Latest / World Ablaze with George Fontes / "How Your Vote Is Really Counted": County Clerk Dismantles Election Myths (Donna Linder)

Transcript

"How Your Vote Is Really Counted": County Clerk Dismantles Election Myths (Donna Linder) · World Ablaze with George Fontes

• 0:00
  welcome back to another world of blades as you can see i have another guest with me today her
• 0:23
  name is donna linder she is the county clerk recorder for stanislaus county she holds many
• 0:29
  hats, County clerk recorder. I'm going to read your card because I just want everybody to know
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  that you and I did actually meet in person before we did this. So that's, you know, this is how this
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  happened. So County clerk recorder, registrar of voters and commissioner of civil marriages
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  for Stanislaus County. And we brought Donna on because the midterms are coming up around the
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  corner and election integrity is always a question. And Donna, before we get going, I unfortunately
• 0:57
  have to do the sponsor thing. So please hold tight. I don't mean to make you just sit there
• 1:01
  and watch me read something, but I got to do it. You know what I'm saying? So give me one second
• 1:05
  here, Donna, and I'll be right back with you. All right, everybody. As you know, we have a
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• 1:58
  All right, let's get back to Donna.
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  So Donna, how have you been?
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  Busy, preparing for an election.
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  Right?
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  So I've actually had a, it's not in Stanislaw County,
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  but I had Rhonda Shader who's running for California Senate in District 34.
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  And we had a discussion about election integrity.
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  and so i think it's very timely for you to be here because i saw i saw a post recently let's
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  put it this way it just popped up it's like hey you know that the midterms are about 60 days away
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  and i was like oh wow you know it's it's funny how fast time flies and everybody starts to forget
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  about it and also it's right on top of you and so the thing that always comes up as i'm sure you're
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  very well aware because i'm sure you get many questions about it is election integrity and i
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  don't think a lot of people understand the process and neither did i before i talked to you by the
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  way. And when I talked to you, I saw your presentation and you and I got to have a good
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  chat about what it is you do. And what I understand is everything you do on your side is like,
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  I think you're on it and you're doing everything that you can do within your control to ensure
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  that there is actual integrity within the elections as far as how balance are counted,
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  how you verify them, everything that goes into that. And also you have an answer,
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  as we discussed offline, to why does it take California so long to count things?
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  So I'm sure that you'll get into that here in a bit.
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  So moving forward, can you please give everybody a little bit of background on you and what it is that you actually do for the county?
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  So how did I get here is kind of what you're thinking, right?
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  I didn't set out to work in the clerk quarter registrar voters office or even to be the clerk quarter registrar voters.
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  I came to work at the county 23 years ago when I was like 10 years old because, you know, that way you don't know how old I am.
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  And I started out in a low-level position and worked my way up.
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  I went to college, got my degree, worked my way up into management, assistant registrar, and then assistant clerk porter.
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  And when the clerk quarter decided to retire, she asked, do you want to run for office?
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  And I thought, I don't know.
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  That means I have to go out and talk to people all the time.
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  And I'm not the background worker person.
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  But I did it.
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  I went out and started talking to people.
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  And I grew up here.
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  I grew up in Stanislaus County or partly in Merced County.
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  I lived in Hillmar.
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  And I raised my family here.
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  And I have a real heart for our community and making it a good place to live and making sure that elections have that integrity.
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  I vote here.
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  My staff votes here.
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  My family votes here.
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  And so we want to make it the best it can be in at least Stanislaus County.
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  Nice.
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  Now, here's the thing.
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  Living in Stanislaus County, you being the recorder in Stanislaus County, I know that you're doing everything in your power.
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  So I'm going to bring something up here.
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  And as I told you before, none of this is gotcha.
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  None of this is putting on your spot.
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  It's just going to open the conversation a bit.
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  And you can answer however you want.
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  So first of all, people question California's election integrity.
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  So this is from the Heritage Foundation.
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  Now, we can question the validity of this because I guess a lot of people would consider the Heritage Foundation to be maybe a little far right or fringe or whatever.
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  But they did a study and the score, as you can see, for state of California was only 30, ranking last of all states.
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  And some of those concerns of top ranking were basically voter ID implementation, accuracy of voter registration lists.
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  And then if you go down, there's also the absentee ballot management.
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  And another thing California has been under fire for has been the mail-in ballots.
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  In 2023, there was another study done, and this was by the Transparency Foundation, who is nonpartisan, by the way.
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  So it's not a left or right type of narrative.
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  It was just down the middle.
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  This is how we score California.
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  Of course, this was a few years ago, but a lot of people still have the same sentiment.
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  And so in their study, California receives a failing grade on nonpartisan election integrity scorecard after audit fines, evidence of voter fraud, inaccurate voter lists, inadequate signature reviews.
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  and voter suppression.
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  And it does go ahead and it says that public trust and confidence was a fail.
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  Accurate maintenance of voter list verifying identity of voters fail.
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  Confirmation eligibility of citizenship.
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  And it goes on.
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  And I'm sure you've heard all the talking points.
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  So I'm not going to beat you to death with this.
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  And again, it's not on you because, again, I heard your presentation.
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  I talked to you personally.
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  So I know that you're fine on your side.
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  But this is what people think regardless of who you are, right?
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  right away they think you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing. They automatically
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  don't think you're really going out of your way to do your job to make sure that everything is on
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  the up and up, as they say. How do you respond to this? How do you respond to these studies and
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  the narratives that are being spread around? Unfortunately, I can't speak for every county.
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  And there are laws in California that not everybody likes, including us that work here.
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  Um, so in our county, we do things to try to, um, um, take things to a different level.
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  So say you're doing a duplication of ballots.
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  Um, duplication is created because a ballot's ripped or, uh, something spilled on it that
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  will cause the count to be inaccurate or our military ballots have already gone out.
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  They're not on ballot paper.
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  They have to be transferred.
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  Code says that only takes two people.
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  One calling off what's on the damaged and one marking.
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  We use four people to make sure that you're watching those two people to make sure things are marked correctly.
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  Even in our partial hand count, we use four people.
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  There's all these little extra steps that we put into everything that causes us to know that what we're doing is protecting the vote and the integrity of the vote.
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  When we do adjudication, it's always a full-time person and either a part-time person or somebody from the clerk quarter department comes over.
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  So you have two full-time people.
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  There's always that extra layer of, I only have 10 full-time staff.
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  I should probably mention that.
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  So a full-time person is always in charge of a process,
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  but then you'll see part-time people actually doing a lot of the process.
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  And so we put those extra layers in to create that safeguard in Stanislaus County.
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  Now, some other counties do that, but I don't know for sure all of them do these extra steps.
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  We also, I'm the clerk quarter and the registrar voters.
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  So helping to keep our voter rolls clean,
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  we get the death list every month
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  from our public health department
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  that goes straight to elections to go through our rolls
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  to make sure that if there's a deceased person on there,
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  we can make sure they get taken off the voter rolls.
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  Now there's laws that say we can't just cancel them.
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  There's all these things.
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  We have to send out cards.
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  Are you really dead?
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  And that type of thing.
