Latest / The Schmidt Show PDX / SOS: Drop it like it’s Hot 🗳️

Transcript

SOS: Drop it like it’s Hot 🗳️ · The Schmidt Show PDX

0:00
[music]
0:07
SPEAKER_02: A quick word from our show sponsor,
0:09
SPEAKER_02: Dr. Adam Moret at Corbett Hill Wellness Center, people I know and trust.
0:13
SPEAKER_01: Hi, I'm Dr. Moret from Corbett Hill Wellness Center.
0:16
SPEAKER_01: My vision for Corbett Hill has always been simple,
0:18
SPEAKER_01: to give our community a place for whole person care with people they can trust.
0:23
SPEAKER_01: Today we offer chiropractic,
0:24
SPEAKER_01: massage,
0:25
SPEAKER_01: acupuncture, naturopathic medicine, laser treatment, shockwave therapy, and more.
0:31
SPEAKER_01: Different kinds of care with one goal.
0:33
SPEAKER_01: Helping you feel your best.
0:35
SPEAKER_01: Corbett Hill Wellness Center.
0:36
SPEAKER_01: Move well, feel well, live well.
0:39
SPEAKER_01: Visit corbethill.com.
0:40
[music]
1:05
SPEAKER_02: I'm Mike Schmidt, former Multnomah DA, recent Minneapolis tourist.
1:10
SPEAKER_02: I had a great time.
1:11
SPEAKER_02: And of course, your favorite part time podcaster.
1:15
SPEAKER_02: Hey, we're less than a month out from Election Day.
1:16
SPEAKER_02: And if you've been reading the headlines, you've probably got some questions.
1:19
SPEAKER_02: The president has gone after vote-by-mail, the system that basically Oregon invented.
1:24
SPEAKER_02: The Justice Department has threatened to prosecute election officials.
1:28
SPEAKER_02: And there's talk of ICE at the drop boxes and of ballots being rejected
1:32
SPEAKER_02: because our mail is too slow.
1:34
SPEAKER_02: A lot of people are worried their vote won't count.
1:37
SPEAKER_02: So today we're going straight to the person in charge of Oregon's elections.
1:41
SPEAKER_02: Tobias Reid was born in Missoula,
1:42
SPEAKER_02: Montana and grew up in Boise, Idaho,
1:44
SPEAKER_02: but he came to Oregon for college at Willamette University in Salem,
1:48
SPEAKER_02: where he rode on the crew team.
1:49
SPEAKER_02: And after a stint at the U.S.
1:51
SPEAKER_02: Treasury Department in D.C.
1:52
SPEAKER_02: and an MBA from the University of Washington,
1:54
SPEAKER_02: he came back and spent eight years at Nike.
1:57
SPEAKER_02: So if you purchase any Nikes in the early thousands, maybe he had a hand in that.
2:01
SPEAKER_02: He served 10 years in the Oregon House,
2:03
SPEAKER_02: where he helped lead the push to fund full-day kindergarten.
2:06
SPEAKER_02: And as state treasurer for two terms,
2:08
SPEAKER_02: he created Oregon Saves,
2:10
SPEAKER_02: the state's retirement savings program,
2:11
SPEAKER_02: and helped to protect the Elliott State Forest.
2:14
SPEAKER_02: He's been Secretary of State since January 2025.
2:17
SPEAKER_02: He lives in Beaverton with his wife and their two kids, and he's coached basketball.
2:21
SPEAKER_02: Oh, and at 6'7",
2:23
SPEAKER_02: he's also the tallest guest that we've ever had on this show,
2:26
SPEAKER_02: possibly the only one who had to duck to get into our little studio.
2:30
SPEAKER_02: Secretary Tobias Reid, thank you so much for being on the show.
2:32
SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having me.
2:33
SPEAKER_02: Well, we have a lot to talk about.
2:35
SPEAKER_02: We sure do.
2:36
SPEAKER_02: I'm excited that you're here.
2:38
SPEAKER_02: And I think a lot of people will be.
2:39
SPEAKER_02: But first, how does it feel to be the tallest guy ever on the Schmidt Show?
2:45
SPEAKER_00: Well, I hope that's just a temporary title.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: I hope you've got all kinds of other tall people, but it's good to look someone in the eye.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: I appreciate that.
2:54
SPEAKER_02: I'm not as much looking to my after photo with you side by side.
2:58
SPEAKER_02: Usually, I'm the tall guy, but you.
3:01
SPEAKER_02: You've now eclipsed Jeff Merkley, Senator Merkley.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: That's probably the only time someone has said that about me relative to Senator Merkley.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: He was the Speaker of the House in my freshman session in the legislature.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: I actually have a picture of him square dancing.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: That
3:18
SPEAKER_02: checks out.
3:20
SPEAKER_02: I learned so much from him on the interview,
3:22
SPEAKER_02: not the least of which was his hunt for geographic things all over the state
3:27
SPEAKER_02: of Oregon, which now me and my family are on the hunt.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we can talk about that, too.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the greatest things about being Secretary of State.
3:34
SPEAKER_00: I went to all 36 counties in our first year to visit every one of our county clerks.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about the heroes of democracy, too.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: Those are the folks who are on the front lines, and there's great stuff in all our counties.
3:46
SPEAKER_02: Well, good.
3:46
SPEAKER_02: Which county is the best?
3:47
SPEAKER_02: Which one?
3:48
SPEAKER_02: The next one.
3:49
SPEAKER_02: Remember what?
3:50
SPEAKER_02: The one coming up.
3:51
SPEAKER_02: The one coming up.
3:51
SPEAKER_02: That's well done, sir.
3:53
SPEAKER_02: Well done.
3:55
SPEAKER_02: So just a little bit about you.
3:56
SPEAKER_02: Tell us about yourself, you know, where you grew up and, you know, some some.
4:01
SPEAKER_02: We have two great kids, a pandemic
4:02
SPEAKER_00: dog and a
4:16
SPEAKER_00: And a cat.
4:17
SPEAKER_00: We had one of those.
4:18
SPEAKER_02: We no longer have a pandemic dog.
4:20
SPEAKER_02: Not because he passed away, but because he needed to go to a different home.
4:23
SPEAKER_02: I see.
4:24
SPEAKER_02: I see.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: Well, I worked out for everyone then?
4:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
4:28
SPEAKER_02: I've heard or I've read that you were a rower in college at Willamette.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: I was.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: It was one of the great experiences.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: And I think rowing is one of the ultimate team sports because you can't stop in
4:41
SPEAKER_00: the middle of a race.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: Every muscle and every body in that boat wants to, but you Literally can't.
4:45
SPEAKER_00: And more importantly,
4:46
SPEAKER_00: it shows what you can do as part of a group that you couldn't ever do as
4:50
SPEAKER_00: an individual.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: You go so much further, do so much more as part of that group.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a really good lesson for all kinds of other things.
4:57
SPEAKER_02: Well, you're very good at this because that was the question I was going
5:00
SPEAKER_02: to ask you is what you take from that.
5:01
SPEAKER_02: I read that book, Boys in the Boat.
5:03
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
5:03
SPEAKER_02: Fantastic book.
5:04
SPEAKER_02: I think it was adapted to a movie
5:06
SPEAKER_00: later on.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: The movie was great too, but it was only half of the story.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: They left the other part of the story out, but yeah, that's terrific.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: And I'm totally biased in reading that book, but it was lovely.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: That guy wrote some other good books too.
5:18
SPEAKER_00: Facing the Mountain about the Japanese Americans in World War II.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: But yeah.
5:23
SPEAKER_02: And you found like he did a really good job
5:24
SPEAKER_02: of accurately like portraying what it's like to be a rower and going through that.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, the thing that I think really sticks with me is that anecdote at the beginning
5:32
SPEAKER_00: where he is recruiting Joe Rance to write the book.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: And Rance is very reluctant, as you remember.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: And at the end,
5:38
SPEAKER_00: he says,
5:38
SPEAKER_00: if you're going to write it, it has to be about the boat, not about the individuals.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: And that was really accurate.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: I appreciated that very much.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: You've also coached some basketball.
5:47
SPEAKER_02: Tell us about that.
5:49
SPEAKER_02: It's not quite the same as rowing, but
5:51
SPEAKER_00: it's still great.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: And I think there's metaphors there and lessons as well.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: I did more coaching of girls teams than boys teams.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, an eighth grade girls basketball practice is great.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the Dennis Rodman.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: Yes, right.
6:32
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
6:32
SPEAKER_00: Dennis Rodman didn't care what he looked like.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: He was going to get the ball.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we wanted these girls to do.
6:37
SPEAKER_00: So try to stick to that too about effectiveness and sticking to the team.
6:41
SPEAKER_02: My first job out of undergrad was to teach middle school in New Orleans.
