We're going to get started in just a minute. >> There's some seats still in the front part of the room. I can see probably five or six up front here. What a crowd. What a topic. Guess we're interested. >> Just let a couple people make their way in and then we're going to get started. >> Okay, looks like we're good to go. All right. Well, good evening everyone. Welcome to Truth, Trust, and the Ballot Box uh on election security. We're so glad that you're here today and we're just thrilled to see this large of a group here. Um it's exciting to see you all here. My name is Chris Olsen. I'm a member of the League of Women Voters Roseville area. Um and I'm also the current president of the Roseville League. Today's program is brought to you by the four leagues of Ramsey County, which are the New Brighton area, St. Paul, White Bear Lake area, and Roseville area. If you're not familiar with the League of Women Voters, we are a nonpartisan volunteer grassroots civic organization with over a 100red years of experience educating voters, advocating on issues, and working toward reforms that strengthen our democracy. If you'd like to learn more about the league, we have a table set out right outside the door and you can stop by there on your way out. There'll be people that could answer your questions as well. Tonight, we are pleased to welcome three experts in the area of election security who will share insights from their unique perspectives. First, we'll hear from Bill Eblad who is from the Secretary of State's office, so that state level. Then we invited David Triplet from Ramsey County Elections. And then uh Robin Johnson is here. And Robin has served as a head election judge uh for the last several elections. If you uh we are planning to have time for a few questions at the end. Uh so the way we're going to handle that is there'll be a couple people. You'll see them on the side of the room. Make eye on contact with them. if you have a question and they'll get you a card and then get that card back to them. And then at the end of the night, we'll um take a few of those that we can um done before we're we have to actually leave the library because they close. So um we'll do the best we can with that. We also have Nine North here. So if you have friends that couldn't make it tonight, we're thrilled that they're here uh to do a professional level recording of our event tonight. and that will go up on their page and our all of our I believe uh all four leagues YouTube channel pages as well uh and look for that probably in a week or so. So you can always uh send people out there to watch as well. So and with that uh I think we will go ahead and just get started and start hearing from the people we've invited to be here. So please join me in welcoming all our speakers and Bill Eklad to start. Well, thank you all for taking the time out of your evenings to be here tonight. Uh I am thrilled to be here. I had a chance to be in this room uh with the league about a year and a half, maybe going on two years ago for a similar presentation. So, um if some of you here have were here that night or have heard some of this before, I apologize. It's not all uh rehash material, but there is some overlap maybe to some of our our things that we've said before. I'm also really thrilled to be here um with uh David and Robin because I think what you'll hear in my certainly in my remarks. Uh this is very much a team sport to try to figure out how to keep election safe and secure in Minnesota doesn't happen at any one office, any one level, jurisdiction. It takes all hands. It takes a lot of people uh involved at all levels. And so to be able to come at this topic tonight uh from the three echelons that really make it possible to defend and protect elections uh that being state, county, and municipal or local level. Um you'll get a full sense of who kind of does what and what each of us tries to contribute to that process. So very grateful to be here with you both tonight as well. Uh let's go ahead and get started with um what we're going to talk about. So I'm going to represent the state perspective. Uh uh certainly uh you probably all are familiar with my my boss uh Secretary Steve Simon. He's very vocal on the topic of um election security. And I think some of what you'll hear me say will echo and closely align with things that he's he's fond of saying as well. Um and and I think there's a a reason that we are are going into this season with one both eyes wide open, but also feeling like we have some sense of of how we're going to get through it. Um, and it's because he's he's put us in a good spot with perspective and leadership and guidance. So, certainly grateful for for all of that. What I want to start with though is a couple of things to kind of level set um the expectations, if you will. So, um there is a lot going on with election security. I don't have to tell you all that. If you're here tonight, it's because you're interested in the topic. You're following it in the media. You're reading. You're learning. Um and that's all very important. and you know that it's complex and and there's a lot of moving pieces and variables and things that just make it a very difficult thing to try for anyone to get their hands around. Um you probably um are not going to leave here tonight with with all the answers. In fact, I'm sure you're not because no one here has all the answers. Um, so know that this is more like one of those college courses where you kind of get different perspectives and you survey and hear and learn, but you're not going to come out of here with an equation that you plug in the numbers and have a secure election. It's not going to work that way. Um, but I do hope that what you'll get from this is the fact that um there is a strategy, a perspective, an approach if you will, that our office is trying hard to um convey and work with the local election administrators to take into the busy election season ahead that gives us a chance to be ready for whatever is going to happen. Whatever that is, we don't really know. There's a lot of things that can uh and will come up. Um, but we think we have a way to kind of go in again, eyes wide open, and be ready to respond and react and get through whatever it is that we face. So, I also want to uh talk about the difference between election security and election integrity because we hear those words used interchangeably a lot and we don't think of them interchangeably, at least not in the election security work that we do at the Secretary of State's office. Um, we think of security very much in the same way a bank or a school or a government building thinks of security. We are protecting people and processes and information and facilities from people that might want to do bad things to any of those or from other factors that might might end up disrupting any of those. And so it's that simple. It's not uh it's not the other things that are coming in sort of as stray voltage in the discussion of elections which you could call it integrity somewhere that blends with misinformation and I'm not going to try to sort all that out for you. Um but know that when we talk about election security it is security with a capital S and not all the other stuff. We're not going to talk to you about vouching. We're not going to talk to you about voter ID. that's, you know, those are policy things that are gaining a lot of attention and headlines, but that's not what we put in the bin of election security. So, just know that as you're listening to that, uh, and we can certainly, uh, sort through any distinction that might require more, uh, elaboration later on during question and answer time. So, with that, sort of as the the going in premise, um, this election security stuff is everywhere, right? Again, you're here because you are familiar with the topic, you're interested in it, you're surrounded by it, in what you're seeing and reading. uh you know uh publications, social media, TV um it's it's kind of everywhere and um again it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. It's used in ways the term itself is used in ways to sort of incite and insense and charge people up and make you nervous and make you subscribe to this or read that. That's all kind of by design the way media works and that's fine. Um, but just know that uh that that that no one source has all the answers as I've said and there's a lot out there. And I think what I'd like you to think about is how did we get to this point? How did we get to the fact where suddenly everyone's interested in election security where it's a topic that is used to get people riled up and and drive action. Um, and really uh we have a little bit of a sense of sort of the legacy, if you will, of of when this kind of became its own thing. Um, so you know, prior to 2016, elections just kind of happened, right? Now, that's an oversimplification. These two over here are going, "No, they did not." But for most of us who weren't in the elections business, uh, we know there's people that did really hard work to pull elections off. It's a lot of organization and administration, but it was about getting to the results, right? It's like who won, who lost. You'd have some controversy over close races. Think of the year 2000, the the the Bush Gore presidential race. But but we were interested in the results and and and that was the story. The process wasn't really understood by people outside of the business. It wasn't scrutinized all that much. We tuned in on election night. We watched the the the polls come in and then we talked about who won or lost. That was elections. 