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  You know, sometimes we even think that's silly, but, you know, it is the law, but we can make them inactive so we don't mail them a ballot.
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  We aren't, you know, and if they do mail us a ballot, it's like, hmm, we need to check into this.
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  We don't just count it.
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  And so we have those extra steps in place, too.
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  Some things are law and we have to follow the law, but we're putting that extra Stanislaus County touch on things, too.
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  How long, interesting, that you brought up cleaning up the voter registrations or registrars,
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  because in the case of a death, for example, what's the process?
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  And what I mean by that, well, actually, let me ask that question again.
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  What's the timeline that is given so that you can legitimately verify that someone might have passed?
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  We have to send out, I want to say, two postcards, one initially and then another one just to be sure.
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  I don't know. And they're forwardable. I think that's always hilarious. Where are you sending it?
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  But so we have we do have to do those steps. But like I said, they're inactive. And sometimes
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  that's where people think that the voter rolls are off, because when you look at, say, the EAC,
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  they take even the inactives and put them on there. So it looks like you have all these people
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  on your rolls that shouldn't be. They're not active, which means we don't mail them anything.
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  They aren't an active voter, but they're there until we can send the postcards,
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  get the confirmations or get nothing and take them off the rolls.
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  What's that time though? How long do they get to respond back to you for verification?
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  Is there a time period or how do you determine?
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  So death is different than like return mail.
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  Return mail, you have to not vote in two federal elections.
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  So that takes a few years.
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  Death is depending on when the, we call them events.
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  I know that's a terrible saying, but event happens.
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  if it's right around election time, it would take longer because no changes to registration
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  happen during an election. Now, we can make you inactive, but we aren't sending out the postcards
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  and changing things during that time because that will cause a problem for actual voters
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  and their ability to vote. So it could take a little longer if it's right in the middle of an
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  election, but typically it could take just a few months.
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  Okay.
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  A long time.
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  Right.
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  But so you do give them plenty of time to make sure you're not making a
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  mistake.
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  And it also gives them time to actually respond.
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  So after a few months, and of course,
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  it sounds like you're doing this well before usually a vote actually comes
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  up.
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  So after, after that time, you're just like, okay, we gave them enough time.
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  They've had enough time to respond.
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  Then we're going to assume or we're going to have to, you know,
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  make a judgment call and they're inactive or they might have just passed well they'll be inactive
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  right away and then if there's either a response from the family or no response
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  to the postcard then another one is sent and then once we have either confirmation or something from that postcard we cancel them So they not on our goals at all
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  So we inactivate people right away.
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  Got it.
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  So once you hear of or anything has been filed for death,
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  for example, like death certificate right away,
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  they're inactive.
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  And then you also take the next step to make sure
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  that they're also actually deceased.
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  Sounds like.
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  Correct.
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  Okay.
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  Got it.
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  And I jokingly say,
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  anyone can tell you somebody passed away.
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  Right.
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  So you have to double check everything.
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  No, it makes sense.
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  And return mail,
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  that was put in place to start protecting people
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  because we get return mail
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  and the person has never moved.
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  Nothing's ever happened,
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  but a mistake at the post office
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  can cause that. We had a person's registration changed because their child went to school in San
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  Francisco and they went and registered their car there for their child and it changed their whole
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  registration to San Francisco. So you have that inactive phase or that let's double check phase.
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  If your registration change, we're going to send you a card and say, hey, there's a change in your
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  registration, you know, just to double check. Yeah. I get it. Um, you know, another example,
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  I mean, my father, he, uh, my sister lives in another state. So he, he went to go visit her
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  and stayed with her for literally, I think it was almost three months and which at that point,
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  he's not responding to mail at his residence. Right. So I can see, you know, where that can
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  also be an issue, for example. Yeah. So these things do happen. Got it. So what about verification?
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  I'm not sure. I'll be honest. I'm foggy on how it works within our county or even at the state
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  level. But I know in federal elections, the verifying a person's identity, not just her
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  identity, but as in their citizenship to vote for a federal election. How has that been currently
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  handling or how's it handled in Stanislaus County? So all registration is the same, whether it's a
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  federal election or a state election. When you register and you put down either your last four
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  year social or your driver's license number, that is ran through the database that connects to DMV
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  or Social Security and verifies that. If that can't be verified, that's when a first-time voter
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  does have to show identification. So there are times when people have to show identification,
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  it's first time voters that something couldn't be checked.
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  And so then they are showing identification.
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  So if you're ever at a vote center and somebody is showing ID,
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  that's why if they're voting by mail,
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  they can come in or send,
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  send copies in.
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  So,
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  so,
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  so IDs present at the time of registering,
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  but after that,
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  they're not required to show ID.
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  No.
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  How is it?
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  How do you verify?
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  a citizenship, for example, though? How would that happen?
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  It's through those two things. So at Social Security, I learned these things
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  because I had to research something. But Social Security, people can get a Social Security card
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  if they're not a citizen. But there's levels, just like DMV. So you are a citizen, you have this type
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  of Social Security card. If you're on a green card, you're going to get this type of Social
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  security card. So it's ran through that database, just like DMV. They're separated, showing the
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  difference. And so they'll run it through DMV and say, oh, wait, this one has the wrong driver's
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  license or through social security, wait, this one has wrong social security card. And you get
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  a social security card when you're a baby. So those are there. So it sounds like the talk going
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  around the narrative, the stories of verifying citizenship and whatnot really doesn't apply,
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  or it's not a thing to even argue. Is that correct in my assessment or assumption here?
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  As far as what we do,
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  we feel like we're checking everything. I know there's a lot of talk, will they give everybody
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  a driver's license? Well, think about when you were 16 or your child was 16. You had to take a
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  birth certificate to get that driver's license. So if you're in there without your birth certificate,
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  you're getting something different. And that's how they can separate those.
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  So as far as you're concerned, in what you deal with in your job, you're going through the steps,
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  you're going through the system, like all the rules and regulations in place, you're doing what you
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  can. So it's basically a combination of having someone like you actually doing your job and also
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  trusting that the other measures and systems are in place and actually functioning correctly.
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  Correct.
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  Yeah. Okay. Interesting. So opinion time, you don't have to give me a straight answer if you don't
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  want given your position, but I mean, where do you think the talk is coming up from then? Like,
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  how did all this start about illegal immigrants being able to vote in federal elections, for
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  example? Where do you think that came from if all these other measures and safeguards are in place
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  already? I think that there's some misunderstanding about driver's license because that's why I
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  mentioned that when you were 16, you had to show your birth certificate because I hear that when I
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  say, well, you're going to write down your driver's license number. We're going to check DMV.
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  Well, everybody gets driver's license. Well, yes, but when you're a citizen, you're showing your
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  birth certificate. And I was going to say something else. Now I'm totally lost.
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  Was that truck driving behind you in the background?
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  It was because I was thinking, can you hear that? My windows aren't that great. I'm on the third
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  floor. But there's the DMV and, oh, I know, same day registration. Because I had somebody come
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  very upset about same day registration. Yes, you can register on election day and they're going to
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  give you a ballot based on where you say you live. But you're going to put that in an envelope
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  that's going to come back to our office
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  and we're going to do all those checks to make sure.
