume many counties are structured very similar, but how many people in Cass County are involved and work with the election?

- Sure.

In the county itself we have two staff, myself and an Election Coordinator that are specifically assigned election roles.

But when it comes to an election, it's all hands to the pump, because as you'd appreciate, there's a lot more work than just two people can handle.

So the entire Finance Department is pretty much dedicated to election work at the moment.

And other parts of the county, IT in particular, are very heavily involved as well.

So it would be easily 20 plus people at any one time across the County working on the election.

- Yeah, and best I know, you can't have an election without volunteers, at the polling stations, especially.

How many volunteers do you have and how do you find them?

- Yeah, it's so true.

We do actually pay them.

It's a modest fee.

So they are compensated for their efforts.

It is very long hours, particularly election day.

It's a 12 hour day at the polls and there's preliminary and post voting activities there and the early voting period as well.

So we entered into a recruiting process earlier this year via a couple of channels.

We sent out applications, which you might have seen yourself.

In the tax assessments that went out, we asked for people to, express their interest that way.

And there was a couple of online aspects, online nomination processes on the Cass County website.

So we received a really gratifying number of interest from both those channels.

More than adequate to fill our 200 odd positions that we have to support the election.

- So 200 plus.

Okay.

- It's about that.

Yeah.

- About that.

Okay.

For people who don't know, how does one vote in Cass County and pretty much North Dakota?

Can you go through sort of the voting requirements?

- Sure, North Dakota is a non voter registration state.

I believe it's the only one in the country, but all you need to vote in North Dakota is to be a North Dakota resident over 18 and a U.S. citizen.

And you just need to have your valid form of ID.

You go to one of the vote centers that are in the county and you'll be able to exercise your democratic right.

- Well, I do want to take a moment 'cause of course we have a Minnesota viewers also watching.

So mention that in Minnesota you must register to vote and you can register the same day in Minnesota as you vote or online or of course by paper.

And I understand you just have to bring proof of an ID and address to the polling station and of course that's in Minnesota.

So what is the requirement when you go to a station in North Dakota?

What do I have to bring?

- You need a valid form of ID, state issued ID, which would be a driver's license, a non-driver's ID also issued by NDDOT.

A Tribal Identification Card, for those folks that have one of those, is also a valid form of ID and a Long Term Care Certificate for residents of assisted living homes and stuff like that.

They're valid IDs for voting.

Sometimes you might require supplemental information just to clarify address status, a bank statement, mortgage, rental agreement, something like that.

- [John] Electric bill or something.

- Something like that, utility, yeah.

Something along those lines and that would clarify your age, your residency and citizenship status in most cases.

- Mm-hm, well Murray, how about new Americans who have just become U.S. citizen?

- Yeah indeed.

Yeah, new Americans are perfectly entitled to vote in exactly the same way as any other U.S. citizen.

My recommendation to them would be to ensure that you update your citizenship status with NDDOT, 'cause that database is what feeds the North Dakota electoral system.

So you'd need to take your naturalization certificate or passport or whatever document they require to update your citizenship status.

And that will feed into the electoral system and it should just be plain sailing on election day.

It's what I had to do the first time I voted here.

- Well, there you go.

Can you talk a bit about yourself?

Being a New American, I think you said 2018.

- [Murray] Sure.

- So can you talk some about that?

- Yeah, when I was- - And even prior to, you- - Well, I couldn't vote prior to that, obviously.

But once I received my naturalization and my certificate, which is sitting at home in a nice frame, I just went to the DOT and I think I teamed it up with getting a REAL ID and you need to provide that sort of information to get your REAL ID.

And it's a pretty seamless process.

Take your paperwork along, your current driver's license, they'll take those forms and replace your driver's license.

It took me, I think I had to make an appointment if I recall correctly, and it took me probably half an hour.

- Mm-hm, well, you know, sometimes we're here in the media, but maybe you can clarify and you've kind of said it already, but if non-U.S. citizens are allowed to vote or not?

So what is the case of that?

Do non-citizens ever have a chance to vote?

- State law requires you to be a U.S. citizen to vote.

- Okay, it's my understanding that poll workers are not really supposed to ask for proof of citizenship.

Is that true?

- That is currently the situation.

Yeah.

They ask the three questions and if someone answers yes, we accept it.

- Okay.

What about if someone's homeless or down on their luck or whatever?