2016 things got a little different. And really what happened uh we had a foreign adversary cough Russia uh who was interested in trying to manipulate US elections in through the use of cyber means in the cyber domain. Now um we know that they were not particularly successful. There was no manipulation of vote counts or ballots or any of that. But for the first time uh eyes got opened on what is in the realm of the possible in terms of election manipulation by technical means in this case from a foreign country and that made a whole lot of people in positions of power really nervous. Uh Washington DC the federal government put a lot of attention in the wake of the 2016 election on figuring out what should be done to tighten things up. a lot of money was put into it, a lot of uh personnel resources put into it to try to get the the right uh methods and means in place to protect against that type of intrusion. So, uh along about 2018 or so, Minnesota uh received some funding for from the federal government to start putting some of those measures in place here in in our state. Uh, and in 2019, the Secretary of State's office began the program um that I'm here to represent to to focus specifically on working with our local partners to be able to secure uh elections for Minnesota voters. U so that 2020 election, however, uh was one where um we went into it thinking the big concern was going to be cyber threats. We thought that everyone's eyes were open now. every bad guy in the world with a keyboard is going to try to manipulate our election over the internet. And we had a lot of robust defenses in place to try to defend against that. Um David could could attest that my first uh goound here I told him to be ready for that. I told all election officials, this is what you're going to have to be prepared for because this is what election security is and this is the thing that's going to matter. It didn't happen. 2020 uh the election very little cyber activity. There are a lot of reasons for that. A lot of it to do with the federal focus uh at that level kind of batting down those threats if you will uh in cyerspace before they ever got within view of of US elections uh systems or infrastructure which is great. Um but what did happen in 2020 um was that uh we had a very different kind of election and many of you were probably part of it. Um but the the what had to be done to conduct an election during a global pandemic was something that hadn't been thought about all that much prior to that and hadn't been done certainly uh and invited a lot of scrutiny on changes that had to be made and uh adjustments that were required to be able to pull off an election in that environment. And those changes and adjustments brought a lot of baggage, a lot of conspiracy theories, a lot of questions, a lot of people who thought that they, you know, caught things going on that they didn't catch going on and all of that. So that was sort of the legacy of the 2020 election was that now you had this focus on the process. Who's doing what? Is it foreign countries? Is it election officials? Is it corrupt politicians? Somebody's pulling the strings to deliver results that I didn't like. Who is it? Let's figure it out. Why is that going on? All of that is was new ground in the wake of the 2020 election. Uh and what that kind of simmered into uh in the wake of January 6th and other types of those uh activities was concern for the physical security of our elections, our our officials conducting them, uh the facilities, people standing in line to vote, what could happen in the way of threats to those people, uh and what should we be ready for uh going into the 2022 midterms, for example. uh we really were we're were starting now to think of elections in terms of not only all the cyber security that we had coming out of those earlier elections but the physical sec security concerns as a result of all these questions that were being asked about elections and processes and who's doing what uh within them. So uh that got us to 2024 and I'm going to take a quick sip of water here. I feel like I'm drying out. 2024, which wasn't that long ago, um, brought all of that stuff forward. So, the cyber stuff was still there. We still had to be ready to contend with that. The physical stuff was still there. That wasn't going away. We had to be ready for that. Um, but we also had sort of a combination of all this different stuff coming together where we had threats arriving to election offices via email from outside of our state. Is that legit? Is it valid? is a is a bomb threat from a Russian uh IP address legit? Do you clear the polling place for that? These are thought processes we never had to think about before. Um we call them hybrid threats because it's sort of this mix of like a physical threat that comes over the cyber domain. Um you could have, you know, it's not all that different in some ways than a telephone threat, but it it does have this sense of distance that changes the calculus and how you react and how you prepare. So this notion of hybrid threats u was something that was new to us in the wake of the 2024 election. Uh we also had some white powder incidents. These are like physical mail that arrived to elections facilities um that had uh suspicious white substance inside of it. Um we don't have uh examples where there was actually at least in Minnesota where there's actually poison or anthrax or any of that stuff. But you don't know, right? You you have to be ready for the worst. And so we spent a lot of time and effort talking about this threat and this concern which was seen uh around the 2024 election cycle and making sure that we were preparing elections officials for mail handling procedures to be able to contend with that type of concern. So this combination of threats being married together in different different ways was sort of how we uh summarized what we learned in the 2024 cycle. And then last year, again, not a significant election year as an off year, but really, uh, for those of us doing election security things, um, the churn at the federal level really was what we were contending with and still are to this day. Um, so I said in the wake of 2016, the federal government put a lot of energy and resources and focus into election security. Um, that all kind of went away last February. There's very few people spending time and energy at it. U, we don't deal a lot with federal partners the same way that we did. um they're still doing some things more um sort of wrote cyber security things but uh there's not a lot of people talking to us about election security uh at the federal partner level. So that's the change that we've had to adjust to uh in the last year and figure out who are our partners today that we can rely on to provide us with help and information when we need them. How is that different than it was a year or two ago? That sort of is what summarizes the past year in in our election security world. And then for this year and and the season ahead, a great big question mark. As I said opening up, we just don't know. Um I I mentioned we try we have tried to predict uh I say we, it's really me trying to predict and tell our locals what they ought to be worried about. Uh and our batting average is abysmal. We've been wrong each cycle basically. So when we told David it was going to be cyber, it wasn't cyber. when we told him there were going to be, you know, bad guys with baseball bats at his polling sites to cause physical harm, that didn't happen either. Uh, and so we've decided we're done predicting. That's not working. We're not going to be right. And we got to have a better way. Uh, and so sort of where we've landed um is this notion of an allhazards preparedness approach. And what we want our local election officials from the county on down to the municipalities to be thinking about is what what do I need to do literally to be ready for anything? Now that doesn't mean that you are going to make a list of every possible scenario that could happen and you know build out steps of for every one of those. It's about the common principles of preparing, planning, training and then reacting uh that you can identify that will serve you with whatever situation arises. So that's about um figuring out who your partners are in advance for the wider range of things that could happen to you. Um, we speak a lot to county election officials about communications and knowing who you can reach and how you can reach them or how you can reach them if the power's out or the cell phone towers are out, but just thinking through the general processes that you can rely upon to respond and react to whatever might happen to you. So, that's um how we're going into this year ahead. Um, it doesn't depend upon um specific preparations for specific contingencies. There's some of that. We'll talk about that in a minute. Um but mostly we are focused on on readiness and preparedness at a high broad level and focusing on those things that crosscut whatever the emergency