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  Do you live in Stanislaus County?
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  Yes, by your address.
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  Did you vote someplace else?
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  Did you vote in San Joaquin a month before the election?
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  Because that's when your ballot went out
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  and then move here on election day
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  and run down and register and try to vote here again.
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  And we have your driver's license or your social security
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  that we're going to put into that, you know, go Secretary of State and off into those databases.
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  So they don't just vote on election day. Those are counted after vote by mail, after, you know,
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  everything else has been done. Then we process those and do that research.
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  Yeah. Okay. So I guess it's really coming down to there's a lot of misunderstanding. And then,
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  you know, there may be things outside of your office, for example, or anybody who has your
• 20:31
  position, there's things outside your control that you personally don't have control of.
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  And in California, they have the right to cure ballots. They have people that can collect ballots.
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  There's always talks of stuff in the ballot boxes, et cetera. I don't know if you've ever faced that
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  or heard any stories about that, but it sounds like from your end, as far as what your involvement
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  is, that you're doing what you have to do. And then as you said, you can't speak for every
• 20:54
  county or everybody, but at least you're doing what you're supposed to do, which is a good thing.
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  now are those stories have you ever heard of any of those stories I brought up
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  to be true or of real concern or from what you know are there also safeguards in place for those
• 21:08
  scenarios so when you vote by mail historically when you went to a poll you signed on a piece of
• 21:20
  paper and we never looked at that. So that could have been an issue. Now, when you vote by mail,
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  and even back then, when vote by mail first started, we're going to check your signature.
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  So have we had people collect all the ballots from their neighborhood and bring them in?
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  Good Samaritans, what have you. But we're checking every single one of those signatures
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  and we're looking really carefully at those because we want to make sure that this person
• 21:55
  really signed this. And our signatures go through several checks. So it goes through the first pass,
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  which those people are seeing your most recent signature. And if it's not dead on, they're
• 22:08
  more likely going to challenge that. And then it goes to an upper level staff member who's been
• 22:14
  checking signatures for a lot longer, really knows the things to look for, and then they have access
• 22:19
  to older signatures. So we don't just look at, oh, you registered again yesterday, but this signature
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  doesn't look like it at all. We're going to look at other things. And then if they still are not
• 22:31
  sure, it goes to management who, if we continue to challenge it, then we're going to send you
• 22:37
  the cure form that says, you know, your signature didn't compare. Basically, is this you? Did you
• 22:45
  sign this? You know, kind of feedback. We need something from you. Now, people get their envelopes
• 22:51
  mixed up. Your envelope is tied to your registration. And so we will take an envelope and say,
• 23:00
  this says Sally on the envelope, but George signed it. And so George lives at 123 Any Street
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  Who else lives at 123 Any Street?
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  Oh, here's Sally.
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  And here's her ballot, her signature on George's.
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  And we compare.
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  And then we can put those through instead of every time two people get their envelopes mixed up, just challenging those.
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  But so ballotiers have a good place.
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  It's just the law does allow them to be turned in for quite a while.
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  So how is it?
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  So then how are you comparing signatures for those who can't sign or write?
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  Like there'll be someone who signs for them.
• 23:45
  How does that work?
• 23:46
  So you can't sign for somebody.
• 23:48
  We do get X.
• 23:51
  That's what I meant.
• 23:52
  Yeah.
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  So if it's the first time you're doing an X, you're going to do an X and somebody has to witness that.
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  and we'll have you re-register with that X.
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  You'd be surprised at how Xs can be very unique also.
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  People put things in their X that,
• 24:17
  different slants, different loops, different.
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  So even an X can be compared.
• 24:23
  It sounds unusual,
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  but we are taught by an ex-FBI agent
• 24:29
  things to look for in writing.
• 24:32
  So you're actually matching their particular writing style.
• 24:37
  Yes.
• 24:37
  And we do actually look at X's even.
• 24:41
  That's interesting.
• 24:42
  Okay.
• 24:43
  That's interesting.
• 24:44
  I didn't even know that.
• 24:45
  So let's talk about this because it sounds like some of these things,
• 24:50
  when we're talking about ballot carrying and checking signatures,
• 24:53
  it could,
• 24:54
  it sounds like it already is going to answer the question,
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  but we did talk about earlier,
• 24:58
  I think offline,
• 24:59
  how California people always complain,
• 25:01
  Why does it take so long to count ballots when other states can do it within a couple of days?
• 25:05
  You know, why California?
• 25:07
  Why do we take so long California versus other states?
• 25:13
  So it's funny.
• 25:18
  I'm going on a cruise.
• 25:20
  That has anything to do with this, but I'm leaving out of Florida.
• 25:23
  And I thought, I'm going to call their registrar and go over there and see how come you're done so much faster than us.
• 25:28
  And then when I went to their website, a third of their voters are vote by mail. And so I thought, oh, and they get their ballots early like ours. And they have to be in by seven o'clock on election day. So they have to be in early where we accept them for seven days after.
• 25:51
  So I don know about every county but in St Susie County we get almost half just under half of our vote by mail ballots on election day or the day after So when you looking at 200 vote by mail and half of them came in two days
• 26:09
  it takes time to go through that whole process of checking signatures and everything that we do to protect the vote.
• 26:17
  if in in one of our elections we had 240,000 I think it was my math could be off so don't don't
• 26:28
  do math based on what I say when I took their third it would have been like 70,000 of them
• 26:34
  and we would have still had 200 and some odd thousand to count based on that math and so
• 26:40
  even before we went all vote by mail in California, 75% of the voters in Stanislaus
• 26:48
  County were vote by mail. So it isn't new. And it's always been very protected as far as checking
• 26:58
  signatures, making sure that it's that right person. So all that process takes time. And the
• 27:04
  fact that we're waiting for seven days after an election takes even longer.
• 27:09
  And so that does not help us be done by being faster.
• 27:14
  Yeah.
• 27:14
  So, but we also hear stories.
• 27:17
  You may not have an answer for this, but we hear stories of how like last year, what was
• 27:22
  the last year or the year before?
• 27:23
  I forget what it was, but it took like 14 days or more and some, not Saskatchewan, but
• 27:29
  some other districts to get everything in and counted and verified.
• 27:35
  And I think those are the little things like that that make people feel a little bit uneasy
• 27:39
  about election integrity, where it's like, okay, we have a standard of seven days, for
• 27:44
  example, after, right?
• 27:45
  But is that seven days after all the votes after election day or seven days from when
• 27:51
  they actually date and give you their election, their ballot?
• 27:57
  seven days after election day and it must be postmarked um before or on election day
• 28:04
  so um we do get ballots that late um so we're done in our county um usually by
• 28:17
  15 days which still sounds like a long time but remember we can't do provisionals or conditionals
• 28:24
  until we're done with vote by mail.
• 28:26
  And we can't finish vote by mail until after seven days.
• 28:30
  And we do get ballots on the seventh day.
• 28:34
  Shockingly, I thought, oh, this is a really long time.
• 28:37
  We won't get any ballots, but we do.
• 28:40
  And the mail, and I'm not saying anything negative.
