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Transcript: 

Theresa Freed 00:00

Election Day is upon us. On this episode find out how the Johnson County election office is preparing for the day. Also meet your Election Commissioner.

Announcer 00:08

Whether you live in or just love Johnson County Kansas, JoCo on the Go has everything Johnson County. Here's what's happening and what's coming up in the community you call home.

Theresa Freed 00:23

Thanks for joining us for JoCo on the Go, I'm your host Theresa Freed, a Johnson County resident and employee of Johnson County government. Although elections don't happen every day, the Johnson County election office is busy all year long gearing up to make sure you can cast your vote quickly and safely Here with more on that is Johnson County Election Commissioner Fred Sherman, thank you for being here today.

Fred Sherman 00:45

Good to see you.

Theresa Freed 00:46

So first off last year was a little bit of a different year, obviously with the pandemic. So we had you weren't in kind of a supporting role. Is that right? And there's Can you talk about how that's kind of changed this year? What's What are the differences?

Fred Sherman 01:02

No problem. So I've worked in local government my entire professional career, but I started at the election office in March of 2020. Basically, the election commission position is an appointed position by the Secretary of State and the current Secretary of State Scott Schwab didn't really want to put a rookie in charge of the election office in a presidential year. So he was able to convince Connie Schmidt, who was the prior Election Commissioner in Johnson County, Connie was the commissioner from about 1995 to 2005. And Connie agreed to come back to lead the office through the presidential campaign in 2020. And I was put in a really great almost perfect situation basically served as our understudy to kind of learn the election administration to the presidential process election year, Connie stepped down a commissioner in late January of this year of 2021, at which time, I was appointed as the Election Commissioner for Johnson County.

Theresa Freed 01:53

Okay, so some pretty valuable time learning under her and then also being able to take the reins. So can you talk about kind of what that transition look like? What are some of the things that you've done since taking for the full role?

Fred Sherman 02:07

Well, in terms of being the Election Commissioner, basically, you're like captain of the ship, and you're in charge of all the things but we still have a lot of staff doing a lot of the bits and pieces and a lot of moving parts of it. This year in 2021. It's kind of the local elections. It's not necessarily the statewide or presidential election year. But as when the municipalities and school districts and the other local jurisdictions of the taxing authorities have the opportunity to elect their board. So it tends to be a little bit of a lesser election, although it's still a lot of different moving parts and pieces. So the main focus this year has been been gearing up getting ready for this 2020 election cycle. We did have a number of races in August. So we did have a primary race and about 60% of the county or registered voters had an opportunity to vote in August. But here coming up on November 2 Coming up on election day, 100% of the county registered voters will have an opportunity to vote on some ballot measure. So most of the processes and work and oversight from what I've been working on has been getting the ready to go for this November elections.

Theresa Freed 03:08

Okay, and so just for the primary and then also for this election, what are you anticipating for turnout.

Fred Sherman 03:16

So we are seeing good interest this year. But traditionally, in these odd year, like 2021 2019 2017 or so, the participation rate is much less than a presidential year. Last year, we saw a lot of voter interest and a lot of participation probably in the upper 70s percent. What we're looking at this year is probably going to be closed between maybe 17 to 20% of voter turnout. In 2017. It was a little over 17%. And again in 2019. We're seeing signs already through the request by mail and also advanced voting which is taking place eight days prior to the election day. We are seeing numbers greater this year than they were two and four years ago. So optimistically I'm going to see predict maybe a 20% or a little greater turnout this go around.

Theresa Freed 04:03

Okay, and so the pandemic impacted, kind of the way people vote and so are you seeing that trend continue? Are you seeing more of the advanced voting in the interest in the mail ballots,

Fred Sherman 04:14

We are seeing a lot of advanced voting 2020 was clearly unique year with the pandemic and the stay at home order. In fact, when it went into effect in kind of April May timeframe last year, we didn't even know if we could have polling sites, you know, the stay at home order. We implemented some new equipment into the voting process. The DS 200 scanner, and there's one at every point site but that gives us the opportunity to use both the Express vote ballots as well as traditional paper ballots. Last year in 2020, we obviously saw a big uptick in vote by mail. We saw generally about three times the number of vote by mail request in the presidential year. How it's going to be this year. I can't tell you it's going to be different. I think it is going to be a little higher than it has been pre-pandemic but I do not see the quite the demand that we saw in 2020. But again, a good people are still wanting to vote by mail. In Kansas, really, since about 1996, voters have had really three options on how they can vote, they can vote in person on election day, they can vote in person and advance voting sites. And we opened eight locations on October 23, for this election, or they can vote by mail. And to vote by mail, there's really kind of in Kansas, no excuse, you don't have to have a specific reason. But you do have to make an application for each election. So the people that are requesting to vote by mail, and up to Tuesday, October 26, with a deadline to make a request to vote by mail, we are seeing a good number of people that made those requests this year. And they've had an opportunity to do so really since 1996, for over 25 years.

Theresa Freed 05:46

And so for those who decide to come and vote in person, can you talk a little bit about the safety precautions, you know, for the pandemic and otherwise that you guys are doing.