or situation might be. The other thing that goes handinhand with that really and we call it our secret weapon is this notion of collaboration that no local election office be it municipality or county level should feel that they have to figure any of this out alone. That this is as I started off the presentation with very much a team sport. There is a wide assortment and array of partners who want to help, who are here to help. It is a different dynamic of partnerships than it was a year ago. I'll say that. But nonetheless, there are resources that can be drawn upon. and knowing who they are, what they can do, and how to reach them in advance, uh, is one of the key um, tools, secret weapons if you will, that we encourage election officials to think through so that they're not fumbling through a a website trying to find who to call for some situation that that pops up on or around election day. U,, we advocate very strongly this notion of sharing situational awareness across all of our Minnesota jurisdictions. So, um, we link together all of the county elections offices in a collaborative platform. If any of you use Microsoft Teams, it looks a lot like that, but it's an always on capability. Uh, when we see something at our level that we think is of interest to our our our county partners, we share it in there. We ask them to share things they're seeing. Um, there's comments and opinions and things, free flow, all of that in there. uh we encourage them especially in that ramp up to an election event. We consider the election event to be about the 10 days prior and the day or so after. Um but in that time frame, we encourage them to pay special attention to what's being shared in there because that's their first indication of something going on uh that they can get a head start on preparing for. So, um, we like to say if you're the county that experienced that thing, whatever it is, you didn't get the benefit of the head start, uh, preparing that. But if you share it, the other 86 get a head start in how to respond and react. And so, your odds are pretty good that you're going to you're going to come out ahead by looking and watching and and paying attention what others are seeing if we get uh uh active collaboration in there, sharing information. Um, and then we certainly uh as we as we share those things, we're we're using a lot of different sources. Um we have uh partners across state government through you know the IT cyber security side, emergency management side, law enforcement uh and the Minnesota Fusion Center are a few of our strongest partnerships. Um we deal with uh some academic and nonprofit partners who are really good at feeding us things that they're seeing out there in the world that may or may not end up being factors in a Minnesota election. Um some of our private sector vendor partners are also really good. They have an interest in making sure that elections are safe and secure. Think the Microsofts, the Googles, the big tech companies who own a lot of the infrastructure that's used to manage and share information. And I don't want to completely say that there aren't federal partners that help either. Um we do still have a really strong partnership with the United States Postal Investigative Service, for example, on mail related threats and some others as well that that are still um you know, good people trying to do the right thing during a difficult environment and time. But again uh the bedrock principle of our approach is to have that idea of let's be ready for anything. What can we do to minimize the response and reaction time to adjust to whatever circumstance might pop up during that election event window and go into it with that perspective. uh the blue uh box, all hands secure elections 26. That's sort of our election security um catchphrase, if you will, uh as we go into the season ahead and I think encompasses the that core principle of thinking of this as a team endeavor and leveraging partners to be able to to do what we can to stay ahead of the concerns that we may have to deal with. A little bit about how we do all this. Um I mentioned the importance of collaboration. Um, our team, and there's three of us on our election security team at the Secretary of State's office, um, is very much about the relationships that underpin this business. So, we are out there on the road. We're traveling across the state visiting election officials in their their home county offices, not just during election season, but all the time to one get them get a sense of who they are, what they're worried about, but also so that they get to know us. and we want them to feel comfortable communicating with us, whether it's in that online platform or whether it's a phone call or an email. Uh even if they're not sure what they're looking at, we want to help them solve the problems they're seeing. We want to answer their calls and work with them. And we want them not to be afraid to call us with a question or a concern. We don't want them to think about, oh, is this worth bothering someone at the Secretary of State's office? No, it is worth calling us. It's not a bother. We're here to help you figure it out. And I think by getting out there in the field, shaking hands, meeting people at, you know, we we hit all 87 counties in the run-up to the 24 election, uh it it lowers that barrier and makes it easier for communications to happen uh across the state. Um we hold statewide exercises that focus on election security. So um we will invite our county officials up to Camp Ripley. We'll have a couple day uh schedule of events to include these we call tabletop exercises. So, it's scenarios with injects and make them kind of think through and talk through what they're doing and thinking about at each step there. And we have some other training activities that we work into that. Um, we provide some briefs from our critical partners on what service and support they provide. And then last year we kind of did a road show version of that where we took it out to five different six different locations around the states around the state where we used National Guard armories and we uh picked kind of six corners of the state if that makes sense and invited the neighboring counties in that region to come and and spend half a day with us at the National Guard Armory to do that same type of activity. Um, we wanted to to do it last year, not because there was a lot of election activity last year, but just to keep everyone's head in the game during an off year so that you're not starting from zero in a busy midterm election year like this year. You're touching election security maybe not every day, but at least every every month or certainly every year in the form of one of these exercises so that you're not having a cold start during a busy election year. Um we do produce uh some materials from our office guide books and handbooks and things uh related to security processes and procedures that are useful to the counties and we make them available. Um and then um we also I mentioned the the array of partners we deal with that bottom kind of inset displays a number of the partners uh some of the federal agencies some of our um associations the national association of secretaries of state and the national association of election directors are two of our more active ones there. uh as well as some of our state partners represented as well. So again, it's all about tying us all together, sharing a focus, sharing an approach, and then everyone sort of buying into that and contributing so that we can no one has to feel like they're figuring this stuff out by themselves. A couple of things, and this is my last slide before I'll turn it over here, but um I said we can't be sure. We don't go very far out on a limb to predict what anyone should have to worry about, but there are certain trends that have sort of been part of the last couple of election cycles that it seems prudent to us to kind of be more ready for than than not. Um the bomb threats are ones that that have kind of gained popularity, for lack of a better word, um because they're cheap and easy. Um you know, you're seeing it happen in schools now. you're seeing it happen elsewhere where it's just too easy to throw that in an email or a text and uh and it causes uh you know chaos and reaction and response. So, um we are definitely uh encouraging our our county and local election officials to think about how they will respond to that. And that is a complicated uh set of considerations. As I mentioned, it's not as simple as bomb threat arrives, clear the building. You have to go through some headwork on is it credible or not? working with law enforcement, talking that through. Do we have any sense of where it came from? Does it convey any sense of the local environment or the building or the people, or is it just some generic thing that could have come from anywhere? Um, this also gets to the heart of that collaboration. A lot of the bomb threat activity that was witnessed in 2024 was the same message that went to election offices across the country. So, we had indication that uh election officers in New Jersey were getting a bomb threat email. we had the email and we could say if you see this email think twice about how you want to respond because it's going all over the country. It