How do they vote if they don't have an address or maybe don't even have an ID?

- Yeah, you do need an ID to vote and there is provision for folks that are down on their luck or homeless as you've mentioned, John.

They can get a non-driver's ID from the NDDOT and that's free of charge if you're over 18.

So that would address that requirement and you'd need to go to the DOT You also need a Care Certificate from a North Dakota located shelter or some sort of facility such as that.

And that would allow you to get an ID, which would facilitate you being able to vote.

- Okay, obviously that is something, of course, you may not be able to get information out to those folks, but how can they identify or are there people out there letting people know that they have this option?

- I honestly couldn't answer that.

It's available on the NDDOT website, apart from that, I'm not sure.

- During the last two years, and we don't wanna get really into the politics of this, we heard a lot about election results can't be trusted or you know, voter fraud, election fraud and so on, things like this.

Can you talk about protocols you have in place to make sure the results are accurate?

- Yeah, sure.

It's a multifaceted approach, 'cause there's a number of avenues that could be used to create doubt in the electoral process.

I guess one part of it is the voter ID requirements.

So people are confident that the folks are qualified electors.

There's a stringent logic and analysis testing of the voting equipment prior to the elections happening.

And I've just come from part of that process today.

There's the chain of custody, which starts from the testing process all the way through to the closing of the polls.

So it's like you can track when equipment was opened and closed and who did it and stuff like that.

There's the post-election audit, which the Secretary of State's Office will direct.

Every county will be told to audit one precinct.

That also helps validate the processes.

There's also a system of checks and balances which are in place to minimize the opportunity for people to interfere with the ballots as they're transported.

Like no person is left alone with ballots at any time.

So there's always two and between them that does reduce the opportunities for any sort of nefarious acts insofar as you possibly could.

- Yeah.

So does Cass County and I guess North Dakota as a whole, is it mostly paper or electronic ballots or what?

Yeah, I can only speak to Cass County and we have two sorts of paper ballots.

You have your traditional ballot with all the races and the measures that's applicable on them, which you'd fill in with a pen.

And the other paper ballot is produced by a machine called Express Vote, which is basically a big dumb terminal and it's there to assist primarily folks that might need a little assistance with visual, hearing, quadriplegics can actually use it with one of those puff tools.

So the races are portrayed on the screen.

You would select your preferred candidate and or ballot measure as applicable.

It would come to the end, you're given an opportunity to review that range of selections that you've made and then you can go ahead and hit print.

It would print a paper ballot for you.

You then again have an opportunity to make sure that's what I want.

And then you would go and feed that paper ballot into the tabulating machine.

And that's how it would be counted.

The same as the handwritten one.

- What about, how do absentee and mail-in ballots work?

Can you talk about the process and have they already gone out?

- Oh, for sure.

Yeah.

There's a lot of people that vote absentee and you know, the folks that decide this weather isn't for them and need to get outta town.

Today.

I can really feel that.

So the absentee process, you need to apply for a ballot.

So you need to get an application.

There's a range of ways you can do that.

You can go to the Secretary of State website, vote.nd.gov and there's a portal there that'll give you a ballot to fill out.

You could come into the courthouse and pick one up.

Sorry, an application for a ballot, my mistake.

Come into the courthouse and pick up an application.

You can call the courthouse at the finance office, (701) 241-5600 and one of our staff, myself even possibly, would mail one out to you.

Or you can email us at elections@casscountynd.gov and we'll mail one out to you as well.

The important thing to know is the application needs to be filled out completely.

Like names, addresses, telephone numbers, everything it asked for.

You need to sign it and you need to return it to the courthouse, so we can then mail out a ballot.

The important thing to remember is that you need to get, at the absentee board where they go through the absentee ballots, they verify the signature on the application with the signature on the mail-in envelope that the ballot comes back in.

And if there there's mismatches, that's when the questions get asked.

And we find every election cycle that a lot of those mismatches are perfectly honest mistakes.

That a husband and wife might have mixed up their ballot and their application paperwork or something like that.

So yeah, that's something to be careful of and yeah.

- Okay.

What's the deadline for doing mail-in ballot?

- Well, an absentee ballot will be accepted if it's postmarked prior to 5:00 p.m. on the 7th of November.

You can drop it off at the courthouse up until closing on, correction, you can drop it off at the Dropbox outside the courthouse on the 2nd street.

- [John] Election day?