6:46
SPEAKER_02: And I was the assistant coach on our girls team.
6:50
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, then seventh and eighth graders.
6:53
SPEAKER_02: So we're middle schoolers.
6:55
SPEAKER_02: And for any middle schoolers, boys, girls, doesn't matter.
6:57
SPEAKER_02: Getting their attention,
6:58
SPEAKER_02: getting them to pay attention and to listen and to,
7:01
SPEAKER_02: you know, take direction and all that is no small feat.
7:05
SPEAKER_02: Stay focused.
7:06
SPEAKER_02: What worked for me was back then,
7:08
SPEAKER_02: believe it or not, I could dunk not a full basketball, but a smaller basketball.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: You are also a member of the older I am, the better I was.
7:18
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
7:20
SPEAKER_02: Fair point.
7:21
SPEAKER_02: But that was the one thing like I do that.
7:22
SPEAKER_02: And then it was like, oh, I better pay attention.
7:24
SPEAKER_02: Listen to this guy.
7:26
SPEAKER_02: Maybe he'll teach me how to do that.
7:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
7:29
SPEAKER_02: Well, I really,
7:31
SPEAKER_02: you know,
7:32
SPEAKER_02: I always like to ground things in people's background
7:34
SPEAKER_02: because I think we bring our backgrounds with us to the jobs that we do.
7:38
SPEAKER_02: And I have no doubt you've already talked about how rowing has influenced
7:41
SPEAKER_02: the way you think about your work, and I'm sure coaching.
7:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
7:45
SPEAKER_02: Same thing.
7:46
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
7:46
SPEAKER_02: So let's jump into the job.
7:48
SPEAKER_02: You're Secretary of State.
7:50
SPEAKER_02: That seems like a pretty big job.
7:52
SPEAKER_02: It is.
7:53
SPEAKER_02: And you do no doubt more things than I even know what you do.
7:56
SPEAKER_02: But the two major functions that I understand that you perform is,
7:59
SPEAKER_02: of course, one,
8:00
SPEAKER_02: overseeing our elections and working with all the election offices across the state.
8:04
SPEAKER_01: The other is auditing.
8:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
8:06
SPEAKER_02: I think people probably know less about that.
8:08
SPEAKER_02: Maybe tell folks a little bit about your auditing function as Secretary of State.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it's one of the underappreciated powers and authorities of this office.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: And I should say before anything else,
8:18
SPEAKER_00: all that we're going to talk about,
8:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm fortunate we're We work with a terrific team,
8:22
SPEAKER_00: both in the Secretary of State's office and,
8:24
SPEAKER_00: as you mentioned, the county clerks around the state.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: They're the frontline folks when it comes to elections.
8:30
SPEAKER_00: But as it relates to audits,
8:32
SPEAKER_00: the real power here, I think, is narrowing the gap between the good intentions.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: I think we have a lot of in Oregon and the great results that we don't have enough
8:39
SPEAKER_00: of that people need and expect and deserve.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: So this audit function really gives us the chance to see
8:45
SPEAKER_00: if programs are designed well,
8:47
SPEAKER_00: if agencies are doing what they're supposed to, if dollars are being spent well.
8:51
SPEAKER_00: The challenge is that there's a lot more need for that than there is capacity.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: When I was treasurer,
8:57
SPEAKER_00: people would come up to me and they always had a stock tip, which was helpful.
9:02
SPEAKER_02: But now when people- As if you're sitting there on your Robinhood app being like,
9:05
SPEAKER_02: oh, That's a good one.
9:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: The state treasury is not stock pickers.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: They're not day traders.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: But nonetheless, I appreciate that people are interested in that.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: And I explain that I'm the state auditor in addition to being secretary of state.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: You can see people kind of respond.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: We have a hotline for that, too.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: But most of these are good ideas.
9:23
SPEAKER_00: It's just that we can't do all of them.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: So if you look at the...
9:36
SPEAKER_00: The graph of the state budget over time, it's up and to the right.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: But that same tracking of auditors is dead flat.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: We have no new auditors.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: So we have to be really intentional and careful about how we pick those.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: And what we've done in our first year and a half is build a risk matrix.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: That seems new, the risk matrix.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: I think it is in Oregon.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: And actually, when we did some checking with peers, people were not so convinced about it.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: But now they're actually asking us how we're doing it.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: So we turned those into quantifiable, measurable indicators.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: Who's using a lot of overtime in an agency?
10:23
SPEAKER_00: Where is there a brand new director?
10:26
SPEAKER_00: Where has the budget increased or decreased dramatically?
10:28
SPEAKER_00: All of those together to say, here's the heat map.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: Here's where we should devote our finite resources.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: And the key after we've done that.
10:36
SPEAKER_00: Even if we've selected the great audit,
10:38
SPEAKER_00: we've done a terrific job at it, is to make sure that it's not sitting on a shelf.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: So everybody has a role in that,
10:43
SPEAKER_00: from the legislature to the governor to the public,
10:46
SPEAKER_00: to make sure that that spotlight remains on those recommendations.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: As much as we have the power to do the audit,
10:52
SPEAKER_00: we do not have the power to make the changes in an agency.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: So I hope people will pay attention to what we're doing
10:58
SPEAKER_00: and help us advance those recommendations and get better results for Oregonians.
11:03
SPEAKER_02: You know, I was,
11:03
SPEAKER_02: as you know,
11:04
SPEAKER_02: a state agency director for six years of the Criminal Justice Commission,
11:08
SPEAKER_02: a small little commission,
11:09
SPEAKER_02: but mighty in the amount of budget that they have and very important work they do.
11:14
SPEAKER_02: And so I remember, you know, the auditing process.
11:16
SPEAKER_02: I don't think we were ever audited while I was there,
11:18
SPEAKER_02: but I was, of course, working with other directors.
11:21
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I think auditing, it can sound scary, right?
11:24
SPEAKER_02: Like, oh, you're being audited.
11:25
SPEAKER_02: Oh, something must be wrong or something.
11:27
SPEAKER_02: But I know from talking to directors,
11:29
SPEAKER_02: you know,
11:29
SPEAKER_02: frequently they would welcome an audit or even maybe pay Potentially suggest it
11:34
SPEAKER_02: to yourself because they also want to shine a light on the challenges
11:38
SPEAKER_02: that they're facing.
11:39
SPEAKER_02: Is that something you found?
11:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:41
SPEAKER_00: I will consider it a victory when people don't metaphorically run screaming at
11:45
SPEAKER_00: the prospect when they welcome that.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: It's not an exercise in gotcha.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: It really is trying to find those challenges in the future.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: And I think people sometimes misunderstand the audit too.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: It is not a response to a headline.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: That's too late.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: This is kind of an audit.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: A performance audit takes months or a year.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: We're trying to find the problem that has not yet emerged before it becomes a problem.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: And encouraging the legislature, too.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: You don't need us to audit ODOT to know that there's an issue there.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: Invite the director in, ask him questions, make decisions based on what you hear.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: We're trying to anticipate to go,
12:19
SPEAKER_00: since we've been talking about sports already,
12:20
SPEAKER_00: to go where the puck is going to be, not where it is now.
12:24
SPEAKER_02: What are one or two audits that you've already completed that people could go on
12:29
SPEAKER_02: and see the results of?
12:30
SPEAKER_00: Oh, they're all there.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm proud of what we talked about with our behavioral health system across
12:35
SPEAKER_00: the state, recognizing that we're doing a decent job of
12:41
SPEAKER_00: Making it possible for people to reach out for help,
12:44
SPEAKER_00: but not as much of a good job of having things to respond to when people do.
12:49
SPEAKER_00: We're excited about the one coming up on the state school funding formula,
12:53
SPEAKER_00: too, to determine whether districts are getting what they're supposed to.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: And hopefully that will prompt the conversation about the relevance
13:02
SPEAKER_00: and up-to-dateness of the formula.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: It's part of a much bigger conversation about education as well.
13:07
SPEAKER_00: But they span the gap, and they're all there to read.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
13:10
SPEAKER_02: Well, that's great.
13:10
SPEAKER_02: And people could go on your website and find the history
13:13
SPEAKER_00: of audits.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: And the plan for the next year, too.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: Oh, cool.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: What's coming.
13:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
13:17
SPEAKER_00: What is coming?
13:18
SPEAKER_00: It's a very meaty menu.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: We've got the health authority.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: We've got the Department of Education.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: We've got the youth authority.
13:27
SPEAKER_00: We've got state police.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: We've got a lot and more to come.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: Great.
13:32
SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
13:33
SPEAKER_02: Well, I really appreciate that work because it is, like you said, it's preventative care.
13:39
SPEAKER_02: It's making sure that we're achieving what we expect to achieve
13:42
SPEAKER_02: when we're making these investments.
13:43
SPEAKER_02: We're using taxpayer dollars and we're doing the work.