Fred Sherman 05:55

So we're still operating much like we did in 2020, we will have a lot of the COVID-19 PPE and procedures in place, we have the sneeze guards in place, we will have mask available if voters want to wear a mask. All the election workers will be required to wear a mask, we still have hand sanitizers available. When we still implement what's called the touches voting process where we have the stylist and pens available, or a voter will be able to pick up those pens and use it throughout the voting process as they check in or either cast your ballot of the pesticide on a traditional paper ballot or there's a rubber tip and they can use to touch the touchscreen device the vote on a machine. So the the touchless voting system process that we employed in 2020 is still into effect. And all the same protocols are put into place to ensure that it's safe environment to vote for both the voters as well as the election workers.

Theresa Freed 06:46

Okay. And again, just to be clear, people do not need to or have to wear masks when they go to vote that is not a requirement, but those masks will be available in the safety precautions will be available.

Fred Sherman 06:57

That is correct, there is no you do not have to wear a mask as a voter to cast a ballot in Kansas.

Theresa Freed 07:03

Okay, anything else people should know if that they might need to bring with them?

Fred Sherman 07:09

Well, what they will not necessarily bring with them, but they probably need to have a good understanding of what they're voting on. There's a lot of different jurisdictions having ballots and where you live, and where you register to vote is going to determine which contest measures are on your ballot. So they're actually 92 separate different contest races here in Johnson County. And not everyone's going to have 92 measures on their ballot. And these are all non partisan elections as well. So the candidates did not declare whether they're with a particular political party or not, and is not listed on the ballot. So some voters have come in and wanted to see that political affiliation. And this color races in this particular election is not an affiliated or partisan election. So usually voters can go on site through our website, look up a sample ballot before they go there to kind of research and see which particular races are on the ballot before they cast their vote on Election Day.

Theresa Freed 07:59

And so that'll show them for their specific location. Right?

Fred Sherman 08:03

Correct. So every city or every municipality has some kind of contest array. So if you live within a city here in Johnson County, that's going to be on there. Every voter will have a vote on the Johnson County Community College Trustees board, that's a county wide race, there's four open slots, so voters will vote for any 123 or four candidates. And there's also write in slots if you want to write in candidates, the school districts again, there are seven different school districts here in Johnson County. So depending on where you live, you'll be able to vote on different school district memberships. And also we have water one, which provides domestic water has their board positions up. So if you are a water one customer, you're also going to be providing or voting on their particular board measures. And we actually have two what's called drainage districts, there's two small areas, one in the Marion area and the other kind of in the Northwest Shawnee area, the Monticello. So it's you'll reside in those, you're voting on drainage districts major. So again, kind of a long list of candidates. And sometimes people are not familiar with all those different jurisdictions and people running. So encourage voters to go online, look up their particular sample ballot, and they can research the particular candidates on their own before they actually vote on Election Day.

Theresa Freed 09:13

Okay, so in addition to the candidates, are there specific issues or questions that are also on about this time?

Fred Sherman 09:18

There are no questions on this particular ballot, these are all candidate driven based off of the local jurisdiction. So it's just basically you're voting for people and not any questions on this particular election?

Theresa Freed 09:29

The next question is, is one that can vary? I know if there's other technical difficulties or you know, some sort of issues, but can you kind of talk about what the goal is in terms of when can people expect those results and where do they go to check them out?

Fred Sherman 09:44

So when the results are released, is obviously on election night, we're striving to get those releases as soon as possible. In fact, internally we kind of, actually Connie Schmidt set that goal and kind of the bar to go by as the having the results done by 9pm. But in essence, With all different three methods of voting people voting by mail people voting in advance in person and Election Day, it does take quite a time and process to cumulate all those tabulations and put them together in the centralized system. So what will happen on election evening is real a little bit after 7pm, after the last voter has voted in person, we will release some first results of the unofficial final results. And now we reflective of all the advanced in person votes, it's been up to that point in time, as well as all the mail ballots we've processed at that point in time. Then on election night after 7pm, the actual use drives or the tabulation results from the individual point sites are coming back to the election office, we have to load them in, we'll have 151 polling locations for this November election. So once all those USB drives from the individual scanners are back and we can tabulate them, then we'll release the final unofficial final results on election night. We've had a great run in the last few elections, we've had them done well before 9pm, knock on wood, we're going to keep that going. But again, we want to make sure they're done accurately and securely. We're not going to make time the only measure but we are striving to have them done in the early evening. Our goal is by 9pm on election night to have those unofficial final results.

Theresa Freed 11:13

Alright, right, terrific. And so speaking of security, that's always a big issue and a big question for people. They want to make sure that their votes are counted properly. And and we also want to protect the integrity of the entire system. So can you talk about sort of the measures that are in place to help with that.