• 28:43
  I don't want to talk bad about other government agencies,
• 28:45
  but it's taking longer and longer to get here.
• 28:48
  And if one thing your listeners should know is
• 28:52
  if you're going to wait too long,
• 28:54
  you need to go in and have your ballot or your envelope postmarked because they go to Sacramento before they're postmarked and it can take two or three days.
• 29:04
  So wait, so all ballots in California go to Sacramento and then back to the counties?
• 29:11
  Stanislaus goes to Sacramento.
• 29:13
  Oh, because the post office.
• 29:15
  Oh, I'm sorry.
• 29:15
  It used to be your ballots or your ballots.
• 29:20
  Any mail was stamped at Kearney here in Modesto.
• 29:23
  Okay.
• 29:24
  even Oakdale's and all of that went right there.
• 29:28
  Now they don't do that anymore.
• 29:29
  Everything is processed in Sacramento.
• 29:32
  We got ballots that people had signed them two days before the election.
• 29:37
  We can't go by that signature date because you want,
• 29:41
  but they more than likely did drop them in the mail two days before.
• 29:46
  Okay.
• 29:46
  So that's where I got lost.
• 29:47
  So we're referring to how the mail is handled.
• 29:50
  So even though they drop it in the mail here in the county,
• 29:53
  it still goes to Sacramento and then comes back to the county.
• 29:56
  Right.
• 29:56
  So it does take a while.
• 29:58
  So we are getting not thousands and thousands,
• 30:02
  but we can get a few hundred ballots seven days later.
• 30:06
  Okay.
• 30:07
  Gotcha.
• 30:08
  So it's really tricky, right?
• 30:12
  Because it sounds like there are areas for where there could be fraud,
• 30:18
  but at the same time, not really.
• 30:20
  so it's hard to decipher like what's true and what isn't i mean what you're telling me i'm not
• 30:25
  saying is true i believe me it's it's just sometimes it does make you wonder you know
• 30:30
  when it comes to certain things um and you know could things happen in the mail could someone be
• 30:36
  you know i i guess they're they're from what it sounds like what you're telling me there can't be
• 30:40
  fraud because based on all the systems in place they're like you're already verified before you
• 30:45
  even place your vote they already they already know if you're a citizen they already have the
• 30:50
  signature on file. There's all these other measures in place that doesn't sound like they
• 30:53
  can really circumvent, unless there was some crazy hacker from some other country that
• 30:58
  really broke the system and tried to go out of the way to do these things. But aside from that,
• 31:06
  it sounds like we're pretty much in good place as far as elections are concerning.
• 31:11
  As much as we can be. I'm sure, I'm not a criminal, so I can't think of all the ways that you could
• 31:17
  you know, get around the system. And I'm sure somebody's thinking of something, but
• 31:21
  within, you know, the law we do as the best we can. I mean, and I feel like in Stanislaus County,
• 31:30
  we do a good job. We have a DA that's very pro. If we see something, we turn it in and he's good
• 31:38
  about, you know, if there's anything there, he can help prosecute. And my staff's really,
• 31:45
  careful about, hey, this doesn't look right. And so we're just careful. Now, we are a mid-sized
• 31:55
  county. I used to say we're small, but we're not anymore. We're 300,000 voters. That puts us up
• 32:01
  there. But we still take that extra steps to be careful. 300,000. And how many people you have on
• 32:08
  staff when it comes to time to count and verify ballots? I have 10 full-time, but we do hire
• 32:16
  between 180 to 200 part-time every election. Now, I say we hire. A lot of those are returning.
• 32:23
  They've worked here for years. And some of them were poll workers before we went all-male.
• 32:30
  and then that kind of changed the dynamic based on vote centers.
• 32:38
  The way that you were processed at a vote center,
• 32:40
  they had to become employees because their background checked
• 32:43
  and they can see your registration.
• 32:45
  And so we wanted them to go through the county background.
• 32:48
  So they're vetted and most of these people that have already been vetted,
• 32:50
  it's just easier to keep bringing those people back.
• 32:53
  Correct.
• 32:53
  They know what they're doing.
• 32:56
  It's easier to refresh their training.
• 32:59
  They've done some things over and over again.
• 33:02
  They work at the vote centers.
• 33:03
  They help in the office.
• 33:06
  So it's better to have people who come back over and over again.
• 33:12
  So how secure are the ballot boxes, though?
• 33:15
  I mean, not the one in your office, but like the ones out, like the drop boxes, etc.
• 33:19
  Like, are they really secure?
• 33:21
  I mean, someone going to drive by and gank it out with a truck or something.
• 33:24
  I don't know.
• 33:25
  Have you seen stories?
• 33:26
  You've seen videos?
• 33:28
  I know.
• 33:28
  I've heard about that. I was told that happens in our county, but I assure you it does not.
• 33:36
  So our indoor boxes have to be tethered. Either they have cables or chains to something permanent.
• 33:43
  A lot of places have allowed us to put eye hooks in. So those are put in by our county
• 33:49
  department that goes out and puts in these eye hooks. They're inside, so you're not going to
• 33:57
  walk away with it. They have three locks on the fronts of them. The keys are only held by our
• 34:04
  people. Two people are sent out to pick up ballots. They don't touch your ballot. They take out the
• 34:10
  bag, seal it shut, bring it back here. It's not touched till it comes to the office. So those
• 34:16
  boxes are heavily monitored. Most of the places we use have cameras because they're save marks.
• 34:23
  their city halls, things like that. And then you have our outdoor boxes. Well,
• 34:34
  they're 600 pounds all by themselves. And then they're actually bolted to the ground
• 34:41
  and they all have cameras on them. And it's something we require. Now, some locations we
• 34:48
  put in the camera, some locations have asked for the box and they put in the camera.
• 34:53
  but we still have access to that feed.
• 34:56
  So that's not-
• 34:58
  I'm sorry, Donna.
• 34:59
  Are you monitoring those in your office?
• 35:01
  Is there somewhere in your office?
• 35:02
  Yeah, we can look at the film in our office.
• 35:05
  Now, again, the cameras are not code.
• 35:08
  That's something extra that we do in our county
• 35:11
  just for voters protection.
• 35:14
  Oh, that's cool.
• 35:15
  So every camera you have access to,
• 35:17
  so you can log in and see the activity.
• 35:20
  Yeah, even at a virtual nursery,
• 35:22
  but they already have the camera.
• 35:25
  That's interesting.
• 35:26
  Okay.
• 35:26
  Well, that's good.
• 35:27
  So 600-pound boxes,
• 35:29
  obviously we always see them
• 35:30
  like anchored to the concrete
• 35:31
  around the floor,
• 35:31
  but every one of them
• 35:32
  does also have a camera.
• 35:34
  And of course,
• 35:35
  you can't speak to all counties, right?
• 35:36
  But at least we know
• 35:37
  where we are in Stanislaw County
• 35:39
  that this is what's going on.
• 35:41
  This is how safety measures
• 35:42
  are being implemented
• 35:43
  when it comes to ballot boxes.
• 35:45
  And again,
• 35:45
  we are the only ones with keys
• 35:47
  even to the outdoor boxes.
• 35:49
  Just your office?