13:45
SPEAKER_02: Right.
13:48
SPEAKER_02: Most people probably think of you right now, at least for your election side work.
13:53
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
13:54
SPEAKER_02: And boy, it's been a busy calendar year for you.
13:57
SPEAKER_02: It has.
13:59
SPEAKER_02: I want to start with going back to March when there was an executive order that came out.
14:05
SPEAKER_02: We can start even before that.
14:07
SPEAKER_02: You take me further.
14:07
SPEAKER_02: Go ahead.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think I know.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: I think I know what you're going to talk about in March, but but.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: I knew when I started this office,
14:15
SPEAKER_00: there was going to be some work because I'm the eighth secretary of state in
14:18
SPEAKER_00: the last 10 years.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: We've seen a lot of turnover.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: What I did not expect as much was to have to play defense against
14:24
SPEAKER_00: the federal government when it comes to elections.
14:27
SPEAKER_00: This is still such a dramatic story in my mind.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: The first several days,
14:33
SPEAKER_00: one of the meetings we had was with our partners at an agency called CISA,
14:36
SPEAKER_00: the Cyber Security, Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: This is a federal federal agency.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: Yes, that is.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: Tasked with protecting elections from cyber intrusion and foreign interference.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: And you're thinking to yourself, well, we're on the same team.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, they do good work.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: They help with with physical security assessments and incident reports
14:56
SPEAKER_00: and all this sort of stuff.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: And they have people that are assigned to our state.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: So we get to meet with them, talk about, OK, here's what we can do.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: Here's what we offer.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: Here's what we have done.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: A week later, they're gone.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: Just gone.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: Were they like a Doge casualty?
15:11
SPEAKER_00: I can't remember if it was specific to Doge, but they were gone.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: And that was the first sort of clue.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, all the other things that suggested that, but this is real now.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: That important, essential agency just doesn't exist.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: And you know this, 36 county clerks are not sitting around like, we got extra money.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: We got extra capacity.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: We could do all this.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: They're just gone.
15:30
SPEAKER_00: So that was the first clue.
15:31
SPEAKER_00: And then we get to March in the executive order.
15:33
SPEAKER_02: So when did that, when did they go away, CISA, on the timeline of things?
15:36
SPEAKER_02: Was it this?
15:37
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was sworn in on January 6th, 2025.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: 2025.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: Soon after.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: Within a week, 10 days.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're just gone.
15:46
SPEAKER_02: I don't I don't we could spend all day talking about,
15:49
SPEAKER_02: you know,
15:50
SPEAKER_02: the Trump administration,
15:51
SPEAKER_02: how maddening the things are that happen in the moves and everything else.
15:54
SPEAKER_02: But it is just it's still worth noting every once in a while that we're not crazy.
15:59
SPEAKER_02: No.
16:01
SPEAKER_02: I care about elections.
16:02
SPEAKER_02: And then he immediately dismantles an agency that is supposed to be protecting us.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: A hundred percent.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: And that's what makes this more recent concern.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure we'll talk about this in more detail, too.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: But remember, he did this in the summer.
16:17
SPEAKER_00: It all comes together.
16:17
SPEAKER_00: I mean, part of this is just.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: We have to have this conversation because it can be way too easy to just think,
16:23
SPEAKER_00: it's overwhelming.
16:24
SPEAKER_00: That's their relentless attempt to undermine elections and avoid accountability.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: So he says in this White House primetime address,
16:30
SPEAKER_00: election integrity, like, wait, hold on, you suddenly are concerned about this?
16:34
SPEAKER_00: The first thing you did was just dismantle CISA.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: It is totally disingenuous and actions speak louder than words.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: So don't believe any of it.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
16:43
SPEAKER_02: You know, hey, go back to basketball.
16:44
SPEAKER_02: I'm just going to just keep doing this the whole time.
16:46
SPEAKER_02: Right.
16:46
SPEAKER_02: What does a good coach tell you?
16:48
SPEAKER_02: You know, don't look at their eyes.
16:49
SPEAKER_02: Look at their midsection because that's going to tell you where they're going to go.
16:52
SPEAKER_02: They're not going to lie.
16:52
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
16:53
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: Well said.
16:54
SPEAKER_02: All right.
16:55
SPEAKER_02: So now we're into March.
16:56
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
16:56
SPEAKER_02: And there's an executive order.
16:58
SPEAKER_02: Tell us about that.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: Well, the first one really just tried to change election law without involving Congress.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: And you're the lawyer in this conversation.
17:10
SPEAKER_02: But Article I, Section 4 is really clear in the Constitution.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: It's pretty clear.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: I don't think you have to.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: Go to law school to understand what says time, place, and manner goes to the states.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: Congress can pass laws.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: There's no mention of executive orders.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: The president doesn't get to just say, I am determining what election law is here.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: And it would have had a really terrible effect on making it that much harder
17:32
SPEAKER_00: for eligible citizens to vote.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: So we sued.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: And...
17:37
SPEAKER_00: And it stopped.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: And that's good.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: But that was only the first one.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: We'll get to the other ones, too.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure we're going to talk about their at least initially sort
17:45
SPEAKER_00: of friendly demand for voter data as well.
17:48
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
17:49
SPEAKER_02: So the first order, what were they trying?
17:52
SPEAKER_02: What What was he trying to accomplish?
17:53
SPEAKER_02: And we sued, and we got an injunction, and so that kind of put it to bed?
17:58
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: What was he asking for in that order, do you recall?
18:00
SPEAKER_00: So many different things.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: A lot of it was showing up in person to vote, to having to show photo ID.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: To the identification that matched birth certificates,
18:13
SPEAKER_00: which is a problem for anyone who has changed their name,
18:15
SPEAKER_00: whether they got married or adopted or anything else.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: All of these things that are solutions in search of problems.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: It's all based on this myth that there is undocumented people,
18:27
SPEAKER_00: fraudulent voting happening, all that sort of stuff, which is not true.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: It's just not true.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: And we'll get into the numbers on that, too.
18:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
18:34
SPEAKER_02: No, I will definitely ask you about that.
18:36
SPEAKER_02: So there is that first shot.
18:37
SPEAKER_02: And, of course, that gets arrested in the courts probably at some point along this timeline.
18:43
SPEAKER_02: And it is hard because so many things have gone on.
18:45
SPEAKER_02: It's the Save America Act and Congress and what they're trying to do there.
18:49
SPEAKER_02: So tell us a little bit about that.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: Well, the executive order really is an attempt to implement the Save America Act
18:54
SPEAKER_00: without going to Congress because he can't pass it in Congress.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: And it passed the House a couple of times.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: This is where it gets really confusing.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: There's the Save America Act.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: And then there was a second one that was even a different name that was slightly different.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: So even more extreme.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: So it continues to...
19:13
SPEAKER_02: And they always name it something like Save America
19:16
SPEAKER_02: when it's like intention is exactly the opposite.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, they truly believe it, I think.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: And that's part of the scary nature of this because they've been taken care of.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
19:50
SPEAKER_02: He tries to implement essentially the Save America Act with executive order.
19:53
SPEAKER_02: That doesn't achieve what he's trying to do.
19:56
SPEAKER_02: Then they figure out, well,
19:57
SPEAKER_02: wait a minute,
19:58
SPEAKER_02: the United States Postal Service,
20:00
SPEAKER_02: we have some control over that or ostensibly,
20:03
SPEAKER_02: even though I think that is also supposed to be that appointed position who
20:07
SPEAKER_02: the Postmaster General,
20:09
SPEAKER_02: I guess I'm getting over my skis here and how much I actually know
20:11
SPEAKER_02: about these things,
20:12
SPEAKER_02: but he's not supposed to be somebody who just follows orders from the president.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah,
20:17
SPEAKER_00: the executive order does not,
20:18
SPEAKER_00: it goes way beyond the authority that the president has.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: It does not, and the notion of the Postal Service goes back, Maris, is service, not business.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: No business is going to say, I will take your piece of mail to any address in the country.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's not a good business model.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: No, you can't get that from FedEx or UPS or anybody else.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: That's about everything.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: It's not about democracy, not about a business.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: And the president trying to dictate that and say to the Postal Service,
20:52
SPEAKER_00: you're going to determine who gets a mail-in ballot and who doesn't.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: Not only is that not appropriate, it's not practical.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: It's entirely on a database that is highly unreliable.
21:04
SPEAKER_00: And to say, even in the executive order, it said 60 days before the election.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: They're still arguing for this 40 days before the election, 45 days.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: Even if there were no legal impediments to this,
21:16
SPEAKER_00: So it just shows again and again, this is not serious.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: You could make an argument,
21:22
SPEAKER_00: I would probably disagree with it,
21:23
SPEAKER_00: that we need to change these things or change versions of it.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: But to do that, it would involve months, years of effort.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: Multiple agencies, all these tests, all the security that's required.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: They're not interested in any of that.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: No.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: They're just trying to avoid being held accountable in an election.