may or may not be directed specifically at your at your facility. So there's some of that type of perspective that helps shape and frame how decisions get made to respond and react. U the white powder incidents I mentioned earlier um they've been around for a couple cycles now. We've really ramped up I think awareness and preparedness for that threat. Um it's just one of those that's cheap and easy. Uh the US Postal Service is getting better at uh helping us um identify suspicious packages and so forth, but um people find that an easy way to to sew some chaos in the elections process. Likewise with suspicious packages there. Um the incendiary devices and dropboxes is not one we've seen here, but it has it is one that has sort of become a trend in some of the states that leverage dropboxes a bit more than we do in Minnesota. Um some counties still use them here, but they're not all that common. And so that's less of a concern but still one we want to be mindful of. And then certainly cyber attacks um you know they continue to be a concern for county governments not specifically or only in the lane of elections but they have uh this ransomware component for county governments who deal with a lot of you know financial property taxes and whatnot. And so there's some financial motives for cyber bad actors to try to uh cause trouble for counties in specifically. And so we work with county IT folks to be aware of those threats. If a county IT network goes down because of a ransomware threat that has nothing to do with elections, but it happens to take place a week before elections, it's now an issue for elections. And so we think uh that being aware of sort of the the election schedule and timing and awareness of sort of that environment for our IT colleagues can help them um minimize the impact upon those events on elections as they go about their business. Um, we also are mindful of sort of this notion that as Minnesota gains prominence for whatever reason, think the activity here in January and last winter. Um, but also if our governor is running for vice president or whatever puts Minnesota in the limelight raises the risk of threats towards our um our our our facilities, our networks from outside of the state. people who never would have thought about doing anything to or against Minnesota are now reading about us in their local paper and go, "Huh, maybe I can do something there." So, um, as that activity gains national or global prominence, um, we have to be more careful and more ready for things bad things to happen here. Um, and then I mentioned a little bit about the tabletop exercises. that's on the list here because um we've been um you know advocating it and conducting them from our office level and we're seeing it take hold among our local partners who are now doing their own type of tabletop activities at their level you know informal but again just to kind of drive that readiness and that uh perspective of prep preparation that we think will serve them well to be ready for um for election day. So I've probably chewed up more time than I was allotted. I'm going to get off the stage right now and turn it over to good friend and colleague David Triplet from Ramsey County. I should say David and I were just talking. We did an event with the league almost I think five or so years ago. Um it was held at a brewery back then. So maybe you guys need to talk to your uh organizers and see if that's something to go back to. >> Well, thanks Bill. Uh, I was also going to mention that event. I think that was the last time I've been before the league. Uh, but I always appreciate coming. Uh, there's a few familiar faces here. I'm guessing we have a few election judges uh, in this room. And, uh, who knows, maybe 20 years ago I trained you as an election judge. I don't even know if this is on. >> There we go. There we go. >> Uh, it's more of a safety tool to hold while I walk up here than anything. Um, so again, thanks for having me here. Thanks for discussing this topic. Obviously, I'm going to discuss election security. Uh but if you're is interested in in all the other election issues, uh I did give a presentation to our uh board of commissioners a few weeks ago on all election topics going into the 2026 year. Or you can just call me uh during the workday uh and I can answer any questions you have. I love just to talk about this stuff. So uh as Bill said, I am the deputy auditor in the county. So if you want to complain about your property taxes, uh you can also talk to me about that uh afterwards. Not the rate. uh I don't set the rate but we also do collecting but the auditors throughout the state of Minnesota are the head election officials for their county. So you will see the auditors involved at least in Minnesota in a lot of election duties. Some of you probably come down to the county office to vote because that is one of our duties or you vote in this room uh which is the busiest early voting location in the state of Minnesota. So yeah I think you got the busiest mall and the busiest movie theater too. So, uh, Roseville is a great community. Uh, and I have family here, so it's good. So, quickly, I'm going to talk about preparing for emergencies. As you heard Bill say, that's really become a core part of securing our elections is we were doing the whack-a-ole thing. Um, and the best thing we found was what how are we going to respond to any emergency? Uh and then I'll talk about how we secure the the finer parts of our election systems. The voting system, the ballot counters, the voter registration database, how we secure voted ballots, and then how we provide transparency. Yes, election security and integrity are two different topics and often get overlapped. Um but there is a sense of security in providing people transparent information. Obviously, the unknown is a big uh factor in fear. And so, if we can remove some of that unknown, um we find ourselves in a good position, too. I like to start with this uh uh chart uh symbol. I guess elections touch many different factors. So, for example, on election day, we're in this room voting. Uh well, this is a bad example because the county owns this building, but let's say we're at a church in Roseville. We're in a few churches. We don't own that building. So, we're not in charge of if they pay the bills. We're not in charge of them unlocking the doors. We're not in charge of them um plowing the parking lot if it uh snows on election day. We operate uh in commercial facilities. We use technologies. We use communications. We rely on law enforcement, emergency services. There's many factors that go into securing an election that we're not that we don't have a say in. Um so, how do we prepare for this? Again, we're talking about security today, but we got to be prepared for snowstorms. Uh we got to be prepared for power outages or we got to be prepared for events that disrupt the polling place. Uh uh lockdowns at schools or uh other various uh security threats that we have. So, in Ramsey County, we've set up a crossount emergency response team. This team generally comes together about a month, month and a half before the election. And then in the leadup, we meet every day. We might not have things to talk about every day, but it's a a quick check-in to make sure that uh any threat or any anything going on uh is dealt with. And this team is our emergency management team. So, every county across the state does have an emergency management office in Ramsey County with the capital in our backyard. Uh we become more of a target and we have a very uh robust emergency management team at the county. Um but we have our communications office. If there's an emergency, we need to communicate out to the public, to the voters, uh to the media to get information out. Uh in an emergency, you still got to follow the law. And so, we rely on our attorneys to, you know, advise us how can we, you know, respond to this while, you know, guaranteeing people's right to vote, your access to vote, but also providing a secure uh election day. Uh and then, you know, public works, property management uh are very important because we got to physically get to these polling locations. We've had issues with polling places. Uh, we had one on Highway 96 where we needed park and rec or excuse me, public works to come out and and create new signs to inform voters of some changes that had to happen right before election day. Um, but the biggest thing we've been really doing is that coordination with local, state, and federal partners. I won't touch much on that because uh, Bill obviously discussed that coordination and that discussing, but it's real valuable to hear what's happening in Henipin County, what's happening in Washington County. Uh when I first met Bill, I think it was 2019. We were at a uh event in Washington DC about this topic. Uh and we did a tabletop exercise and if you didn't communicate with your partners, you would not have thought there was a threat. But when different officials started communicating, you pieced together and you witnessed a very obvious threat. So that communication piece has become very important. A big thing in preparing for emergencies was when the voting system was deemed critical infrastructure. I think that was in 2017 and that was responding to all these 2016 cyber attacks. I