• 35:50
  Mm-hmm.
• 35:51
  Nobody else?
• 35:52
  Got it.
• 35:54
  No.
• 35:54
  So how does that collection process work then?
• 35:58
  So we have teams, again, background checked employees that go out in bands, teams of two, and they have a route where they pick up.
• 36:09
  They have the keys to each location they're going to.
• 36:11
  They have seals.
• 36:13
  They go to the location.
• 36:15
  They'll break the seal in the box, unlock them, pull the bag out, shut it.
• 36:19
  They have a little hook seal that goes into that.
• 36:22
  And then they have to write where they were, the seal number, which is also attached, the new seal they put on the box.
• 36:29
  And then that goes in the bag.
• 36:32
  They put a new bag in, of course, and then they bring that back to the office.
• 36:36
  It's almost like collecting evidence.
• 36:37
  Like, basically, you're writing down the chain of custody, like who handled it, what time, probably even the vehicle number.
• 36:45
  I don't even know if you do all that.
• 36:46
  is there ever a case where it's been like a very heated election, for example,
• 36:53
  and your people had to be like, you know, followed or at least had some kind of police presence?
• 37:00
  We ask the sheriff. So when you get closer to an election, instead of having everything
• 37:08
  ran around the whole county and brought back here, we'll have dropped locations. And we do
• 37:14
  ask for a sheriff presence at those. So there's a sheriff there. Now, sometimes observers will
• 37:23
  follow our people. And like we tell them, it's fine. Let them follow you. They're going to tell
• 37:28
  everybody that things were kept safe. So that's good. And they'll follow them all the way here,
• 37:33
  make sure everything got here. And that's fine. I mean, as long as you're not trying to steal
• 37:39
  something. They have a right, but I can see where there's... It did unnerve a few people, but
• 37:45
  they weren't there in malice. So it's fine. No. Well, we do have some conspiracy theorist type
• 37:51
  people who are... But as long as they're being respectful, right? They're not trying to impede
• 37:57
  anything. Right. They just made sure they took them to the right place and they weren't...
• 38:01
  Have your staff ever been harassed though by anyone?
• 38:04
  um our staff not so much in stanislaus county i know other counties have had real problems we
• 38:13
  had protesters um one time but um they just didn't know the process and so they had questions and so
• 38:24
  um that's what i find a lot people who are upset don't actually know what we do
• 38:29
  they don't know all the care that we take to process their ballot and make sure that their
• 38:35
  vote is kept protected. So it's, if you haven't had too many issues, it sounds like,
• 38:42
  as far as outside people can give you a hard time. Okay. Well, that's good. So sounds like you have,
• 38:49
  you guys keep track of chain of custody. There's, there's a, wherever you do have drop sites,
• 38:53
  you have them at least protected by sheriffs or any other law enforcement right How long would they sit at a drop site though before they taken to your office Oh they not at drop sites very long Sometimes election night takes
• 39:07
  a little bit longer because they're there and collect even from the vote centers. So vote
• 39:17
  centers, you can drop off your ballot there too. And you're voting. Now, voted ballots aren't kept
• 39:23
  there overnight, they're sealed up and brought to the drop boxes or to our office. And so
• 39:31
  they might be there a little bit longer on election night because they have to pack up
• 39:35
  all the equipment and they have to bring their scanners. So that takes a little bit longer than
• 39:40
  normal. Right. But once your people leave, those vulture trans, like they're brought to where
• 39:46
  they're supposed to go. Right to us.
• 39:48
  So you're just not sitting there indefinitely or for a few days forgotten.
• 39:51
  No, no, no. Oh gosh. Nothing's ever out overnight. No. And if you, uh, and anyone's invited to come
• 40:01
  and have a tour of my office, I'm, I'm very open about, I want to show you the process. Um, but we
• 40:07
  are in an old bank building. So we have a bank vault and, um, if ballots aren't being processed,
• 40:13
  they're in the bank vault. So they're locked up every night in a vault. So they're not like left
• 40:18
  out for anyone to have any access to.
• 40:22
  So, and the cleaning people don't clean the vault.
• 40:25
  Sometimes that's bad.
• 40:27
  But they can't get in, which is the point.
• 40:32
  Gotcha.
• 40:34
  Actually, you sent me some slides or pictures.
• 40:37
  Did you want to go over?
• 40:38
  Because those kind of give us a pictorial explanation of what you're talking about.
• 40:43
  Yeah.
• 40:43
  Maybe you go through.
• 40:45
  Sure.
• 40:45
  That always helps a visual.
• 40:47
  Let me go ahead and remove this and add the first one here.
• 40:52
  Okay.
• 40:53
  This is the life cycle of a vote by mail ballot.
• 40:56
  I hope you can see it good on your side because I have it kind of large on my side here.
• 41:01
  I can see it.
• 41:04
  So it talks about how the first step would be to check your signature.
• 41:10
  You can see below the little signature that there's a machine where we process the ballots.
• 41:20
  It goes through the first time and will attach the envelope to the voter registration so we can check the signature.
• 41:27
  And then those go back through that machine.
• 41:30
  They go through three times.
• 41:31
  The first time is to attach to your voter registration so we can check your signature.
• 41:36
  The second time is to remove the challenge ballots because we won't open a ballot until it's processed and available to the signatures verified and that type of thing.
• 41:50
  So if there's any kind of problem with it, they're challenged.
• 41:56
  Then they go through again and we do what we call a fine sort and we sort by our ballot types.
• 42:02
  This coming up midterm, there's 140 of those.
• 42:06
  And that's, we don't have to do that. It's not code. We do it. And most people don't know this
• 42:11
  either. If you want to recount, you pay for the recount. Um, and who pays for it? Who pays for it?
• 42:18
  Person that asked for it. Oh, the person that asked for it. Oh, okay.
• 42:22
  If you're a candidate and you ask for one, if you're a district and you ask for one,
• 42:26
  you're going to pay for that. And so we, um, we, we did that just because it was a practice that
• 42:33
  we had with our old equipment. And then in 2020, Waterford School District had a measure that lost
• 42:42
  by just a couple of votes. And so they asked for a recount. Well, we had way over 200,000 ballots
• 42:50
  and they had only 5,000 voters. So if we would have had to go through all 200,000 to find their
• 42:58
  5,000, it would have been an astronomical amount of money because they pay for it every minute.
• 43:03
  Instead, there was three boxes.
• 43:05
  We went in, we pulled the three boxes, and we did the recount.
• 43:08
  What would it typically cost someone to pay for a recount,
• 43:12
  especially when you're talking about 200,000 or 300,000 ballots?
• 43:14
  It depends on...
• 43:17
  Most people don't ask us to recount the whole county.
• 43:20
  Usually, if you're a candidate, you have your district, your area,
• 43:25
  or like Waterford, it was the school district,
• 43:29
  so it was just the little area for the school district.
• 43:33
  And so it isn't usually the entire county. Again, that bill would be hundreds of thousands of dollars.
• 43:42
  But for Waterford, it was a lot cheaper because everything was right there.
• 43:47
  And it also depends on what kind of recount you want to count. Do you want to put it through the machine?