21:38
SPEAKER_02: Right.
21:39
SPEAKER_02: In this moment.
21:40
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
21:41
SPEAKER_02: And then to make things more confusing,
21:44
SPEAKER_02: there's the SAVE system,
21:46
SPEAKER_02: which stands for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements System.
21:51
SPEAKER_02: Right.
21:51
SPEAKER_02: Had to read that off my screen because it doesn't quite roll off the tongue.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: I have to think about it too.
21:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
21:55
SPEAKER_02: So it's like, save America, save this.
21:58
SPEAKER_02: And also we're going to use the save system and use states.
22:01
SPEAKER_02: So this is a system and you could tell me,
22:03
SPEAKER_02: but essentially the federal government is tracking people who access programs.
22:09
SPEAKER_02: And in that, it keeps track of somebody's citizenship.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: Is that essentially what it is?
22:17
SPEAKER_00: That's roughly right.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: And so it's not intended for- It's not a voter system.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
22:21
SPEAKER_00: And it's not reliable.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: This is not a theoretical thing.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: I forget all the other states,
22:25
SPEAKER_00: but I think Texas was one that used it and showed a pretty high error rate.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: So a number of the people that were flagged as non-citizens were actually citizens.
22:35
SPEAKER_00: And in multiple places where
22:37
SPEAKER_00: a regime like this was considered was actually implemented,
22:42
SPEAKER_00: Thousands,
22:43
SPEAKER_00: tens of thousands of people who are eligible to vote were denied the right
22:46
SPEAKER_00: because they were falsely flagged by this database.
22:49
SPEAKER_00: So we're not about to say, yeah, we'll use that database for voting.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: It's a fundamental right that Oregonians and Americans need to have.
22:57
SPEAKER_02: Well, I think, you know, and this is part of the game playing, right?
23:01
SPEAKER_02: Is we name something save or you say, oh, well, this is just a system that checks citizenship.
23:06
SPEAKER_02: Why?
23:06
SPEAKER_02: How could you possibly be against that?
23:08
SPEAKER_02: Right.
23:08
SPEAKER_02: And then they want to frame it as if you're the person who's like,
23:10
SPEAKER_02: no, I want non-citizens to vote.
23:13
SPEAKER_02: But this system doesn't work.
23:15
SPEAKER_02: It's demonstrably disenfranchising people who do have a right.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: That's the problem.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: All true.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: And it's on top of a place where there isn't any need for that.
23:25
SPEAKER_00: Our system is strong and secure.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: We verify.
23:27
SPEAKER_00: Identify identity and eligibility on the front end.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: In order to register to vote, you have to prove that you are eligible.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: You have to prove you are who you are.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: Then you get a paper ballot in Oregon.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: It's tracked the envelope with a barcode so we know where it's going.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: If you've lost your ballot or Made a mistake or wanted to, you know, the dog ate your ballot.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: You can get a second one, but that envelope also has a barcode and it invalidates the first one.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: So no one's voting more than once.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: The ballot comes in, has to be signed on the envelope in order to be counted.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: That's verified everywhere.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: Every single signature is verified.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: And then we count them with machines that aren't ever connected to the internet.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: Those same machines are tested publicly before and after the election.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: The ballots are audited.
24:10
SPEAKER_00: They're stored so we can recount.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: There's just every step.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: There are layers of security.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: And I always quote,
24:18
SPEAKER_00: Dennis Richardson,
24:19
SPEAKER_00: the Republican Secretary of State for me, he said, we have paper ballots.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: You can't hack paper.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: You can't hack paper.
24:26
SPEAKER_02: So, you know,
24:27
SPEAKER_02: reading some headlines,
24:28
SPEAKER_02: you might think, oh, well, the Supreme Court allowed that save system to break.
24:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you're not going to use it.
24:55
SPEAKER_02: And we gave you a partnership
24:57
SPEAKER_00: on that.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: I said, no, thanks.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: And then they came back again and said,
25:02
SPEAKER_00: you're ordered to give us this information under the Civil Rights Act of 1960.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: Again, you're the lawyer, I'm not.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: But that'll come up in a second again, too.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: And I said, no, you didn't hear me the first time.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: No.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: So then they sued.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: And this was the new experience for me being in a federal courtroom as a defendant.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: I'd intended to just go watch and the Oregon DOJ defending us against the US DOJ motioned me up.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: So I sat at council table for a couple of hours and listened to the conversation and
25:33
SPEAKER_00: in a rare move.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: You tell me how rare the judge dismissed the case from the bench before he left.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: That's pretty rare.
25:41
SPEAKER_02: That's pretty rare.
25:42
SPEAKER_02: Like, I've heard enough.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: Go home.
25:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, more or less.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: And again, I'm paraphrasing, but he basically.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: I think you're getting the Civil Rights Act backwards.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: It's about including people, not excluding people.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: And I do,
25:57
SPEAKER_00: having said all that,
25:58
SPEAKER_00: I do want to give the administration and the US DOJ credit for this.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: They have accumulated an unblemished record on this case.
26:06
SPEAKER_00: In this case,
26:07
SPEAKER_00: we were the first state to get our demand and lawsuit dismissed,
26:12
SPEAKER_00: but there have now been 24 others.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: So they are 0 and 25 on this.
26:16
SPEAKER_02: You know,
26:16
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to miss because,
26:19
SPEAKER_02: you know, I had the experience while I was district attorney.
26:21
SPEAKER_02: You know,
26:21
SPEAKER_02: I started early in the middle of the riots and protests that were happening downtown
26:27
SPEAKER_02: and after the death of George Floyd.
26:30
SPEAKER_02: And I remember then Attorney General Barr taking a press conference in Washington,
26:36
SPEAKER_02: D.C.
26:37
SPEAKER_02: and essentially threatening me and Ted Wheeler and any other local official who.
26:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I remember that too.
26:57
SPEAKER_02: That's kind of a law.
27:21
SPEAKER_00: That was my reaction, too.
27:22
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for reminding us of federal law, which we follow.
27:25
SPEAKER_02: But they didn't write the letter to remind you of the law that you already know
27:29
SPEAKER_02: and took an oath to swore to protect.
27:31
SPEAKER_02: They wrote the letter for a different purpose.
27:34
SPEAKER_02: What did that feel like?
27:36
SPEAKER_02: Your federal government is talking about you personally.
27:39
SPEAKER_02: That's a feeling.
27:39
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I had it, but how did it hit you?
27:41
SPEAKER_02: It didn't.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: It's sort of non-serious for all the reasons you talked about,
27:48
SPEAKER_00: but it also brought to mind the contrast with what I'm doing
27:54
SPEAKER_00: and what other people have done.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: Lots of examples of this, but I think actually of my dad in the 60s.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: And he was 18.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: He was taller than me, taller than both of us.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: He went to South Carolina in 1965 to register African-Americans to vote.
28:11
SPEAKER_00: And he tells some really dramatic stories of what that was like,
28:15
SPEAKER_00: the threats and intimidation, being surrounded, being chased in a car.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: One night, in fact, they...
28:22
SPEAKER_00: They were in a car being chased.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: Somebody threw a brick through the window.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: They were all so amped up that they thought the lit cigarette that came in
28:31
SPEAKER_00: with it made it a bomb.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: Fortunately, it was not.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: But those are folks that didn't give up.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: And I think that is a through line that I see with all this bluster and things.
28:52
SPEAKER_02: Is the more that you can make people fearful or just so confusion,
28:56
SPEAKER_02: then maybe they decide to sit this one out.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
28:59
SPEAKER_00: It's the two things.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: And what we know is that we have to confront bullies.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: We have to do it in a in a in the respectful way.
29:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: But he can't change the Constitution.
29:31
SPEAKER_02: I was in Minneapolis yesterday and back today,
29:34
SPEAKER_02: and we got a shout out for our frogs from Minneapolis,
29:37
SPEAKER_02: which that is a city that has been on the front lines.
29:40
SPEAKER_00: Well, speaking of threats, that's the other thing.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: Remember,
29:42
SPEAKER_00: they said in that experience when everything was going on there,
29:47
SPEAKER_00: you know that all this violence,
29:49
SPEAKER_00: this ICE stuff, that could stop if you just give us that voter data.
29:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: It's a ransom note.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: That's intimidation.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: And we should not accept that.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: Wild.
29:59
SPEAKER_02: Is this accurate?
29:59
SPEAKER_02: Did Oregon invent vote by mail?
30:02
SPEAKER_02: Is that kind of hyperbole?
30:03
SPEAKER_00: It is, I think.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: In fact,
30:07
SPEAKER_00: the first use of vote by mail in the United States goes way back further
30:11
SPEAKER_00: than people tend to think.
