Seminar on electoral process held in Woodruff

Keep Our Republic (KOR), a 501(c)(3) non-profit and non-partisan organization, held a community engagement seminar in Woodruff on Thursday, June 6.

According to a press release announcing the event, the organization is “committed to upholding the integrity of our electoral system and educating citizens on threats to our democratic values” and “has a mission to protect and preserve the republic for future generations.”

Keep Our Republic state director, and former chair of the state committee on elections, election process reform and ethics, Kathy Bernier speaks to the electoral process during a seminar hosted by the non-profit Thursday, June 6, in Woodruff.
(Photo by Trevor Greene/Lakeland Times)

This was the third seminar KOR has hosted this year. Over the last year, seminars were also held in Waukesha County, Washington County, La Crosse County, Brown County and Chippewa County. 

KOR state director Kathy Bernier, Oconto County clerk Kim Pitlyetski and Oneida County and Town of Crescent clerk Tracy Hartman were the featured speakers at the June 6 event, which spanned roughly three hours and included a presentation and the three fielding questions from the nearly 25 people who attended. 

Bernier served in the state senate and assembly prior to her role as KOR’s state director for Wisconsin. During her time as an elected official, she chaired the committee on elections, election process reform and ethics. Prior to that, she served as the Chippewa County clerk and was chairperson of that county’s Republican party. 

She told the Lakeland Times she thought the seminar in Woodruff went well and mentioned two other seminars previously held in Waukesha and Washington counties, where there were “pretty outstanding accusations in regard to the electoral process.”

“So I was braced for some pretty tough things,” she said. 

Bernier said she liked the “direct” questions asked from those who attended the seminar in Woodruff “because you are not going to get that addressed unless you asked them.”

She also commended Pitlyetski and Hartman for their participation. 

“So that was the highlight, good questions,” Bernier said. 

If a person has any question “whatsoever” with regard to elections they should sit down with their municipal or county clerks, she added.

“You have to go to the source if you have a question,” Bernier said. “Because these individuals who are running around this state, or from other states, feeding you disinformation or misinformation about Wisconsin election law, you need to get it directly from your clerks that carry out the election.”

Pitlyetski said she was pleased to be able to explain the overall process of elections for those in Woodruff. 

She said she also really enjoyed answering questions from the public “because we can stand up and give all kinds of information, but it doesn’t do us any good if we’re giving the wrong kind of information, and I think tonight we really touched on what people wanted to hear.”

This was the third KOR seminar Pitlyetski has participated in. She said she will travel around Oconto County on her own if a municipality requests that she speak about elections. 

“It’s kind of my fun time,” Pitlyetski said. “(I’m an) elections enthusiast.”

She agreed with Bernier that the crowd was thoughtful and brought “very intelligent questions.”

“I think we had a very well informed crowd and so that was kind of a highlight for me,” Pitlyetski said. “These people definitely were interested in the process and wanted to see where improvements could be made, how false information has been put out and how we can all work together to make sure that we’re … getting it right.”

One thing about the state’s electoral process  she thinks everyone should know is “that it is an open process.”

Pitlyetski indicated clerks in the state are as transparent as they can be. 

“There are certain security things that we’re not going to share with you, we’re not going to give you access to our equipment,” she said. “You know one of the things (I hear) is ‘You know I could hack that,’ well … if you have access and time and all those things. Sure you could get at one piece of equipment, but we’re not giving you that access (and) we’re showing it to you at our public test, things like that. So we’re transparent in the work that we do and the integrity that goes into that work is something that I really appreciate the opportunity to share.”

Election audits was a subject Hartman said she was happy to talk about. 

She said she thinks it’s important for voters to know “that election results aren’t just face value, especially the national elections.”

Hartman said every election audit in Oneida County is provided to the public on the county’s website. 

“So that, for me, is something that I’ve really tried pushing out to Oneida County residents when they call and express concerns with the voting machines, that they are audited and they are accurate,” she said. “Very seldom do we see any errors and it’s usually human error that causes that.”

During the seminar, Hartman noted Oneida County’s voting machines are not in any way connected to the internet and she believes that’s the case for Vilas County as well.

There is no one person who controls the state’s election results, Hartman noted.

“Wisconsin is one of I think only one or two states where you have your municipal clerks that run the election and then it moves to the county clerk and then it moves to the state,” she explained. “I think that’s important for people to realize because they know their municipal clerks and so they can have trust in their municipality and the way the election is being run. And then on the back-end of that, for people to understand, there is a lot of checks and balances that go into each election … to verify that those results are accurate.”

State representative Rob Swearingen (R-Rhinelander) attended the seminar as a member of the public. He said he was looking forward to learning a thing or two, especially with regard to elections at a county level.

“I thought this was hugely informative,” he said. “I thought the questions were good. I thought the presentation was good. And, clearly, there’s always more work to be done legislatively in the state, so this is a learning process for me.”

Swearingen said he wished more people from the district he represents had attended the event. 

“Although, I would agree that the clerks in my Assembly district — Oneida and Vilas — really have a lot of respect from the locals,” he said. “We don’t here much complaints about our local clerks. I think for the most part they do a fantastic job, especially since the state keeps mandating more and more work for them.”

That’s one of the reasons Swearingen said he thanks a local clerk every time he sees one of them.

Elections in the Northwoods are “fairly accurate,” he said.

“We want to make our elections secure; easy to vote, hard to cheat, so I hesitate when we pile on more and more laws,” Swearingen added. “But it seems to me that a lot of laws need to be clarified to make sure that the locals understand the procedure or how to interpret things.”

Trevor Greene may be reached at [email protected].