• 43:52
  Do you, you know, what are you actually looking for? Do you want to see every challenge ballot?
• 43:58
  Do you want to see every conditional provisional?
• 44:01
  What types of things do you want to see?
• 44:05
  And so, but we've continued to do that process because most of the time who needs a recount?
• 44:12
  It's our small districts that have closer races.
• 44:16
  So, so we, so that's the next step.
• 44:19
  And then they go to our opener, which you can see the top persons prepping them.
• 44:25
  And then you can see the girl pulling the ballot out.
• 44:28
  And that cuts your envelope and it opens it so we can't see your name.
• 44:33
  And then your name goes one way and your ballot stays.
• 44:35
  Voting is private.
• 44:37
  And so we don't want to associate your name with your actual vote.
• 44:43
  The next set of pictures is the next process.
• 44:48
  So once they're out of the envelopes, they have to be flattened.
• 44:52
  Flattening is that takes the longest, has the most people.
• 44:57
  It sounds weird, labor intense, but we get over 200,000 ballots and they're either three or four carts.
• 45:05
  So it's a lot of pieces of paper to make flat.
• 45:08
  And when I say everybody in the office helps, I mean everyone helps flatten.
• 45:13
  People come from the clerk quarter division and help.
• 45:16
  My managers help.
• 45:17
  I help.
• 45:18
  Everybody helps flatten.
• 45:20
  And then once they're flattened, they can go into the count room and run through the scanners.
• 45:25
  Is it a machine that's used for that, Donna?
• 45:27
  Yeah. So you can kind of see in the, you can see the gentleman putting them through to be scanned,
• 45:36
  but in the other picture, you can see that there's several in a row there.
• 45:41
  So we have what I call pods and it's three scanners. They hook to one server.
• 45:48
  And that's the only thing that's connected is those three scanners to the server.
• 45:53
  and that's where the actual votes are stored.
• 45:57
  And we don't pull those, look at them, nothing until eight o'clock on election night.
• 46:02
  So we don't have any idea what's going on until then.
• 46:06
  But there is more steps to counting.
• 46:10
  Once they're scanned, we have to do what's called adjudication.
• 46:13
  And adjudication happens if you voted for a measure and you voted yes,
• 46:20
  but then you heard some other things about it and thought, oh, I should have voted no.
• 46:25
  You can cross off yes and mark no. If you look at that bottom picture where it says adjudication,
• 46:31
  you'll see two people are looking at that. We're very two people, four people oriented
• 46:39
  because you're making a decision of what the person was actually asking for.
• 46:44
  And then in Stanislaus County, we also look at undervotes. So if it said vote for five and you
• 46:49
  voted for two, we're going to look at that to make sure that everything was picked up by the
• 46:54
  machine correctly. And if you didn't vote for anything, which happens a lot with measures,
• 46:59
  then we're going to go back and just double check that there isn't a mark on any of those boxes.
• 47:06
  Do you contact those people? We don't know who you are, remember?
• 47:10
  Oh, okay. Right. Because you don't see, gotcha. Okay. Well, fair enough.
• 47:15
  pay attention george i'm just kidding okay did you want to go to the next picture
• 47:20
  yes okay oh that's um that's showing the security um so you know i i took the picture off that was
• 47:30
  a brown box because i hear a lot oh it's not as secure now as it used to be well we used to send
• 47:37
  all of your um items and bring them all back from poles in a brown box like literally it's a brown
• 47:44
  box. Now everything goes out in these cages that are locked and tethered to things or put in
• 47:49
  closets that are locked. And at night, your scanners, your laptops, they're all put back
• 47:55
  into these cages. Ballot paper, anything that could have any way of being used is locked up
• 48:04
  every night and then brought to us after the election, election night, most things.
• 48:13
  and then again it shows the boxes that i described the eye hooks um and then how big those outdoor
• 48:19
  boxes are well again you said those were like 600 pounds by themselves yeah that's and then after
• 48:27
  election day um during the canvas process i go out to the warehouse and i um now my warehouse
• 48:36
  manager has already checked every box when it comes back they open them and look at them but
• 48:40
  I go out and personally, I don't check every one of the 28 or more boxes, but I will go through and
• 48:47
  check every third one and just do a double check that we've made sure that we have all the ballots
• 48:53
  out. If you come by the office, you'll see me climbing inside that one out front because we
• 48:57
  don't take it down. And that's the only way you can double check. So I'm...
• 49:01
  Climbing inside?
• 49:02
  I made sure to wear pants that day, but I'm literally almost in there because I'm always
• 49:06
  worried that something's going to get hooked up in the top of it. And so I want to make sure that
• 49:11
  we've double-checked everywhere. So we do a lot of checking. Every once in a while, you hear in
• 49:17
  the news that a county found ballots and I'm like, oh boy, guys, you got to double-check yourself.
• 49:22
  What is the story behind that? Like, hey, we found another 100,000 votes, 80,000 votes.
• 49:29
  How does that come about? That's the one thing I didn't ask you. I was like, how does that happen?
• 49:34
  uh the last one they found them in a box like you didn't check your boxes
• 49:42
  that's why when they bring this back to our warehouse our warehouse manager has every single
• 49:49
  doors opened and they check every single one of them and then i go out and spot check uh you know
• 49:54
  like every third one i even look through all the black bags too because i never want to be that
• 50:00
  county that is like, oh, guess what? We found all these ballots. And I learned from my friend's
• 50:09
  mistakes. So no questionable overnight FedEx trucks just driving overnight out of nowhere.
• 50:17
  No. No.
• 50:20
  What do you think when you hear those stories, though, in other states? I mean,
• 50:24
  it just kind of doesn't sound real. You know, some things I can kind of see,
• 50:28
  Like they talk about, oh, they kept bringing in black bags.
• 50:31
  Well, our black bags come out of our boxes.
• 50:34
  So were they just bringing them from another room or from like a warehouse or something?
• 50:39
  But, you know, you have to explain things to people.
• 50:42
  Don't just drop something off, you know, explain why is this here?
• 50:46
  Don't do it in the cloak of darkness.
• 50:49
  You know, oh, we sent our observers home and then they came back and oh, magically, there's
• 50:54
  all these boxes.
• 50:55
  no you know you want to be open and transparent with people okay you guys are back now we're
• 51:01
  going to bring in the bags this is where they came from here's the you know sheet that tells
• 51:06
  you what is in there and why and you know you just have to be open and it's just it's just crazy
• 51:12
  because that's that's that's another i mean i know these are stories and and you know some of us can
• 51:17
  say hey it's possible maybe it's plausible but at the same time it's like we still hear these stories
• 51:23
  because, you know, some of these elections is like,
• 51:26
  everything looks like one candidate or whatever.
• 51:27
  It's like, okay, this is done.
• 51:29
  And then all of a sudden, three in the morning,
• 51:31
  we found another 80,000.
• 51:32
  It's like, what?
• 51:34
  I think that's where some people are like,
• 51:35
  this doesn't add up.
• 51:37
  This ain't making sense.
• 51:39
  And so it's, I don't know.
• 51:41
  That's why I asked you that.
• 51:42
  It's like, it's just very strange.