30:12
SPEAKER_00: The War of 1812.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: Soldiers should have a voice in who is commanding them.
30:19
SPEAKER_00: It is accurate to say that Oregon was the first state to make it our exclusive method of voting.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: That was in 1998.
30:25
SPEAKER_00: And as one of our colleagues mentioned,
30:29
SPEAKER_00: Chris Walker of Jackson County pointed out in a town hall this week.
30:33
SPEAKER_00: We're the only one of the three states that do that exclusively that decided that in
30:38
SPEAKER_00: a citizen initiated initiative.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: So people chose this.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't even the legislature.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: It was the people directly who said, we want to do this.
30:47
SPEAKER_00: And it is enormously popular because it works.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: Where else in the modern economy do we say, let's make something less convenient?
30:56
SPEAKER_00: Oh.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: I want to go to these states where you watch people standing in line and yell support.
31:03
SPEAKER_02: There's a better way.
31:04
SPEAKER_02: You don't have to do this.
31:05
SPEAKER_02: You don't have to do this.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to take time off.
31:07
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to get a babysitter.
31:08
SPEAKER_02: You don't have to drive somewhere in a cold morning and stand in line.
31:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
31:12
SPEAKER_02: Weather is not a factor in our, you know, correct.
31:15
SPEAKER_02: I so I grew up on the East Coast.
31:17
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I've been here now for over 20 years.
31:19
SPEAKER_02: So I consider myself an Oregonian,
31:20
SPEAKER_02: but I grew up on the East Coast and I had the experience of voting in New York.
31:23
SPEAKER_02: So I at least have that in the kind of way back machine of my brain.
31:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
31:29
SPEAKER_02: There's two things that I tell people,
31:31
SPEAKER_02: former friends and everything that I love about the West Coast.
31:33
SPEAKER_02: I love many things, but the top two things.
31:35
SPEAKER_02: One is that sports start three hours earlier than they
31:39
SPEAKER_00: do on the West Coast.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: Yes, you can make it through.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: I remember being in DC now.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: Trying to watch a Pac-10 game and falling asleep at midnight.
31:45
SPEAKER_02: At midnight, right?
31:46
SPEAKER_02: You know, I grew up in Syracuse.
31:48
SPEAKER_02: Syracuse fan, they famously had a game that went like four or five overtimes.
31:52
SPEAKER_02: You're talking three in the morning.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: Even Jim Boeheim was falling asleep.
31:56
SPEAKER_02: Exactly right.
31:57
SPEAKER_02: Well done.
31:58
SPEAKER_02: So sports time.
31:59
SPEAKER_02: And then vote by mail.
32:00
SPEAKER_02: It is like the best ritual where you can sit at your kitchen table.
32:05
SPEAKER_02: You can,
32:06
SPEAKER_02: if you want,
32:06
SPEAKER_02: you got a partner, a spouse or somebody else, you have a conversation with them.
32:09
SPEAKER_02: Hey, what are you doing?
32:10
SPEAKER_02: What do you think?
32:10
SPEAKER_02: You're reading the pamphlet.
32:12
SPEAKER_02: You're not forced to go into a booth and be like, wait, who am I checking the box for?
32:15
SPEAKER_00: Or Yeah.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: It's incredible.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: I've never voted in person in that sense.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: I remember going with my parents as a kid in Idaho, but there's another very practical one.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: Like I'd be like, there's people behind.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: I got to hurry.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: I got to.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: Right.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: You got to hurry.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: Right.
32:27
SPEAKER_02: Like, oh, who am I?
32:29
SPEAKER_02: You know, assuming you're not.
32:30
SPEAKER_02: Just like I always vote down the ticket, right?
32:32
SPEAKER_02: You're thinking about things.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: But even that,
32:34
SPEAKER_00: in Oregon,
32:35
SPEAKER_00: as you well know, this is an anomaly this year where we don't have any initiatives.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: There are ballot measures.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: There are sometimes a lot.
32:43
SPEAKER_00: And that's another thing.
32:44
SPEAKER_00: You could do a little tonight.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: You could do a little tomorrow.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: You can take your time, consult all your recent neighborhood voting parties.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:50
SPEAKER_02: Good stuff.
32:51
SPEAKER_02: All right.
32:51
SPEAKER_02: So vote by mail.
32:52
SPEAKER_02: We love vote by mail.
32:54
SPEAKER_02: It is very popular.
32:55
SPEAKER_02: I think many Oregon's feel this way,
32:59
SPEAKER_02: despite the fact that it's being politicized,
33:01
SPEAKER_02: I think, nationally, which is unfortunate.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: The president hates vote by mail, except for when
33:07
SPEAKER_02: he does it himself.
33:09
SPEAKER_02: Good for me, not for thee, right?
33:11
SPEAKER_02: That seems to be a motto of this presidency.
33:14
SPEAKER_02: But I want to talk a little bit about postmarks and things of that nature.
33:18
SPEAKER_02: Your office noted that the number was 7,314 primary ballots were rejected
33:24
SPEAKER_02: for late postmarks in this year's primary, which is actually up from four years ago.
33:28
SPEAKER_02: So what's going on there?
33:31
SPEAKER_00: Well, a couple of things.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: The main one is,
33:34
SPEAKER_00: and this is separate from all the political stuff that we've been talking about with
33:37
SPEAKER_00: the Postal Service, they're also engaged in a bunch of budget cuts.
33:42
SPEAKER_00: And we can talk about why that is,
33:44
SPEAKER_00: but I want to be clear,
33:45
SPEAKER_00: my complaints with the Postal services are about those choices,
33:49
SPEAKER_00: not about the people who are doing the work.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: The people who are in the postal facilities,
33:53
SPEAKER_00: the people who are at your door,
33:55
SPEAKER_00: they're all doing a great job, and we have a lot of confidence in them.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: But it's now the case that there is exactly one facility in Oregon that does all of
34:04
SPEAKER_00: the processing and postmarking.
34:05
SPEAKER_02: When I learned this, I was blown away, but continue.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: So it doesn't make as much of a difference for those of us who are sitting
34:12
SPEAKER_00: as we are right now in Portland.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: But if you live,
34:14
SPEAKER_00: to pick that Medford example again,
34:16
SPEAKER_00: if you live in Medford and you want to send your ballot across town to Chris Walker
34:20
SPEAKER_00: and the Jackson County Elections Office.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: That's a 500-mile round trip.
34:24
SPEAKER_00: It's going to Portland first to get processed and postmarked, and then it's going back.
34:29
SPEAKER_00: So we want to make sure that that is really clear for people so they don't get caught in that.
34:33
SPEAKER_00: So our advice to everyone is be ready to vote.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: Use your voter's pamphlet as your prompt.
34:39
SPEAKER_00: Get prepared so when your ballot shows up, You're ready to go.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: Sign the envelope.
34:43
SPEAKER_00: If you're going to mail it, get it in the mail at least a week before Election Day.
34:47
SPEAKER_00: And I say that everywhere, even though that might be more than you need in Portland.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: You have worldwide reach, Mike, so we don't want someone here to.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: To hear an inconsistent message, that gives it time.
35:00
SPEAKER_00: And if you do have to mail closer to Election Day than a week,
35:05
SPEAKER_00: go into the post office,
35:06
SPEAKER_00: get them to put a postmark, a hand postmark on that envelope.
35:10
SPEAKER_02: Even better than just dropping it in the box.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: The drop box is number one.
35:13
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I mean, so yeah, the blue box.
35:15
SPEAKER_02: We're going to talk about the drop box.
35:16
SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.
35:17
SPEAKER_00: But if you're mailing, mail it early.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: Get in the stamp.
35:19
SPEAKER_00: If you can't do it, get a hand postmark on it.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
35:22
SPEAKER_02: Well, let's talk about the Dropbox because is it right that you went to the e-board
35:26
SPEAKER_02: and asked for more money for Dropboxes?
35:28
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
35:29
SPEAKER_02: And so there are going to be how many more requests?
35:32
SPEAKER_00: We're closing in on 20.
35:34
SPEAKER_00: And for context, we had 324 in the primary, and that's good, but we can do better.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: We did a really terrific,
35:41
SPEAKER_00: comprehensive analysis of every address in Oregon to find those spots where
35:45
SPEAKER_00: the addition of even one more More Dropbox makes a significant difference in access.
35:50
SPEAKER_00: We want to make sure people can easily get to a Dropbox,
35:53
SPEAKER_00: whether it's by driving or transit or walking.
35:57
SPEAKER_00: We're pretty good in a lot of places,
35:58
SPEAKER_00: but there are those spots where we can make a big difference.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: Particularly some of those rural spots where it's still, you know, a couple hours.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: It's a long drive.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: To get to a Dropbox.
36:08
SPEAKER_00: All right.