- No, on 5:00 p.m. prior to - [John] Prior to.

- Election day and I believe you can drop it in at the courthouse on election day.

- Okay.

Okay.

Well let's talk about your tenure at Cass County.

Have you ever experienced any voter fraud?

How much have you seen?

If any?

- úIn my time at Cass County, I've not seen any voter fraud and I'm not aware of any voter fraud that's occurred in Cass County.

- Hmm, okay.

But you kind of hit on this, but then, you know, how difficult is it to commit voter fraud?

'Cause everybody talks about it.

I say everybody, a number of people will always talk about it.

That people are committing voter fraud.

- It would have to be a deliberate conscious act.

It couldn't be something that was unintentional.

You'd have to make a false statement, at least you'd be signing your name to something that you know wasn't accurate.

On a bulk scale it would require significant resources to have the wherewithal to have any impact upon the electoral process.

So, yeah.

- Well, let's discuss maybe a little bit from your perspective or what you know, the importance of voting in this country and why should people take it seriously?

- Well, voting is the bedrock of the democratic system, you know, for the government in this country.

And if you want to have a say in your city, your county, your state or your nation, the way any of those levels of government run, manage, et cetera, you need to vote.

But ultimately though, under the U.S. law and constitution voting is up to the personal discretion of an individual.

So if you choose to vote, vote.

If you don't choose to vote, don't.

- Can you talk at all?

Can you tell me a little bit, are there significant differences in Australian ways and the U.S. ways of voting and things?

- Well, I guess the fundamental difference in the Australian electoral system is that it's mandatory voting.

In that if you are enrolled to vote, you are expected to vote.

And when you enroll, typically it's at, you can enroll before you're 18, but similar to here, it's you have to be 18 to vote.

And once you're in the role, you're in the role.

So yeah, you'll get "please explains" if you don't vote.

And there's small fines too, if your explanation's not reasonable.

- Oh really?

Okay.

Well have you, have you found it interesting?

Or what have you found of our voter turnouts here in the United States?

- You know, I haven't paid a lot of attention to it, but they are lower than Australian and it's mandatory and people don't like paying a small fine, even if it is a small fine.

So your turnout's gonna be higher.

- Well if someone is recently moved or their driver's license maybe still has the old address.

What do voters need in order to vote at the proper voting place?

- Well, first up, the back end of your question first, I'll address that.

Cass County uses vote centers.

So any qualified elector of Cass County can vote in any one of our 11 votes centers.

So it doesn't matter where you go, you can vote at any one of them, but you need to have your ID.

Make sure you have your ID and if you need your supplemental evidence, take that along with you and if you haven't corrected your address try and get to the NDDOT before election day or early voting day, if you're voting on early voting.

Early voting week, sorry.

And update your ID, correction, update your address, you can do it online, you can do it in person.

We do have QR codes, which we will have at the vote centers.

So if you have a smartphone you scan the QR code and update your address at the NDDTO website.

And when you get to the poll clerk to check in, you can just show them that and that's considered the supplemental information to update your address.

- Sure, do you have any last minute tips for people getting ready to vote?

- Make sure you have your ID.

Make sure you know where you're gonna vote and check the Wait Time apps which are available on the Cass County website.

That should be updated regularly and give you an idea of what the wait times at the various vote centers will be for you.

So you can plan your voting excursion.

- Yeah.

Murray, what's the best part of your job?

- I work with great people.

They are truly fantastic.

We couldn't work the elections as we are without them.

They're really good to work with.

- Yeah, well we are out of time, but if people want more information where can they go?

Who can they contact?

- Sure, they can come to Cass County Courthouse on 9th Street there, correction, 2nd Street.

And they ask for the finance department.

They can call the finance department at (701) 241-5600 and ask to speak to someone about the issue.

They can look at the Cass County website and under finance tab there's an elections tab as well.

There's a whole bunch of information there.

And the Secretary of State for the State of North Dakota also has a very helpful website at vote.nd.gov and there's lots of really useful information on that one as well.

- Well, Murray thank you and hope it answers some questions for some people out there.

- Yeah, I certainly hope I have as well.

- Stay tuned for more.

(upbeat music) Community leaders and citizens are restoring a 19th century Lutheran church in Buxton, North Dakota.

Buxton In Bloom is a local non-profit affiliate of Preservation North Dakota, which is dedicated to historic preservation.