• 51:44
  But at the same time, you know,
• 51:45
  maybe we're just reading it wrong.
• 51:46
  Maybe we just don't understand the process.
• 51:48
  So you will see.
• 51:50
  So we report how many ballots we have left and that will change over the seven days because
• 51:57
  we're getting ballots.
• 51:59
  So obviously that number is going up.
• 52:01
  And you're counting. So, you know, it's going up that you're receiving them, but down how many you have left to count. So you might see that, but you understand why that's happening because, you know, we're still getting ballots from the mail.
• 52:16
  and especially the day after the election people love to drop their ballots off at the vote centers
• 52:23
  and you know we can't watch at night it gets you know we're here till two in the morning
• 52:28
  that's without counting them and so there would be no way to count over 70 80 000 ballots check
• 52:36
  all their signatures and do all that process that fast but that whole not understanding where they
• 52:46
  come from, I think is where the problems arise. And if you find them way after the election,
• 52:52
  then, and can mistakes be made? Of course. I don't want to say that these counties are
• 52:58
  totally wrong and they're doing terrible things. And could something happen? I mean, we're very,
• 53:04
  very careful, but we are human. Not that we want to admit that in elections, but we do a lot of
• 53:13
  triple checking here. And that's where I have that peace of mind because being on here, I'm
• 53:19
  going to tell you, I count every eligible vote. And I want to be able to say that with a straight
• 53:26
  face. I've checked my boxes to make sure that no ballots got left in there. We've triple checked
• 53:32
  signatures to make sure that they are compared and they're good before we count. I mean,
• 53:40
  we've checked all the under votes to make sure nothing got missed with the machine. And then we
• 53:47
  do a partial hand count also where we randomly draw from all over the ballots and make sure that
• 53:55
  every contest is counted. And then that double checks the machines too. So we have all those
• 54:02
  extra things in place. And that's how I have that comfort level of being able to say, yes,
• 54:08
  we've counted everything. We're very careful. What's the situation? I don't know if you've
• 54:15
  ever experienced this, by the way. I don't, but maybe you have some insider from what you've
• 54:19
  heard from colleagues or other people you know. How has it ever been handled? Let's say election's
• 54:24
  done, person's elected, yay. But then let's say a month or two later, it was like, hold on,
• 54:29
  something wasn't right. And we found whatever, ballots or didn't match up. How is that handled?
• 54:36
  Because I just don't recall in my lifetime where there's something like that happened, and then the person was like, nope, it wasn't you.
• 54:42
  It was this other guy, and then they get pushed in.
• 54:44
  How's that handled?
• 54:45
  How would you handle that?
• 54:47
  So I've never seen it happen where that would be the case.
• 54:54
  I know of two counties that have found ballots after the fact.
• 54:59
  Once an election is certified, it takes a court order to open anything and do anything to it.
• 55:05
  both counties have said,
• 55:09
  well,
• 55:09
  we found this many and it wouldn't change any of the races.
• 55:12
  So they didn't count them,
• 55:14
  which I don't know how I feel about that because I'm telling you,
• 55:18
  I count every eligible vote.
• 55:20
  Now they can't say that,
• 55:21
  but California had that,
• 55:23
  that rule where all,
• 55:25
  all votes should be counted.
• 55:26
  I thought unless I'm wrong.
• 55:28
  Yeah.
• 55:29
  But two,
• 55:30
  two counties have gone on the news and said that which would make me very uncomfortable That interesting But yeah I mean the one county found them so far after the election we were into the next one So yeah But if you do a recount
• 55:50
  and you find an error, it can change the election. So if an official recount is triggered, then that's
• 55:57
  different. But it's kind of strange to see someone who's been in office, let's say a month or two,
• 56:02
  and then all of a sudden, re-count?
• 56:04
  Like, what's the time frame?
• 56:06
  Because if every vote's supposed to be counted,
• 56:07
  and I'm asking this because I literally don't know.
• 56:09
  So I'm not trying to sound like an idiot here,
• 56:11
  but I don't know.
• 56:12
  So what's the time frame that is given?
• 56:16
  Because let's say you do find something
• 56:18
  two or three months later.
• 56:19
  Maybe you hear something, you look into,
• 56:21
  it's like, oh, wait a minute,
• 56:22
  we have 10 or 20,000 that were never ever counted
• 56:24
  for some reason or whatever.
• 56:26
  It's just making some numbers up.
• 56:28
  How, you know, is that possible?
• 56:29
  and then given the rules,
• 56:32
  would that person then lose their position?
• 56:35
  Would there be a re-vote or how would that work?
• 56:38
  What would be the next step?
• 56:39
  So it would be a failed election
• 56:41
  and that would kind of be up to the courts
• 56:43
  how they handled that.
• 56:44
  It would have to go to court.
• 56:46
  So a recount has to be requested within five days.
• 56:50
  So you have five days after an election
• 56:52
  to request a recount.
• 56:54
  You have to start it.
• 56:56
  You have to come in with a deposit check
• 56:59
  and then we start the recount.
• 57:02
  So that's kind of the, you have that timeframe
• 57:06
  because once we permanently seal the election,
• 57:09
  it does take a court order to reopen those boxes.
• 57:14
  Right.
• 57:16
  Now conspiracy time.
• 57:18
  So it does leave, it does, I know you're all, damn it, why?
• 57:22
  No, but it does beg the question.
• 57:24
  So like, what if, you know,
• 57:26
  there's a district that leans one way or the other
• 57:28
  as far as politics concerned.
• 57:31
  Let's say left, right.
• 57:32
  And those bags from that said district
• 57:34
  just happened to not make it.
• 57:37
  You know what I mean?
• 57:38
  And then all of a sudden, it's like,
• 57:41
  it's just they never got counted.
• 57:42
  But I'm going to assume also this.
• 57:44
  You know how many people are registered.
• 57:46
  So you'd probably be like,
• 57:47
  okay, we're kind of missing some votes.
• 57:49
  What happened here?
• 57:50
  I'm assuming that's what you would do.
• 57:52
  But what about that scenario in general?
• 57:54
  Because you can't speak for out counties,
• 57:56
  but just say that did happen.
• 57:58
  It'd be hard to say there's 200,000 registered voters in that district and we only got 70,000 ballots. You'd wonder. But in a primary, turnout's really low. So depending on your county, you might kind of be like, okay, we'll chalk it up to that.
• 58:22
  we are using that canvas time after the election to go through all of our boxes, to go through,
• 58:32
  you know, we even go through places where you would think there's no way there's a ballot in
• 58:38
  there just to double check. So, you know, they brought back all their unused paper. We're going
• 58:43
  to open those to make sure we count the paper to make sure they brought back all the paper.
• 58:48
  But we also look to make sure that they put something in here that's not supposed to be here like a ballot or two because they didn't fit someplace.
• 58:56
  That was more when we had poles because they were sticking everything in a brown box.
• 59:01
  But now everything goes in bags that are sealed.
• 59:04
  And so we're looking for those, too.
• 59:06
  Did we get all their bags?
• 59:08
  They were given two.