36:09
SPEAKER_02: But if you can, first preference, use the Dropbox.
36:12
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
36:13
SPEAKER_02: Second preference, use Post Office with faith.
36:15
SPEAKER_00: But if you're not doing at least Just a week early, go and get the stamp.
36:19
SPEAKER_00: Do it a week early.
36:20
SPEAKER_00: Do everything you can to do that because your ballots are going to be mailed on October 14th.
36:24
SPEAKER_00: If you have not gotten it by October 21st, reach out to your clerk and make arrangements.
36:30
SPEAKER_00: But as soon as you've got it, You have the choices.
36:33
SPEAKER_00: You have the resources.
36:34
SPEAKER_00: Make your choices.
36:35
SPEAKER_00: Get them back in.
36:36
SPEAKER_00: And we should also talk at some point about ballot tracks,
36:39
SPEAKER_00: the notification system that we're now going to make available across the state.
36:43
SPEAKER_00: It's something that five counties in Oregon have had for a while now.
36:46
SPEAKER_00: It's a terrific system.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully you have opted into it as well.
36:49
SPEAKER_00: You get a notification by email or text or both when the ballot is sent,
36:54
SPEAKER_00: when it's received on the way back,
36:56
SPEAKER_00: and when your signature is verified and your ballots counted.
36:58
SPEAKER_00: Just an additional level of visibility and confidence.
37:01
SPEAKER_00: And now every voter is going to have that option.
37:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I get the text message.
37:05
SPEAKER_02: It is great.
37:06
SPEAKER_02: And you're like, oh, my ballot's on the way.
37:07
SPEAKER_02: Oh, they got my ballot.
37:09
SPEAKER_02: It's a great feeling.
37:10
SPEAKER_02: Voter tracks.
37:12
SPEAKER_02: How do people sign up for that?
37:13
SPEAKER_00: TBD.
37:14
SPEAKER_00: It's coming.
37:15
SPEAKER_00: We just finished the legislature's approval.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: Well, I've held off on getting to this point.
37:34
SPEAKER_02: And so even though on his face, his actions are demonstrably going.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: And his own administration in 2020 said it was the most secure election in history.
37:55
SPEAKER_00: And there was no evidence of any votes being changed, any intrusions or anything else.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: Ask your 2020 self,
38:00
SPEAKER_02: Mr. President.
38:01
SPEAKER_02: Can you imagine working for this guy?
38:02
SPEAKER_02: No.
38:04
SPEAKER_02: Just relentlessly thrown under the bus, right?
38:06
SPEAKER_02: You're like, hey, Mr. President, we did a great job.
38:08
SPEAKER_02: We invented a vaccine and we did warp speed and we're helping people.
38:12
SPEAKER_02: And he's like, ah, it's terrible.
38:14
SPEAKER_02: Like you, you're just like, no consistency.
38:16
SPEAKER_02: Ah, just okay.
38:17
SPEAKER_02: But what I wanted to actually Yeah, right.
38:34
SPEAKER_02: Out of 2 million plus ballots,
38:37
SPEAKER_02: he found 54 potential cases,
38:40
SPEAKER_02: which almost all of them didn't merit any kind of criminal charges.
38:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's even a better, bigger sample size.
38:46
SPEAKER_00: The Legislative Fiscal Office did a study of 19 years of data, 60.9 million ballots cast.
38:53
SPEAKER_00: They found 38 cases of improper voting, not 3,800, not 38,000, 38.
38:59
SPEAKER_02: Over almost two decades and 61 million votes.
39:02
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
39:03
SPEAKER_00: 38.
39:03
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
39:04
SPEAKER_00: And I want that to be zero,
39:05
SPEAKER_00: but that is not something that is changing the results of any election.
39:10
SPEAKER_00: It is not justification for the kinds of reckless and extreme policies
39:14
SPEAKER_00: that This administration is pursuing that would have the effect of making it harder
39:18
SPEAKER_00: for eligible citizens to vote.
39:19
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it's not there.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: The evidence is not there.
39:23
SPEAKER_00: And that study is very consistent with what we've seen from all kinds
39:27
SPEAKER_00: of other sources,
39:28
SPEAKER_00: including the Heritage Foundation, not exactly a progressive organization.
39:34
SPEAKER_00: They too say there's nothing here.
39:36
SPEAKER_00: It's not a thing.
39:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:38
SPEAKER_02: You know,
39:38
SPEAKER_02: if you are a real assiduous news reader in Oregon,
39:42
SPEAKER_02: you might remember an article about the DMV mistake.
39:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:45
SPEAKER_02: So that that is real.
39:47
SPEAKER_02: It happened.
39:48
SPEAKER_02: And so my understanding,
39:50
SPEAKER_02: my recollection of that was that there were people who were registered to vote
39:54
SPEAKER_02: that maybe shouldn't have been.
39:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:56
SPEAKER_00: And it's important.
39:56
SPEAKER_00: It's a couple of things on this one.
39:59
SPEAKER_00: Those were people who didn't take any steps themselves.
40:02
SPEAKER_00: This was a government error.
40:04
SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to talk about that, too.
40:07
SPEAKER_00: But they were not.
40:07
SPEAKER_02: They weren't.
40:08
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I'm going to vote.
40:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm not allowed to.
40:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's number one.
40:12
SPEAKER_00: Number two, it gives the lie to the idea that voter ID is somehow a solution.
40:19
SPEAKER_00: This was checking ID and there were still errors.
40:22
SPEAKER_00: But this was just poor people.
40:24
SPEAKER_00: Program design and implementation.
40:25
SPEAKER_00: So that started before I was Secretary of State.
40:27
SPEAKER_00: One of the first things we did was really take a clear and fresh look about all
40:31
SPEAKER_00: of those processes, and we changed them really significantly.
40:34
SPEAKER_00: So anytime humans and data interact, there are going to be errors.
40:39
SPEAKER_00: I can say very confidently the risk of those errors is dramatically less than it was.
40:43
SPEAKER_00: And you don't have to listen to me about that.
40:45
SPEAKER_00: We did an audit, an outside auditor, looked at the changes we've made and agreed with us.
40:52
SPEAKER_00: We're in a much stronger position.
40:55
SPEAKER_00: So many more checks in that process.
40:57
SPEAKER_00: So we're in good shape.
40:59
SPEAKER_00: And in general, it's a good policy to make it easier.
41:02
SPEAKER_00: More convenient for eligible people to be registered and participating
41:05
SPEAKER_00: because we're stronger when more people are voting and we're more likely to get
41:08
SPEAKER_00: the government that reflects the will of the people.
41:11
SPEAKER_02: 100%.
41:12
SPEAKER_02: So fraud, not really.
41:15
SPEAKER_02: That's a red herring.
41:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
41:17
SPEAKER_02: You're confident about our election systems across the state.
41:20
SPEAKER_02: Very.
41:20
SPEAKER_02: People should have that and share that confidence with you.
41:24
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
41:25
SPEAKER_02: I talk statewide stuff and you're a statewide elected official,
41:28
SPEAKER_02: so I appreciate that perspective.
41:29
SPEAKER_02: I want to zoom into Portland for a second.
41:31
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
41:32
SPEAKER_02: We had a ballot initiative.
41:34
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
41:47
SPEAKER_02: You weighed in on that at the time.
41:49
SPEAKER_02: It's since gone through the courts.
41:51
SPEAKER_02: And Judge Simon said he looked at the process.
41:54
SPEAKER_02: He said, actually, they followed the laws.
41:55
SPEAKER_02: They followed the rules, things of that nature.
41:59
SPEAKER_02: Do you still have faith in the local Portland election system?
42:02
SPEAKER_00: I do.
42:02
SPEAKER_00: I think there's room for us to continue talking about how that process works and
42:08
SPEAKER_00: to give people more visibility into it.
42:11
SPEAKER_00: The point I was making in my letter was when I'm getting calls from all ranges
42:16
SPEAKER_00: of people on both sides of And I point to the experience we had in the Secretary
42:23
SPEAKER_00: of State's office in two very different cases.
42:26
SPEAKER_00: You'll remember the referral where people gather signatures to put
42:32
SPEAKER_00: the transportation package on the ballot.
42:33
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
42:34
SPEAKER_00: Alternately,
42:35
SPEAKER_00: there was a ballot measure that sought to,
42:37
SPEAKER_00: and I'm being fairly loose with the language here,
42:41
SPEAKER_00: that sought to put additional restrictions on hunting and fishing and all that sort
42:45
SPEAKER_00: of stuff.
42:45
SPEAKER_00: That did not make the ballot.
42:47
SPEAKER_00: Thank God for my perspective.
42:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean, from my personal perspective.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: Understood.
42:53
SPEAKER_00: The point that I'm making in drawing these contrasts,
42:55
SPEAKER_00: these are people who felt very differently on these two things,
42:58
SPEAKER_00: and yet they had different results, and people did not question our process.