think in 2012 both the Obama campaign and the Romney campaign had boasted we were we were hacked by foreign adversaries and that really prompted this discussion. Um and so when 2017 when they deemed our voting system as critical infrastructure that's the same as your dams or your power grid or other critical infrastructure in the country. We got a lot of resources and a lot of those resources were uh training. They were tabletops. They were surveys. We had uh the FBI come into our office in 2017 and do a physical security review. Excuse me 2018 perhaps. Uh but they did a physical security review and it was things about do you have bulletproof glass? Do you have um on your computer stations? Do you have your docs blocked so somebody can't put in a thumb drive without you seeing? Um and so we got a lot of those features uh from the federal government when they deemed our voting system critical infrastructure. As Bill said, some of those have waned over the last few years. Uh but there are still some services such as sharing of information uh that are still available to us. All right. So how do we secure a voting system? Um, the voting system can be a big word. Uh, but I'll define the voting system here today as the machine that counts your ballots. There's a lot more parts to a voting system, but for the voters, it's that putting your ballot through the ballot counter and that machine that counts and reports your votes. So, how do we secure the voting system in Minnesota, at least in Ramsey County? So, the the the main thing we're doing right now today is we're upgrading to the new 2.0 federal standard. So to use a voting system, it has to be certified by the federal government and by the Secretary of State's office. And there's standards that you have to meet. And in 2022, they passed the new voting system guidelines, the 2.0 standards. And a lot of those features are security, two-factor authentication, um encryption, non-network systems, redundancies to the system. So in Ramsey County, we are actively working to upgrade to the 2.0 system uh going into 2027, but we're not there today. So, what are we doing? Well, currently in Ramsey County, we use a non-ET network system. Some of you might know that as your results are really late in Ramsey County. Uh, that is because we have a non-ET network system. I'm not going to get into all our results reporting, but I will say we might be the f the last to start, but we're one of the first to finish. So, yes, the results in Ramsey County are a little delayed, but if you look at the time stamp, uh, we generally finish first. And what we're reason we're doing that is we don't have a uh modems in our machines in Ramsey County. We have very small geography so we benefit from that. But at the end of the night the teams of election judges and I see a few here. Uh you seal up those ballots as a team. You all do an audit. You verify as a team that what was put through the ballot counter matches the check-ins on the roster matches what gets sealed in the ballot box. Once that box is sealed, the teams of judges bring it down to our office. They're also bringing the sealed memory card. If you've looked closely when you vote, you'll notice there's a tamperresistant seal on your ballot counter. The main focus of securing the voting system and is ensuring that the system hasn't been tampered with through the life of its uh through its life cycle and that is done through a chain of custody. I think Robins might talk about the chain of custody a little here so I won't get into that. Um, but that's a main component of our our security of our voting system. non-networked, secured by election judges, verified by election judges, and physically delivered to our office. So there can be no electronic interference. So as much as the conversation in 2016 through 2020 was cyber security, we nullified that threat because the only way you can get to our system is through the AC power. There is no network, no connectivity to it. As a result, you do get your results a little later, but in Ramsey County, you're getting a result that's been audited. That's not going to change. And our goal is when when we leave our office at night, that's the official result. Every ballot absentee election day has been reported and you can go on and it's never going to change. And that's our goal. We also keep our voting system in a secure environment. I discussed we have an audible chain of custody. Anybody who's been in our secure voting system room, I can give you the log of everybody who's accessed that at least going back to 2020. Um, and we have a chain of custody for this. An audit log is great, but if you're not checking it, it doesn't mean anything. If Bill's not supposed to be in my secure room and he's signing the audit log and I'm never looking at it, I don't know if he's been in there or not. Um, so audit logs are great, chain of custody is great, but you have to be reviewing it. You have to be, uh, making sure who's coming in, who has access, uh, is continually auditable. We also get data requested a lot for can we have your access logs and see who and people have scrutinized who has and who has not had access uh to these secure areas. As you're probably all aware though, the most secure thing you can do for your voting system is have paper ballots. I'm sure all of you have been around when there's been a recount or a questioning. And for any of you who've been around in a recount, they're a great form of security and transparency because you're auditing the voting system. And if you don't trust the result of the voting system, you can go back and count the paper ballots, which we do in Minnesota for recounts or in a post-election review. Physical security is really what we're relying on for our voting system. And I talked about the teams of bipartisan election judges. Again, for those of you who've worked in polling places, it is a team of bipartisan judges working together to secure the ballots, audit them, and get them brought back down to our auditors. Um, and then finally, the voting system is auditable. It's publicly auditable. you don't trust the result, you can data request my audit office for the cat's vote record and you can audit the election on your own. You can see how the machine treated ballots and how it counted ballots. Obviously, your ballot is is is private. Um, but the cast vote record is is a publicly auditable um record, electronic record uh that you can use to review the voting system. And then, as I said, recounts in the post-election review are another way to verify the accuracy of the system. So in Minnesota in 2006 um there was a a professor out of Harvard and he had basically showed you could manipulate uh ballot counters in certain ways. And so there was the first kind of real thought of how do we trust the ballot counters and so in Minnesota uh there was a group that put forward a post-election review and after every state election we open a subset of the ballots and handc count those to ensure that the ballot counters are counting accurately. And if that review finds a one half of one, I think it's a one quarter now of 1%, it triggers a recount. So the most secure part of our voting system is the fact that we don't actually need the system to count our results. Yes, the system's great. It gives you quick results, accurate results on election night. Worst case scenario, we can rehand count our paper ballots. There's a lot more into securing the voting system, but we have limited time. So, um, these are really just the high points. All right. How do we secure our voter registration database? This is probably the one in the news the most. Uh, there's been a lot of attention on voter registration databases. Um, at the high level, the Minnesota's voter registration system is uh supported and produced by the Secretary of State's office, but it's the county's responsibility to manage the data and access to that system. So access to the system is granted to verified users on verified devices. So first the state needs to know who is this user uh and you have to be an acceptable user and then they want to know which devices are you going to access the system from. I'm actually not a verified user. I don't go on the statewide voter registration system at all. Um because I'm pretty obvious target. Um but if I were to have access and I was try to access it from this computer, I would get denied because it does not know this computer. So that's the first secure function that only accessed users can enter the system. And then it requires a two-factor authentication. So um for those of you who've worked early voting uh locations, you might know the little grid cards you have to use. Uh and every time you access the system, it's giving you basically a code that you got to go on your grid card and repeat back to it. Um so to access the system again, verified users, verified devices, and two-factor authentication. We're also monitoring the systems users. So if we think we have a nefarious user or a user who shouldn't be in the system, we can run audit logs and see who's doing everything. So if you're a user in the system, I can see every keystroke you're making within the system. And that's a security feature because then we know who's using the system and what are they doing within the