- Elections are just around the corner and we are constantly barraged with information about election integrity.

What is rumor and what is reality?

Stay tuned to find out on this episode of IGI.

(dramatic music) - [Announcer] This program is brought to you with support from the Lewis H. Humphreys Charitable Trust and from the friends of KTWU.

(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to IGI.

I'm your host LeTiffany Obozele.

Americans access news and information on multiple platforms these days, many of which tell conflicting stories about the timely topics happening in the United States.

There is a topic that has become popular headline ever since 2020 elections.

Election integrity.

How do we determine what is fact and what is fiction?

How can we dispel rumors that threaten election integrity?

Here with me for this discussion are Susan Quinn, Voter Services Chair for the League of Women Voters of Kansas, and via Zoom's Cille King, Former Co-President For League of Women Voters of Kansas.

Susan and Cille, thank you so much for being here with me today.

Before we jump into this discussion, I wanna start with you Cille.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and the work you've done with the League of Women Voters?

- I've been with the state board more than 10 years now.

I served as a voter service chair and as first vice president, and then four years as co-president of the state league.

And currently I'm the advocacy chair for the league.

And so in all these capacities, it's always the same.

It's getting information out to the voters to what they need to do to register and get ready to vote.

Information about candidates.

We are non-partisan, so we're always looking for what the candidates want to do, not anything about parties or political affiliations.

So that's basically it.

We are always for education.

- And Susan, what about you?

Tell us a little about yourself.

- Sure, sure.

So I got involved with the League of Women Voters in 2020, in November of 2020.

So you remember 2020?

- I do.

- I had read a book by Eitan Hersh.

Well, he is a political scientist out of Massachusetts area and his book "Politics Is For Power" basically said, if you're a news junkie, if you watch the nightly news every night and and know all about it, but you're not a part of the solution, then you need to get up off the couch.

So I decided to join the league and I'm really glad that I did.

I've been on the state board now for just a few months and I am over voter services.

- Well, thank you guys both for telling us a little bit about yourself.

And getting ready for talking to you guys today and learning more about rumors versus reality and election integrity.

I read an interesting quote that talked about how to safeguard democracy, one of the important things we have to do is educate people.

And so I think that's what we're hoping to help people do here today.

And so in starting off the topic, why Susan is determining what is fact or fiction become such an issue since the 2020 election?

- Well, I think 2020 was a pivotal year for election rumors and that's because we had an incumbent president that lost and that is not rare that an incumbent president might lose his election bid, but it is unusual.

It is about third of incumbent presidents won't win.

But two thirds of the time they will.

And so I think he was trying to get through that and was gearing up toward losing that battle and then just proliferated some misinformation out there.

And it's really tough when you're hoping to win and you're looking at this and it just doesn't seem right.

So lots of misinformation started flowing around.

- Cille, so we're talking about what's fact or fiction, and how it's become a bigger issue since the 2020 election.

What can people look at or reference if they're trying to determine what they're hearing is fact or if it's fiction?

- Well, there's one big federal website that they can go to.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, that's CISA for short.

It developed an online information site which is www.cisa.gov.rumor-vs-reality.

And this is an official website of the US government and the US Department of Homeland Security.

So that's a major place to go.

Also, the Kansas Secretary of State website, there's a for the sos.ks.gov/security/initiative.

Did you know, which has a wealth of information relating to Kansas.

So particularly either of those two sites would give you a lot of facts to dispel what somebody might say as a rumor.

- And I'd add on that snopes.com, politifact.com, and factcheck.org are all great nonpartisan sites to go to to dispel any kind of rumors, whether it's election rumors or not.

- And how do you get people to go there?

'Cause I feel like when you're watching news, people have their sources that they like to watch.

If you like to watch Fox News you're gonna watch Fox News.

If you like to watch CNN, or MSNBC, you're watching your news sources.

How do people know if something that they're listening to if it had to go to these websites?

Or how do we get people to want to go?

- Well, I'll tell you one time I was watching a presidential debate and I just happened upon factcheck.org and I watched it in real time.

And it was really interesting to me that as the candidates were saying different things, they were fact checking what they were saying in real time.

And all candidates will not tell the entire story as they're communicating maybe not on purpose, but they'll pick pieces out that kind of support where they're wanting to go with the conversation.

So it's important to just get lots of sources for the information that you're trying to make sense of.

- And Cille, did you have anything to add to that?

- I think she covered it.

- Okay.

So now there are rumors that we're dealing with currently when it comes to the election process, about ballot scanners, about the behavior of folks that are observing, and ballot secrecy.

So let's take each of these one at a time and what current rumors are we hearing about ballot scanners?

- And who's that addressed to?

- Cille, sorry.

I'm looking at you, but I forgot to say.

- Alright, well, ballot scanners.

Well, there's always a chance that some electronic equipment may have a glitch.

That doesn't mean that your ballot's not counted.

There's ways that the election officials at every polling site will be able to secure your ballot and make sure it's counted when the election equipment is fully running.

And similarly, there's times that if a ballot is torn or miss marked or something else, it may not be able to go through the scanner correctly and those two can be checked at a later time.