43:02
SPEAKER_00: That's where we want to be.
43:04
SPEAKER_00: Didn't prevail is disappointed by the results,
43:07
SPEAKER_00: but their reaction is,
43:08
SPEAKER_00: I need to do a better job gathering signatures,
43:10
SPEAKER_00: convincing people, those kinds of things.
43:13
SPEAKER_00: So it is possible to do that on two very different perspectives and have
43:17
SPEAKER_00: a process that's not questioned.
43:19
SPEAKER_00: So that's really what I was trying to say about Portland.
43:21
SPEAKER_00: We got to get that process right so that people feel confident in the process,
43:25
SPEAKER_00: even as they're disappointed in the results.
43:27
SPEAKER_02: And now that it's gone through the system and the evidence was put in front
43:30
SPEAKER_02: the court, you're more confident in the process that you've seen here?
43:33
SPEAKER_00: I'm confident in the result,
43:36
SPEAKER_00: but I think we can improve the process so that people don't feel that again,
43:40
SPEAKER_00: they can be disappointed by the outcome,
43:42
SPEAKER_00: but they're not saying it's because of this process.
43:45
SPEAKER_02: Okay, great.
43:46
SPEAKER_02: And in that process, lots of Portlanders.
43:48
SPEAKER_02: And it was all over social media for a time.
43:50
SPEAKER_02: We're documenting their own complaints about the signature gathering campaign.
43:54
SPEAKER_02: Those many of them were forwarded onto your office.
43:57
SPEAKER_00: Those are still under investigation.
43:58
SPEAKER_00: Yes, that process continues.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: And that's separate from the outcome.
44:01
SPEAKER_00: The process has nothing to do with the outcome.
44:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
44:04
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
44:05
SPEAKER_02: Because I know, you know, I think a lot of folks are like, well, it didn't qualify.
44:08
SPEAKER_02: So maybe that just goes away.
44:09
SPEAKER_02: Complaints.
44:10
SPEAKER_02: No, that's not how it works.
44:11
SPEAKER_02: Correct.
44:12
SPEAKER_02: I remember from my experience with people for Portland,
44:14
SPEAKER_02: they folded up and suddenly the investigations that were filed just didn't seem
44:19
SPEAKER_02: to ever come out.
44:21
SPEAKER_02: So I'm glad to hear that that's still coming on.
44:23
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
44:24
SPEAKER_02: Let's take a quick break there to hear a word from our sponsor.
44:27
SPEAKER_02: A quick word from our show sponsor, Dr. Adam Moret at Corbett Hill Wellness Center.
44:31
SPEAKER_02: People I know and trust.
44:33
SPEAKER_01: Hi, I'm Dr. Moret from Corbett Hill Wellness Center.
44:35
SPEAKER_01: I know some people worry that once they see a chiropractor, they'll have to keep coming back.
44:40
SPEAKER_01: That's not how I practice.
44:41
SPEAKER_01: I recommend the care that you need for as long as you need it.
44:45
SPEAKER_01: And at Corbett Hill, you have options.
44:47
SPEAKER_01: Chiropractic,
44:48
SPEAKER_01: massage,
44:49
SPEAKER_01: acupuncture, naturopathic medicine, laser treatment, shockwave therapy, and more.
44:54
SPEAKER_01: Care should be about what's right for you.
44:56
SPEAKER_01: Corbett Hill Wellness Center.
44:58
SPEAKER_01: Move well, feel well, live well.
45:01
SPEAKER_01: Visit corbethill.com.
45:03
SPEAKER_02: All right.
45:03
SPEAKER_02: So I want to, you know, I go on social media.
45:05
SPEAKER_02: I see different things that people are, the fears that they're expressing.
45:09
SPEAKER_02: And in fact, I was just in a room full of prosecutors, which is why I was in Minneapolis.
45:13
SPEAKER_02: And they were talking about things that they are doing for preparation.
45:17
SPEAKER_02: And so I'm just going to, This is going to be the lightning round.
45:20
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to throw some quick prompts at you.
45:22
SPEAKER_02: And just, you know, what should people be concerned about or not?
45:26
SPEAKER_02: Or from your perspective, how do you respond to these things?
45:28
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
45:29
SPEAKER_02: All right.
45:29
SPEAKER_02: So first one, what if ICE shows up at the boxes?
45:33
SPEAKER_00: Go to a different one.
45:34
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the advantages of having hundreds of them.
45:37
SPEAKER_00: If you see something you don't like,
45:39
SPEAKER_00: go to a different one,
45:39
SPEAKER_00: come back another time,
45:40
SPEAKER_00: have somebody else drop your ballot off that you trust,
45:43
SPEAKER_00: call the elections office, call us, call law enforcement.
45:47
SPEAKER_00: There's lots of options.
45:48
SPEAKER_02: What I love about that, too, is because you get your ballot, you can vote whenever you want.
45:53
SPEAKER_02: I mean, as soon as you vote,
45:54
SPEAKER_02: they can't be there 24-7 from, what, the 14th till the election day?
45:59
SPEAKER_00: Till November 3rd, yeah.
46:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you can't do that.
46:02
SPEAKER_00: Little known fact,
46:03
SPEAKER_00: I don't recommend it,
46:03
SPEAKER_00: but if you put your ballot in any drop box anywhere in the state, it will get back.
46:08
SPEAKER_00: So do it in your county if you can,
46:10
SPEAKER_00: but if you find yourself on a trip and you have your ballot and you're not going
46:13
SPEAKER_00: to get back in time, you can put it in a drop box elsewhere in the state, too.
46:16
SPEAKER_02: I never considered that.
46:17
SPEAKER_02: That's neat.
46:18
SPEAKER_02: All right.
46:18
SPEAKER_02: What about same same kind of question?
46:20
SPEAKER_02: National Guard is going to be deployed to keep order during elections.
46:23
SPEAKER_02: What's your reaction?
46:24
SPEAKER_00: Well, we're going to use every legal tool we have, of course, but we have lots of options.
46:29
SPEAKER_00: And again, you've got different drop boxes.
46:31
SPEAKER_00: So don't don't be concerned about that.
46:33
SPEAKER_00: Vote as soon as you are ready.
46:35
SPEAKER_00: That's the best advice.
46:37
SPEAKER_00: What if the Fed sees our ballots?
46:39
SPEAKER_00: One of the best things we've been doing lately is these regular tabletop exercises
46:43
SPEAKER_00: with county clerics,
46:44
SPEAKER_00: making sure they are well connected with their county council,
46:47
SPEAKER_00: with us,
46:48
SPEAKER_00: with the Oregon DOJ,
46:49
SPEAKER_00: so that they know the difference between a warrant and a subpoena and exactly what
46:52
SPEAKER_00: to do,
46:53
SPEAKER_00: calming that system and making sure that they are prepared,
46:55
SPEAKER_00: very confident with how they will respond.
46:58
SPEAKER_02: What if someone's going to hack our count?
47:01
SPEAKER_00: Paper ballots.
47:02
SPEAKER_00: All those those systems are not connected to the Internet.
47:05
SPEAKER_00: We test them before and after the election.
47:08
SPEAKER_00: And if we needed a recount, we can do that.
47:09
SPEAKER_00: It's one of the beauties of paper ballots.
47:11
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
47:12
SPEAKER_00: What if our president cancels the election?
47:14
SPEAKER_00: Here is one thing we have never done in the history of our country between wars
47:18
SPEAKER_00: and pandemics and earthquakes and everything else.
47:21
SPEAKER_00: We don't cancel elections.
47:23
SPEAKER_00: The president might try.
47:24
SPEAKER_00: He can't do it and we won't let him.
47:27
SPEAKER_02: What if I am somehow flagged or I get communication that I could be flagged for voting?
47:33
SPEAKER_00: Talk to your elections office.
47:35
SPEAKER_00: Talk to your county clerk.
47:36
SPEAKER_00: It's another good reason to check your status at any point to make sure
47:39
SPEAKER_00: that your registration is up to date, that the address is correct.
47:43
SPEAKER_00: Again, if you don't see your ballot by the 21st of October,
47:46
SPEAKER_00: a week after they're in the mail,
47:47
SPEAKER_00: call your county clerk, say what's what's going on.
47:49
SPEAKER_00: They will they will know the answers and they will help you out.
47:52
SPEAKER_00: What if they refuse to certify the results?
47:54
SPEAKER_00: We certify the results of elections in Oregon, so there's no they.
47:59
SPEAKER_02: There's no Mike Johnson waiting in the wings for Oregon votes.
48:03
SPEAKER_02: Not to certify results in Oregon, no.
48:06
SPEAKER_02: Fantastic.
48:07
SPEAKER_02: Anything else you're hearing from people that you want to take on and help address?