system. Maintenance is a very important part of securing the system. Um, yes, it's integrity of the system, and I'm not going to get on that today, but it's also a security feature. So, we have to verify our active records. We need to make sure that the records in the system are real registered, active voters. Um, years ago, we had a group uh who was distributing voter registration cards and signing them. Um, and that's illegal. Uh, trying to, you know, get um unverified records into the system. Recently, uh we had a group out there distributing uh fraudulent voter registration cards. This was like 2022 that the FBI was investigating. Um none of those they all failed verification, but groups are trying to game the system and trying to get uh non-registered uh or records uh registered. So verifying active register is really important to make sure you have a clean database. Also goes for your address ranges. You want to make sure the address ranges in the system are actually residential addresses where people can live. In Minnesota, you can't register at a PO box. You have to register at a residential facility. I think it was around 2010 it got brought to our attention we had really broad address ranges and so there was like uh UPS or postbox etc. mailbox etc. whatever those and those aren't addresses you can register from and so by having those in the system you open up a vulnerability for people to nefariously try to game the system. So verifying that your address ranges are tight and only represent actual residential addresses. Uh and then we do have to forward violations for investigation as I said in 20 whenever it was 2022 and we had the group filling out um fraudulent voter registration cards across the state. Um those were filed for investigation. We don't want groups out there trying to game the voter registration system. What I'm saying with this though is there are a lot of checks in place. uh we are daily managing our system. Uh unfortunately we have staff who their daily job is to go through the obits to to look at death records. We run DVS checks to make sure that you know is this record matching with the social security database. Um so lots of verifying the system. We have a lot of staff who their job is just maintaining the records within the system. Ramsey County obviously one of the biggest counties we have a lot of records. Uh and then there's just a lot of redundancies in place in case of failure or loss of access. Um for those of you in 2020, if uh you might remember on Halloween, so it was 2 days before the 2020 election, statewide voter registration database went down uh and we had to run uh voting because we still had a line of people uh offline. And so there's a lot of redundancies in place in case of failure or loss of access where we can continue to check in voters, register voters, and keep you voting. And that is really important. If there's going to be an emergency on election day, the last thing we want to have to do is stop voting. And actually, I don't think we have legal authority to do it. So we have to have redundancies in place to ensure you can keep voting. And a lot of that is just offline um processes in place. All right. Finally, securing the voted ballots. This is a question we got a lot especially after rec or excuse me, especially in close elections. Uh candidates want to know what we're doing to secure the ballots. Um which is very important especially because of the slide previous where I said a key security feature of our voting system is we have paper ballots. So how are they secured? Well, first of all, all vote ballots are witnessed by the election judges at that polling place. You're as a team. You're pulling them out of the ballot counter. If you had a 100 voters, you should have a 100 ballots. You secure those. The judges, obviously, for those who work at polling place, you have an audit form. You even have to account for the unvoted ballots and the spoiled ballots or the misissued ballots. Um, and then ballots are never unsealed. That's one thing I'm not sure a lot of people realize that we can't open up ballots unless there's a recount or a court order. So once the ballots are sealed by the teams of the election judges, they get put in a secure locked cage and we hope to never touch them uh until we can shred them in two years. Um and they're only open for those candidates can also appoint a ballot guard. I don't think we've had ballot guards since the '08 uh Coleman Franken recount. At least in Ramsey County, we haven't. But there is a law that does allow candidates to have a guard sit at the ballot. If one candidate provides a guard, then the other candidate has the right to provide a guard, too. Um, I think it's a form of security, even though we don't see a lot of it here, because it gives trust to people that the ballots aren't being tampered with. And so, when you go into a recount, you can trust that the ballots being put on the table and handcountered by the judges are in fact the ballots that were secured by the teams of election judges at the polling place on election night. Ballots are kept in our secure facility and the early voted ballots are returned every night. So ballots are always at one secure facility. Uh and we have a lot of things in place. Uh when Bill's team came out to do a review or a walk through assessment, uh we get a lot of good feedback. So it's it's simple things like, well, there's fire extinguishers up here. What if they go out? So getting tarps to secure the ballots or to secure the voting system. uh we have a backup of every piece of hardware offsite at a secure facility. So if we lose our building, we can still operate at a secure off-site building. Uh and then we do coordinate with our sheriff's office for physical security. Having a non-network system, that means if you want to come and hack or interrupt our system, you physically have to get to it. So on election night, for those again election judges, when you make your returns, you will see the sheriffs. They're doing traffic control because we have a lot of cars coming in our parking lot. we want to make sure you're safe, but they're also there providing physical security that if you want to get to the voted ballots, you got to get to them physically. Uh, and we have our sheriff's office provide that physical security. And then finally, um, pre2020, I wouldn't have thought much of transparency as a security topic, and it it isn't always. Um but some of the folks who've come into our office who've been maybe a little excitable or upset um generally it was just they they didn't know something. They they heard something um but they weren't sure of it. Um but I want to tell you elections are very transparent. There are a lot of events that are open to the public. Pretty much everything we do is open to the public from as coming to the election judge training so you can see what the judges are assigned to do. the amount of times I got done with an election judge training and someone came up to me and like wow I did not realize there was this much involved in elections. So training is a great thing to do. The public accuracy test we're before every election we have to prove to the public that the voting equipment is counting accurately. You can come to the test you can look you can mark your own ballots and run them through the ballot counters if you want. So we do have the public accuracy test. Our ballot boards which count all the mail ballots those are staffed by citizen election judges who oversee it. Our election night returns are open to the public. Our post-election review is open to the public and recounts are open to the public. And again, if you've been part of a recount, it really gives you confidence in how those ballot counters are working because they are very accurate. Um, citizen election judges, I think, are the best thing we have to provide transparent and secure elections. That's folks like you. At the end of the day, in the state of Minnesota, I think the number is like 80,000 citizen election judges are needed across the state to administer our elections. In Ramsey County, we deploy about 1,500 to 1,800 depending on uh the size of the election. Uh but they are our first line of defense. They're also our first line of ensuring voters have the right to vote. For those of you who have been election judges, you're like a problem solver. A voter comes in, might not have the right document. You're going to work with them to find it. So, our election judges really are that first line for a lot of things on election day. Uh and then we have a lot of data on our our on our website that we publish after every election. Uh and then doing events like this or data requests, responding to media is another good way to kind of break down misinformation about elections and kind of remove that unknown uh that we encounter quite a bit. Well, that is all I got on this end. I feel like I jumped around a lot, so thank you for uh humoring me here. Uh and I'll pass it over to Robin, who I think uh as you'll find, the further down you get in elections, the more in the trenches you'll get. And I think what you're going to find with Robin is uh our election judges at the polling place are definitely in the trenches. So, thank you. >> Well, I'm at the bottom of the heap. Um what I'm going to do is