The Grue Church project has received grants to help in its restoration so that it can serve as a wedding and art center venue.

(church bells ringing) (soft music) - As an architect, I've always had kind of a soft spot for the historic rural churches and I know we can't save 'em all, but I feel we need to to save some.

This one became most interesting 'cause we had a family connection.

It's not very big, it only seats about a hundred people on the inside, 120.

So it's not overwhelming or daunting to save the church.

So I just feel that we do need to save part of our history.

- I'm going to architecture school and I got really into kinda the architectural history of kinda the vernacular of the area with the churches and the old schools and university buildings and stuff like that.

I just think it's important to kinda keep that history.

- On March 17th, 1879, 63 individuals started Grue church.

They came here from Norway and they have a sister church in Norway called Grue.

So that's where it kinda got its name and it got its start.

In 2020, they were down to very few active families, probably four to six active families in the church here.

And they decided that it was time for them to close the church.

One of the gals that lives close by here, in the summertime, heard that they were talking about burning the church.

Her family is buried out here so she has a connection to the church and that's when she became interested.

Her name's Nancy Friese.

She'd called me and asked if I was interested, 'cause she knew I was an architect in Buxton.

But what she didn't realize when she called me is I love to do historic preservation work, but me and my husband were also married here and my in-laws are buried here.

We've been to a lot of activities.

My mother-in-law played piano here for almost 40 years.

Both of my sons Koy and Jace were baptized here.

So I had a connection too.

So when she was interested in saving the church and doing something with it, I jumped on board.

So the Buxton In Bloom, the board of directors, we got together and we said, "Yes, we're in."

(vacuum swooshing) (workers chatting) Challenges are always finding the funds to do the work and finding those people that are willing to donate and also finding people who are willing to donate their time too.

- There's no running water.

So anytime we need any sort of hot water, it's drive over to our farm, which is a couple miles and load up a plastic storage container that we fill full of warm water.

That's always kind of been a struggle as far as keeping it clean.

I used to clean with my grandma here when I was younger and same issue there.

You'd get your bucket of hot water, so you can mop the floors, from two miles away.

Which sounds kinda insane.

- We plan on having two events here every year.

Last year we had an event in July we did fresh lefse on a Blackstone grill.

My mom, my sister and one of my sister's friends.

We made lefse and lemonade and we had kind of a closing ceremony.

And the other event is we received a grant from the North Dakota Council on the Arts and we had Waddington Brothers.

They're from Southwestern North Dakota and they came and performed a concert here the last Saturday in October.

And that's gonna be another event that we wanna do yearly.

Kind of an end of October Fall Concert.

- It's been used for weddings for probably since it's been built.

So kind of continuing that use, but also I envision kind of the the future concerts.

It creates kind of an interesting acoustical setting with all the tin surrounded by it.

The previous concert that we had, we had a pretty good out.

- Since the pandemic, we're seeing people just wanting to have more of those type of events close to home.

We used to have to travel to do those type of events.

So having some cultural events closer to home right here in North Dakota and Western Minnesota, it's just a perfect spot.

Our thought is to maybe have visiting artists.

Traveling artists could probably come and stay here for a couple weeks at a time and do some of their artwork at this location and maybe we can have an art exhibit too.

We would like to see it done in three to five years.

That's kind of our goal.

Our main goal this year is to get the roof redone.

We do have a grant from the North Dakota State Historical Society that we're still looking for some grant funds for matching so that we can keep the water out.

We're gonna be painting the outside.

So we're just really excited and thankful that we have other groups that are interested in being part of our project.

- There's definitely some nostalgia.

Sitting in the pews, when I was younger I used to sit there and shuffle my feet back and forth, 'cause they never touched the ground.

So I get some memories like that.

Or watching my grandma play the organ here.

There have been a couple times where I've played the piano for Sunday church service.

The second I walk through that door, it just kind of floods my memory full of times like that.

- I feel calm when I come to Grue Church.

It just has this pleasant, calm, peaceful feeling.

It's quiet, it's serene.

It has the nice backdrop of the coulee with the evergreen trees.

And you can see it from the highway when you drive by too.

It's a little off in the distance, but it still has that nostalgic look.

(soft music) - Well, that's all we have on "Prairie Post" for this week.

And as always, thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funded by the North Dakota Council on the Arts and by the members of Prairie Public.

(upbeat music fading)