48:11
SPEAKER_00: I would kind of reiterate what we talked about before,
48:14
SPEAKER_00: which is voting early is the best thing you could do to develop your own plan
48:19
SPEAKER_00: to know where the Dropbox is that you're going to use.
48:21
SPEAKER_00: If you can't use a Dropbox,
48:23
SPEAKER_00: make sure that your ballot is in the mail at least a week before Election Day.
48:26
SPEAKER_00: That's Tuesday, the 27th of October.
48:29
SPEAKER_00: If you have to mail after the 27th,
48:32
SPEAKER_00: go to the post office, ask the kind people there to put their manual postmark on it.
48:37
SPEAKER_00: That will reduce the risk of it being delayed.
48:40
SPEAKER_00: And just Be ready.
48:42
SPEAKER_00: You can check your status before that.
48:44
SPEAKER_00: It's exciting.
48:45
SPEAKER_00: We're less than four weeks away.
48:47
SPEAKER_00: It's all coming.
48:49
SPEAKER_02: It is exciting.
48:50
SPEAKER_02: I love voting.
48:52
SPEAKER_02: I love this time of year.
48:53
SPEAKER_02: I'm constantly encouraging people.
48:56
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't matter what your political ideology or anything else is.
48:59
SPEAKER_02: Get to a house party.
49:00
SPEAKER_02: If you believe in a candidate, go knock doors.
49:03
SPEAKER_02: Get involved in the political process.
49:04
SPEAKER_02: I think when it feels so much, many of us feel like democracy is so under threat.
49:10
SPEAKER_02: Just getting out there with your neighbors.
49:11
SPEAKER_02: I like that.
49:12
SPEAKER_02: All right.
49:12
SPEAKER_02: Key dates coming up for people?
49:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, October 13th is the last date for someone to register who is not currently registered.
49:36
SPEAKER_00: That's also a good time or good date to have in mind to make sure
49:39
SPEAKER_00: that your address is up to date because ballots are going to be mailed on the 14th.
49:44
SPEAKER_00: And so keep an eye on that.
49:46
SPEAKER_00: Opt into ballot tracks as soon as you can.
49:47
SPEAKER_00: You'll know when your ballot has been mailed.
49:49
SPEAKER_00: Keep an eye out for that.
49:50
SPEAKER_00: If you don't get it by the 21st,
49:52
SPEAKER_00: that's the time to reach out to your county clerk and find out what's going on so
49:55
SPEAKER_00: that you can vote.
49:56
SPEAKER_00: Ballots have to be back into the elections office by 8 o'clock on Election Day.
50:01
SPEAKER_00: That helps those elections teams do their work so that we get results faster.
50:04
SPEAKER_00: There are lots of things that happen after Election Day.
50:16
SPEAKER_00: Before the certification of elections, which happens on December 10th.
50:21
SPEAKER_00: But make sure you have what you need.
50:23
SPEAKER_00: Make sure you've got plans for yourself and anybody else that you care about.
50:28
SPEAKER_00: Talk to people around Oregonian, around Oregon.
50:31
SPEAKER_00: Encourage them to go visit their county clerks.
50:33
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to listen to what we've been talking about.
50:35
SPEAKER_00: You can go visit yourself and see all the processes.
50:38
SPEAKER_00: Every one of those county clerks is excited to have visitors and show their work
50:42
SPEAKER_00: and show their processes.
50:43
SPEAKER_00: And people leave with lots more confidence and credibility.
50:46
SPEAKER_02: If there are people out there that are listening to this,
50:49
SPEAKER_02: they may have heard that they can show up to help and monitor or watch and make sure
50:56
SPEAKER_02: that the vote is happening and that things are being counted accurately.
50:59
SPEAKER_02: Are there ways that people can plug in like that?
51:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, things look different in different counties.
51:03
SPEAKER_00: So the best thing to do is to check in with your county clerk and ask how that process works.
51:08
SPEAKER_00: Lots of different ones have systems where people sign up for a spot to watch.
51:14
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people watch from a window outside the room.
51:18
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes there's a box taped on the floor in which you stand.
51:22
SPEAKER_00: Many clerks have a live stream, so you don't even have to leave home to watch what's happening.
51:27
SPEAKER_00: Options across the state, and people should definitely look into those.
51:31
SPEAKER_00: Any other resources you think people should be aware of?
51:33
SPEAKER_00: OregonVotes.gov.
51:35
SPEAKER_00: You can check your status.
51:36
SPEAKER_00: You can check the status of your ballot.
51:39
SPEAKER_00: All of those things.
51:40
SPEAKER_00: There's lots of FAQs there.
51:43
SPEAKER_00: The standard things that we hear all the time about signatures, about filling out a ballot.
51:50
SPEAKER_00: All of those kinds of things are right there.
51:52
SPEAKER_00: We encourage people to check that out.
51:53
SPEAKER_00: There's available in lots of languages, too.
51:56
SPEAKER_02: I imagine you're pretty busy between now and election night.
51:59
SPEAKER_02: Where can people find you?
52:00
SPEAKER_00: On all the standard social media channels,
52:03
SPEAKER_00: we'll be doing a bunch of town halls to make sure that people have this kind
52:07
SPEAKER_00: of information and keep in touch.
52:10
SPEAKER_02: Secretary Tobias Reid, thank you so much for coming on the show.
52:13
SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Mike.
52:13
SPEAKER_02: That was Oregon's Secretary of State Tobias Reid.
52:16
SPEAKER_02: Boy, we covered a lot today.
52:17
SPEAKER_02: The fight with the Trump administration over mail voting,
52:20
SPEAKER_02: why Oregon is telling people to use drop boxes as well as getting their ballots
52:24
SPEAKER_02: in early,
52:25
SPEAKER_02: the Justice Department's threat to prosecute election officials,
52:28
SPEAKER_02: and how much voter fraud actually is in Oregon.
52:31
SPEAKER_02: Spoiler, basically none.
52:33
SPEAKER_02: And the fears a lot of us have about November.
52:36
SPEAKER_02: Here's my ask.
52:37
SPEAKER_02: If you're not registered to vote, it's not too late.
52:39
SPEAKER_02: You have until October 13th.
52:41
SPEAKER_02: Go to OregonVotes.gov.
52:43
SPEAKER_02: It only takes a few minutes.
52:44
SPEAKER_02: Ballots go out on October 14th, and when yours shows up, fill it out and get it back.
52:49
SPEAKER_02: Use that Dropbox if you can.
52:51
SPEAKER_02: The point is to make you scared or confused or convinced that your vote won't count.
52:55
SPEAKER_02: Because if you believe that and you stay at home, that's the goal.
53:13
SPEAKER_02: Don't give into that.
53:14
SPEAKER_02: No matter who you're voting for, whatever party, whatever candidate, democracy is fragile.
53:19
SPEAKER_02: People fought and died for the right to vote.
53:21
SPEAKER_02: Don't let it be taken away.
53:23
SPEAKER_02: Exercise your voice.
53:25
SPEAKER_02: Thank you to our sponsor, Corbett Hill Wellness.
53:27
SPEAKER_02: Please support the sponsors who support this show.
53:30
SPEAKER_02: And if you'd like to sponsor Schmidt Show PDX, please reach out.
53:33
SPEAKER_02: Help us spread the word, leave a review, tell a friend, post about the show on social media.
53:37
SPEAKER_02: It all helps get the word out.
53:40
SPEAKER_02: Between now and next week, take an action step.
53:42
SPEAKER_02: Talk to a neighbor.
53:43
SPEAKER_02: Check to make sure that you're registered to vote if you aren't sure.
53:46
SPEAKER_02: Sign up with any number of local groups to make sure that our elections are free and fair.
53:51
SPEAKER_02: That's your homework.
53:52
SPEAKER_02: And I'll see you next week right back here on The Schmidt Show.
53:56
SPEAKER_02: A quick word from our show sponsor,
53:58
SPEAKER_02: Dr. Adam Moret at Corbett Hill Wellness Center, people I know and trust.
54:02
SPEAKER_01: Hi, I'm Dr. Moret from Corbett Hill Wellness Center.
54:05
SPEAKER_01: Your back hurts, so where do you start?
54:08
SPEAKER_01: First, we'll figure out what's going on.
54:10
SPEAKER_01: The answer isn't automatically an adjustment.
54:12
SPEAKER_01: It might be chiropractic,
54:13
SPEAKER_01: massage, acupuncture, laser, or shockwave therapy, or another approach.
54:18
SPEAKER_01: That's the advantage of whole person care.
54:20
SPEAKER_01: We have options, and we'll help you find what makes sense for you.
54:24
SPEAKER_01: Corbett Hill Wellness Center.
54:25
SPEAKER_01: Move well, feel well, live well.
54:28
SPEAKER_01: Visit corbethill.com.