I'm going to try to go through an election day so you can see the different um check-in point systems that we have within the day to make sure that the election is done correctly. Um, like Dave was saying, we all have to do >> everybody. >> Is it not on? >> Or you could walk around the side and use the >> I gota see it though. >> Yeah, that one's on. >> Okay. Um, as Dave was saying, everyone has to do judge training and those who want to take on more advanced jobs like mine as a head judge, um, additional training is required for those people. But on the opening night, let's see how I do this, you guys. I'm not used to this. Um, when we open the election site in the morning, we're there early getting everything set up. The first thing that we do is we open the ballot counter. The ballot counter has seals on it with numbers identifying um that they have been sealed. And we have to um reconcile those to a certification form that you see here. and two judges need to verify those numbers and sign at the bottom. The same thing will be done at the end of the day to make sure that nobody has tampered with the machines or replaced them during the day. After we've done that, then we do a print out of the ballot counter and that printout should show a zero showing that nobody has voted on that ballot counter prior to the opening of the election. That form needs to be signed by every judge that's working that day. Um the same thing is done we have a what we call a touch writer which is used for people who have visual problems. We treat it the same way. It's opened by two people. Um the certification sheet is signed and a printout is done. We receive a number of poll pads for the election. If you've been in a site, you'll see that there's usually several people sitting at the um poll pad check-in area. The pole pads are each sealed and those also have to be um compared to a certification sheet and signed at the beginning of the day and the end of the day showing that none of those pole pads have been substituted or altered during the course of the day. Um again those have to be signed by two judges but they have to be signed by two judges of different parties. Um, so then you go into the part where we count the ballots. Ballots, we get a box of ballots. It's huge. And each packet holds 50 ballots. They're sealed in plastic. The the packages are opened, counted by two judges. Both judges initial the ballot up in the corner, and the packets are supposed to contain 50 ballots, but there have been times that we've had 49 or 51. All of that has to be accounted for so that our count comes out correctly at the end of the night. Those the ballots that aren't used at the end of the night are then counted and tallied into our count when we're reconciling everything. What Dave was talking about is this statistic sheet that we have um that reconciles what the ballot counter shows for number of vote votes cast during the day. We also have to reconcile that with how many voters checked in and voted that day. So there's a a check-in point system that goes through all of this to make sure that everything is being ma managed correctly. And we can't go home until that is perfect, which can be rather scary at the end of a 15-hour day, you guys. Um, now before we actually open the polls, all of the judges take the judge oath and the code of conduct oath. And this assures that all of us are going to provide a nonpartisan, safe, welcoming environment to any person who enters to vote. We all take the vote orally and then sign at the bottom. And I have never experienced an election judge who has not behaved correctly or tried to welcome everyone or tried to make sure that a person could vote even if there were roadblocks in their path. Um then as the day goes by um there's a variety of things that happen. First thing is as a voter enters the polling place and goes to one of the poll judges gives them their name. They the information is entered, the person's name is entered. The judge then asks the voter, you know, tell me your address. We verify that that information is correct and then have the voter himself also verify that the information on the poll pad is correct. This is a check-in point system to make sure that we're not doing John Junior as opposed to John senior or that we're we're registering someone who's not in the system. um they sign saying that the information is correct. They read the voters's oath and sign again. And then they're given a ballot exchange slip. The ballot exchange slip is then taken to the ballot judge who gives them a ballot. And rudimentary instructions are given. We're not telling the person how to vote, but we tell them how to fill in the box. or in a p uh primary election where you have to vote single party, instruct the person not to cross over from one party to the other when they're filling out their ballot. Um the beauty of the poll pad system that we have now, and there are a few of who you who probably remember when we had the books and you had to stand in the row of A through L or whatever it was to vote, um is that the poll pads are kept up to date all day. So, if the county receives an absentee ballot in the morning for Joe Doe, on our poll pads, it'll say next to Joe's name AB for absentee ballot. If Joe Doe were to come in and try to vote, we would say, "I'm sorry, but your absentee ballot has already been tallied." So, that's that's a beauty of the poll pads is that we have this up-to-date information. So as the day progresses um there are different things that we have to record and track so that that pink sheet turns out correctly at the end of the day. One of them is um the incident incident log. And on that it would be if a voter checks in at the poll pads and then leaves. They didn't ever pick up a ballot. Or maybe somebody fills out a ballot and then leaves and leaves the ballot abandoned on a on a table. Those are all things that we have to document because it's affecting our counts of different things at the end of the day. Another thing that's done, you touched on this a little bit, is vouching. If a person doesn't have um anything that shows their current address, they can have another voter from that precinct come in and vouch for them that they actually do live within the precinct. I've only seen this happen a couple of times and the most common one is that renter number one signed the lease and pays all the utilities and um you know bills for the apartment. Renttor number two just pays num number one for rent. So they have no record of their actual address. They don't have a a electric bill. They don't have the lease. They don't have anything like that. Um, so of the renter number one can come in and vouch for that person and we allow them to vote. Then it it's a process. There's much more involved in it than just seeing this tally sheet. But no, no one can vouch for more than seven voters in an election. And I've never seen anybody vouch for more than one. Um, another sheet that helps us keep track of things is if there's any corrections, if um, a name is misspelled, a birth date is off by a day or something like that, we document those events and then the county is able to make those corrections for the next election. Um, another thing that can happen is is that you can have um there's additional duties that come up not related to this, but there's the per person coming in for election day registration. Now, in previous years, it was a lot of 18-year-olds finally being able to vote and they would come in and do their registration that day. But with the onset of phones that never leave a child's hand, you can do your entire registration on your phone and it goes to the county and they don't have to come in and register on the day of election. But for people who have changed their name, maybe have moved or have not voted in several of the most previous elections, they will have to go and do election day registration. And there is a process involved in that where the person needs to have ID that shows who they are and then they will have to also show some proof of their their current residence. Again, a utility bill, a lease or something like that. The fun part about that that has gotten better over the years is it used to be people had to come in and carry that paper paper Excel Energy bill from this month and prove it. And sometimes people wouldn't come in prepared for that. Nowadays, people pay all of their utilities online. You can pull everything up on your phone, say, "Here's my Excel Energy bill from this month, and it it works for those people." Um, but all of that is then recorded and tallied and used at the end of the day to reconcile all of our um paperwork. Another thing that I don't have up there, and this is very rare, but I have had the opportunity to do it, is curbside voting. Again, if somebody is not capable of coming into the election site, they pull up to the curbside voting spot, call the county. The county notifies us, and two election judges of different parties will go out, get the information from the voter, go in, get that processed in the poll pad, get a ballot, bring it out to the person to vote, and then the two two judges bring that ballot in and put it in the ballot counter. It's fun to do. except the last one I did it was pouring rain. So that was not so much