• 59:10
  We only find one Where their other one And so we you know looking everywhere for things um and and making sure that we have everything that was sent to a vote center back and double checking
• 59:22
  it to make sure that we've opened everything and that we've processed every ballot yeah and then i
• 59:28
  guess as you said if if that was found to be the case like let's see someone intentionally was not
• 59:34
  delivering a bag from a certain district or area, then I'm sure someone will be like,
• 59:39
  hey, we need to look into this.
• 59:41
  And then that should trigger a court order, right?
• 59:43
  Correct.
• 59:45
  It should.
• 59:47
  And you know how many you've sent places.
• 59:50
  I mean, we keep track of that.
• 59:52
  Well, you do.
• 59:54
  Sounds like you do.
• 59:55
  We do.
• 59:57
  All right.
• 59:57
  Well, is anything else you want to tell anybody about election integrity?
• 1:00:01
  I mean, at least from your perspective and how we can handle it.
• 1:00:03
  Because again, it sounded, when I talk to you and I'm talking to you now, you're on it.
• 1:00:06
  Like you're doing everything you can.
• 1:00:08
  And I get there's some things that could be out of control, but it sounds like there's
• 1:00:13
  a lot of systems and safeguards in place to also handle those scenarios.
• 1:00:16
  And I'm not trying to force you to speak for the counties or states, but you know, you
• 1:00:20
  hear stories.
• 1:00:20
  So I appreciate you giving us your opinion on that, or even just straight up fact as
• 1:00:26
  in, nope, it wouldn't happen because of this.
• 1:00:28
  Is there anything else you want to tell anybody as far as, you know, because primary is coming
• 1:00:32
  up?
• 1:00:33
  anything else or midterms? I mean, is there anything else you want to tell anybody about
• 1:00:36
  their vote? Make sure that you get your vote in. I hear so often, oh, it doesn't matter anyway,
• 1:00:45
  because there's LA. But when you're voting for Senate and Assembly, those are local.
• 1:00:52
  They're your area. We have a congressional district that, yes, we share with other counties,
• 1:00:58
  But if you don't vote, then, yeah, that other county is going to control it.
• 1:01:04
  And so you want to make sure that you vote.
• 1:01:07
  I use in my presentation, Sherlock School District, where the incumbent lost by one vote.
• 1:01:16
  And I always love to tell people what happens if it's a tie.
• 1:01:21
  And a lot of people say to me, will you recount?
• 1:01:24
  Well, we already counted it.
• 1:01:25
  It's a tie.
• 1:01:27
  And so really it goes to the district.
• 1:01:29
  We count the vote.
• 1:01:31
  We send it to the district.
• 1:01:32
  But the way a tie is decided is literally a flip of a coin.
• 1:01:39
  It's a quarter.
• 1:01:40
  They pick heads and tails.
• 1:01:42
  There's a little more tooth than that.
• 1:01:43
  You know, they check the quarter and that type of thing.
• 1:01:45
  But your person is decided by a flip of a coin.
• 1:01:49
  Or they can draw straws or, I mean, cards.
• 1:01:52
  And then it's decided by the suit and the number of a card.
• 1:01:56
  And so it's so important that you vote for your local people, including Congress and Senate and Assembly, because your Senate and Assembly in our state are making your laws.
• 1:02:09
  And so sometimes those laws come down and I go out and present new laws and they're like, oh, and I think, you know, I'm not a big fan either.
• 1:02:18
  You know, we're going to put as much in place to make this law safe for us.
• 1:02:22
  but you know this was done by an assembly person or this was done by a senate person
• 1:02:28
  and so you know that's why it's so important that you vote and you know I know that
• 1:02:36
  people are kind of weary because they hear so many bad things I invite anybody to take a tour
• 1:02:46
  of my office I happy to show you around I don have anything to hide And you can just show up at the front counter and say hey Donna said I could have a tour They kind of used to it
• 1:02:58
  They'll come find me and I'll give you a tour. And if there's some parts of things that you miss
• 1:03:05
  because of what time of day it is, I'll say, hey, that happens more at this time of day, come back.
• 1:03:10
  And because I want our voters in Stanislaus County to feel comfortable voting, I want them to vote.
• 1:03:15
  I want them to have their voice heard.
• 1:03:19
  I think what you said was important because people focus on who's going to be governor, who's going to be state controller.
• 1:03:28
  Like you're always thinking state level or even federal, but they fail to realize like if they don't vote that they're losing the representation in their own county.
• 1:03:36
  And so I'm glad you said that because that's important for people to realize like you could be losing your representation in your county.
• 1:03:43
  You could be flipping a seat in your county if you're not paying attention or choosing not to vote because you think it doesn't matter.
• 1:03:48
  But at the county level, it matters a lot.
• 1:03:51
  So, yeah, I'm glad you said that.
• 1:03:53
  I'm going to have to go take a tour because you said that I could.
• 1:03:55
  So I'm going to have to hit you up on that.
• 1:03:57
  You know, our congressional 13 district race has been won, I believe, twice by like 180 votes.
• 1:04:05
  That's it?
• 1:04:06
  Yeah.
• 1:04:07
  Wow, that is super tight.
• 1:04:09
  It's us, Fresno, Madera, and Merced.
• 1:04:11
  And even with the redistricting, I'm told that that race will probably be that close again.
• 1:04:17
  So that is why it's so important for people to vote.
• 1:04:22
  I mean, look how close that race is and you can make a difference.
• 1:04:27
  For anybody who lives in Stanislaus County that's watching this, is there a website or anything you would like people to go to to be able to schedule an appointment or you just want them to just kind of like call ahead of time?
• 1:04:37
  Yeah, they can.
• 1:04:39
  scheduling, they should call our administration if they want to schedule. And that's 209-525-5211.
• 1:04:51
  Or they can just come in. I'm here most days. This election, I have two mornings that I have
• 1:04:58
  to take care of some family things. But I usually say you don't have to necessarily make an
• 1:05:03
  appointment. You can call and say, hey, she's going to be here at this time. And if they say
• 1:05:08
  know come another day. But I always say you don't have to have an appointment because I don't want
• 1:05:14
  you to feel I'm setting something up. If you are going to have more than four or five people,
• 1:05:19
  you might want to call because our office is very crowded and it is hard to get big groups through.
• 1:05:25
  Gotcha. All right, Donna, I think we're going to end it here. That was informative. And again,
• 1:05:31
  appreciate you being on. So if there's nothing else, I'm going to say, hey,
• 1:05:38
  You know, have a great day.
• 1:05:38
  Is there anything else you want to add?
• 1:05:40
  I don't think so.
• 1:05:41
  I did my little soapbox about why it's important to vote.
• 1:05:45
  If people have questions, they can contact our office.
• 1:05:49
  I'm happy to answer any questions.
• 1:05:51
  All right, everybody.
• 1:05:52
  Well, I guess that's it for this episode, this show.
• 1:05:54
  Thank you very much.
• 1:05:55
  Remember to support, share, like, subscribe to Will to Blaze.
• 1:05:58
  And if you're in Stanislaus County, you want to take a tour,
• 1:06:01
  go ahead and get a hold of Donna Linder in her office,
• 1:06:03
  and she'll be happy to set that up.
• 1:06:05
  until then everybody have a great