Fred Sherman 11:29

So security and the integrity election is done throughout the entire process even well before election day. So we go through what's called a logic and accuracy process where every piece of machinery that's being utilized on election day goes through a whole kind of diagnostics and testing system. And we actually create kind of a predetermined test election where we know the outcome and we cast all the ballots in all these different pieces of equipment before they're deployed on election day to make sure the results of what we did on the test text match was what we anticipated to be. So there's logic and accuracy testing, it's already been done and then basically tested and all the machines. And we do apply various different levels of security seals and checks and balances on the machines. Because they are a lot of them are delivered to polling sites. Many days before the election day. When our election workers show up to a polling site election morning, they go through a process in fact, it's a team of two people that will verify all the security seals to make sure those machines have not been tampered with or altered on election day. As voters come in, we go through a check in process where voters will show their ID. They verify verbally their name and address a sign in on the electronic poll pad. And again, we go through and balanced and make sure the number of voters that check in matches the number of ballots that's been cast. here in Johnson County, we use kind of the mark verify scan process where every voter is going to vote on a paper ballot, whether the traditional paper ballot or the vapor ballot that comes out of the Express vote the touchscreen machines. So voter will first mark their ballot. Once they market, they will then be able to physically hold that paper ballot in the hands of verify their selections on it. And then they walk over to the DS 200 scanner where they actually scan their ballot to actually cast their vote. So that Mark verify scan process, again as part of the security integrity of elections where we have paper ballots for every ballot that's been cast here in Johnson County, including mail in ballots. That's a great audit type of backup. So once we get through election day, we'll release the unofficial final results. Those mail in ballots that have a postmark on election day, they can arrive through the US Postal systems up to three days after the election and still be at the tally. So we're going to do another set of results on Wednesday, another set on Thursday. And then the final set of results on Friday. The election is not done or concluded Intel Canvas the canvas board is matte. And the canvas board for this particular election is scheduled for November 9, at that time will present all the provisional ballots to the canvas board. And those that are to be counted will be opened up and tabulated and then final results is presented to the campus board. So that's done through the process. The other thing that's done prior after Election Day, but before Canvas is we will do a hand count audit. In Kansas we do audit our elections not the entire election. But there is a number of precincts that are randomly selected as well as a number of races that are randomly selected. And we take a bipartisan team and we actually hand count the paper ballots and compare them to those election night unofficial final results. So again, the security and integrity election is done for every election not just presidential elections, but this election and future elections. We go through that logic and accuracy process. We train the workers we use the voter FIDE verify voter verified paper audit trail through the mark verify scan process. We'll also do a hand count audit prior to canvass a lot of things happening for elections to make sure we get an accurate and secure voting for all candidates here in Johnson County.

Theresa Freed 14:51

I'm sure our voters are happy to hear the extensive process for sure. And the workers that you have, they are well trained And a lot of them come back year after year because I just really value this, this responsibility and, and the community kind of nature of doing this work. So can you talk about what the prep is just to get them ready?

Fred Sherman 15:15

So yeah, we're gonna have over 1000 Different volunteers and workers helping us through various stages in the election process. Some of them have been working part time in the election, office Telesco to the logic and accuracy system and accuracy system, as well as the testing. We deliver and deploy the equipment. We have people here helping us do train additional workers, but every election worker is required to go through some level of training before working on election day. We through the COVID environment have been deployed a lot of online training platforms, but we're still requiring most every election worker to come in. We're doing it here in the administration building of the county and kind of getting their hands on practice with equipment because we realize they don't do this every day. We basically have two elections a year and some people only work a few days a year. So they are going through a process of preparing, getting prepared, practicing through the process and setting it up for election day. But we could not pull off successful elections without the wonderful crew of election workers we have here in Johnson County.

Theresa Freed 16:11

Definitely. And so I know that I got my postcard in the mail that tells me exactly where I need to go on election day. And so if people can't find that they don't know where they're supposed to go. I know you talked about the websites great for getting that sample ballot. Is that information also available?

Fred Sherman 16:26

Yeah. So voter can also look like where they need to go on election day. So voters can vote in advance at any one of our eight advanced sites. But on election day, on that Tuesday, we are still a precinct based voting situation here in Johnson County. So voters do need to go to their designated polling site. And again, 151 polling sites on Election Day. Information cards are mailed to every registered voter again, they can go on the website to look up to the voter view or their their specific voting location.

Theresa Freed 16:56

All right perfect. Anything else that voters need to know about this year's election?

Fred Sherman 17:00

You know, it's it's all elections matter. And I think the local elections really matter, because those are the people that are going to make probably the the biggest decisions that have the biggest impact locally, whether it's through land use and development issues, whether it's through policies of the school districts and those kinds of things, the water district in terms of how they provide drinkable water, I think these really things matter and are seen on a daily basis. So all elections matter, but local elections really matter. Because I think you're going to see the fruits of the labor of the people that are elected, and then the leadership of that aspect of it. So do go vote, we encourage you to vote. Unfortunately, again, only about 20% of the registered voters typically will turn out for this election. So those are the folks choosing your leaders this go around.

Theresa Freed 17:42

All right. Well, great information. Thank you so much for joining us today. I think that was an excellent preview to this election day. And we look forward to having a successful election day that will provide us some quick returns results and hopefully there are no technical issues right?

Fred Sherman 18:00

Knock on wood. Thank you much.

Theresa Freed 18:03

All right. Thank you and thanks for listening.

Announcer 18:05

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