fun. But it is it's a nice process. It's not used very often, but it is a nice process for people who can't come in. Um, so we get to the end of the day. I have opened the polls at 7 o'clock in the morning based on my phone. And at 8:00 at night, I close the polls based on my phone. any voters that are in quue at that time are allowed to vote, but no one else is allowed to get in line at that point in time. Then we start to go through the process of um check this. Okay. Um we go through the process of of closing down everything and securing stuff. One of the things that we have to reconcile are spoiled ballots. So any any ballots that were not put into the machine but had been filled out or had been left somewhere need to be tallied. They need to be put in an envelope, sealed and the seal is signed by the judges. This continues through all these different things. Everything is sealed, signed by the judges and brought back that night by the head judge. Um another thing is election day registration documents. Okay, you guys, I am not computer literate. So, um, election day registration documents are tallied up. They are also reconciled. All of those forms are put in an envelope and, um, sealed and initialed by everyone. I did get the right one. Um, this is the form that's used when an a new voter comes in the criteria that they need to pro to provide in order to be allowed to get a ballot. You can see on there, it's probably not real clear, but they do have to have some kind of ID showing a picture of themselves. Then they have to bring a current um utility bill lease or something like that. or at the bottom you can see you can have vouching or something like that to help the person get get to the point of voting. Um the the site is closed at 8:00. We let the rest of the voters finish voting and then we start to close down the machines and tally everything up. So the ballot counter prints out a final tally of the votes that have been done that day. two judges sign that and it's put in a sealed envelope. We also make sure that the the um the secure the sec what do you call it securities on the ballot counter um match up with the certification sheet again so that nobody so we know that the ballot counter has not been tampered with. Um bunch of my got lost. Okay. Um, other things that we have, we count the ballot exchange slips, tally those up, seal them. Um, then you have those ballots that we were counting that came in plastic sheets and everybody has to open them and count 50 and sign them. If there are any of those left at the end of the day, those are also sealed that no so that no one can fill those out and run them through a machine at a different time. The totals are completed on that pink sheet that you saw earlier. Everything has to match up. And if they don't, we then start going through the process trying to figure out where we made a mistake or what's missing. And all of that stuff is packaged up and the head judge then drives down to the Ramsey County site on Plato Boulevard and sits in queue for Lord knows how long because they have it set up. It's beautifully set up, but there are a lot of sites coming in to drop off their equipment and um you can be in line for quite a long period of time. Um the one thing I would like to say is that it is a long day and for the most part people are kind when they come in. They're focused on voting and getting back out of there. I've rarely met anybody who has a contentious attitude about the whole situation. And a lot of times people come through and thank us for volunteering. Clarification. Most of us are not volunteering. But it it is an interesting day. It's it's interesting to see how everything works. We are responsible for a lot of little pieces of the security system to make sure that they all fall into place before they're brought back to Ramsey County. So, in the end, what I would like to say is if you think that the election system is suspicious or if you have any concerns about that, I encourage you to become an election judge because you can follow through the system and see how it's handled. If you believe the system works and you would like to help your fellow voters, they can always use more election judges. It's an interesting day. It's a very long day, but for the most part, I would say people I think people really enjoy doing it or they wouldn't sign up to do it. So, and that's it. Thank you. Okay, we are um we've got just like six minutes, so not very much time. We didn't get questions on cards, but is there any specific question anyone has in the room that we could maybe ask whatever is the right expert for your question? I saw this one go up first. >> Vouching is an issue. Or >> I'll repeat it. >> Run into a situation where someone came in and vouched for eight people >> for eight. >> Yeah. Vouch for eight people, right? >> I think it was seven. Have you ever had anyone? It's usually one >> is usually what you see. >> We get it though. >> And but you do get it. >> You see a lot of colleges. You'll see. Yeah. >> Okay. >> Um we'll get people who use the maximum. And for those who've been here long enough, you'll notice the number of vouchers used to be 10. Uh it's now it's down to seven. And so really the legislature just sets that law, that rule. Um but yeah, we've had precincts where people have vouched for >> So has there been instances of people vouching for eight weeks? Yes. The policy says >> yes when it was still it was okay to do eight but now they can only do seven if they Right. So only if whatever the maximum is they don't exceed that. >> Can I tell you we've had some anecdotal examples outstate smaller counties where there's religious communities for example that uh maybe ID is a different thing for that and we have heard about some of that as well. Not super common, but as David said, it does happen. >> Yes. >> How will potential passage? So the question is about the SAVE act which I think a lot of us are familiar with but it's a change to what's needed in order to to vote >> for that by November. >> Do we have the procedures in place? >> I will tell you what is going to be required and then I guess I'll let you come to the decision if you think we're going to be ready or not. Um, what the SAVE Act would do administratively is it would require voters to prove citizenship and they would say here's the acceptable documents to do that. Right now in Minnesota, you do have to attest to your citizenship. Actually, there's a federal law that says, you know, only citizens can vote, but they've left it up to the states to determine how we want to ensure that only citizen are voting. In Minnesota, you attest to it. And if you've registered to vote or if you voted on your oath, it says I'm a citizen. I'm 18 and all the other eligibility requirements. So what it would do is when you come to vote, you would now have to provide us a document. Um I'll let you all go out and do research about the merits of if is it difficult to get these or not. There's a lot of content out there about it. Um but voters would be required to do that. And so right now when you show up to vote, if you're already registered, you say your name, your address, and your birth year. For most of you, I think that transaction probably takes what, 15 seconds, 20 seconds once you're at the the election judge. For those of you who have had to register to vote, um, and you have to show some form of documentation, that transaction can be, you know, four or five minutes. Um, not always, but it's a longer transaction. So administratively, if we have to if the SAVE act passes, we now have to check the citizenship document of every voter. So from the administrator standpoint, I'm thinking, how do I continue to make the line move? So we would have to hire additional election judges because I can't tell every voter, hey, you used to have a 15-second transaction. Now you're gonna have a minute, two minute. So we'd have to hire more election judges to continue to let that flow go. We'd also have to have a few election judges just managing the line because there's nothing worse than waiting in line and then getting to the counter and being told you don't have the right thing, you got to go home and then get back in line later. So, we'd want judges managing the line saying, "Hey, do you have the right document?" You have that. So, administratively, that's what it would look like is uh basically if any of you who've been election judges and have done the election day registration process, you're now going to do that for every voter, not just the the percentage of voters uh who would normally do that on election day. Thank you. I wish we had more time, but the as we heard the library is going to be closing. So, um I want to thank our three panelists or speakers again. I hope we all feel more secure and have a little more knowledge and I think there's a whole lot more to know if you um wanted to study up more about it. One thing I did want to mention, this same group, our four Ramsey Leagues, are going to do another program in September, the 27th of September on property taxes. >> It's in it's on the new it's on the news in the news a lot. So, we thought that would be something that would be very interesting for our residents as well. So, thank you very much. Have a good rest of your evening. Thanks a lot.