And what's basic to remember about all this is that the the ballot itself is the main voting document that we have.

And it's there no matter what.

And so if there's a problem with a scanner, we can get a different scanner.

Your ballot information is still secure.

- Thank you for that, Cille.

So Susan, I wanna talk with you about what kind of behavior people who are observing at poll sites can engage in.

I think one of the rumors is that they're allowed to kind of act however they want or maybe intimidate people.

Is that truth?

- Well, in Kansas, no.

In Kansas, there's rules about how close you can get to a voter while they're working with their ballot.

And in fact, you're not allowed to touch another person's ballot.

As a poll worker, when I work the polls, I'm not allowed to put anybody's ballot into the scanner.

They need to do that on their own so that they know that nobody else was able to see their ballot.

And they have full secrecy on their ballot.

Of course, your name will never go on a ballot and you just fill in the bubbles and put it in the tracker, the scanner, and it will count your ballot.

- And what about people who are observing from outside, is it true that somebody can intimidate somebody?

Can people block you from going in poll sites?

Is that any behavior that's acceptable for people that are observing?

- No, definitely not.

Sometimes we will have poll observers but when the election is getting set up for the day, the people who are working that poll site will be told ahead of time who is coming and observing and allowed to observe.

They'll have a name tag on, and they'll be pre-approved by the election commissioner in your county to be able to do that observation.

They know the rules and they will be asked to leave or stop what they're doing if they don't behave within those guidelines that are in Kansas law.

- And Cille, are there any other rumors that are kind of going around about participating in the election process that we can help dispel?

- Well, one of the other rumors was that your ballot's not secret, but ballot secrecy is guaranteed by law in all states.

And so there's just, as Susan was talking about that election workers or observers can't get close to a voter or their ballot.

They can't touch their ballot, they can't intimidate the voter.

So it's a rumor and it's not true.

And so that's one of the other issues that some people have that somehow their ballot is not gonna be secret.

And all ballots are secret whether they're in person on election day, early voting, by mail, provisional, whatever, they're all secret.

- Okay, thank you.

So I wanna change topics for a minute.

We're still talking about rumors but it seems like it's so hard these days to dispel rumors that are going on.

Let's start with the first part.

Why do you think we're having an issue with people believing the rumors and having such a hard time dispelling rumors for folks?

- Well, I think in this modern day, it's lot easier to become entrenched in your own thoughts or your own view of the world.

You'll have an echo chamber of sorts, especially with social media.

It's just so much easier to curate your own news sources that reinforce what you have a tendency to believe.

And so I think we need to be extra vigilant about making fact finding and the truth part of just as important a part of our reality and our goals as informing ourselves about what our opinions are and what identity is.

But in 2023, it's a lot easier to curate your own news.

Back when I was a kid, we had three news channels, and in fact when I lived in Emporia, we only got to watch the one.

But there's all kinds of cable news channels nowadays.

So you can pick and choose where you want to get your information and especially if you're getting off of social media, they have algorithms that will keep you clicking.

And so as long as you want to hear more about something that fires you up, you can do that.

- And Cille, I wanna enhance the question a little bit and ask you, how do you think politicians at our national state and local level are also impacting rumors and information that's going out about elections?

- Well, unfortunately, I think that's all too true, that there are some politicians who are taking advantage of the national misinformation, the rumors, and if they're in a state legislature, they're sometimes taking advantage of those rumors by demanding that we tighten or reduce the amount, the number of ways that a person can vote.

So by tightening ID restrictions, like some states won't allow student IDs which I think is a real problem.

If they take away ballot drop boxes because there's a possibility that something might happen, I think that's a disadvantage to a lot of voters who depend on those drop boxes to get their ballots in on time.

Or if they, excuse me.

If they try to do away with the grace period for ballots to arrive at the county office after an election ad we know that if you mail something on the day that's not gonna get there that day, you might have to mail it five days or seven days before that deadline in order for that piece of mail to get to where it needs to go on election day.

So I think it's a real problem here in Kansas that they're trying to do away with ballot boxes and that grace period after an election to receive ballots.

And I think there's too many of those targeted and we find that across the nation, a lot of those are targeted to a particular demographic or a particular political party, which is even worse.

- And you both have talked a lot about different ways that you can fact check things and adding truth to just as much as how we receive our information.

Those websites you talked about earlier, are those good websites that if somebody's wondering about ballot boxes or if they're wondering about some of the things that are being said they could go to to see how that process works, and how it's helpful or harmful?

- Yeah, I think the best one that Cille brought up was the Secretary of State's website.

He has a lot of great information out there on the did you know tab for election security.

And I encourage everybody to go out there and read those because Secretary of State cares a lot about our election security and integrity and has tried to make sure that everybody has the information that they need to feel comfortable that your vote will be counted and will be counted in a way that reflects your values.

- So since you started talking about election integrity, for people who are watching, let's talk about what the election process looks like.

How does it work?

- Sure, sure.

So all voters in Kansas need to be registered to vote and there is a deadline to register to vote by a certain date.

So this year it's October 17th, so if you haven't registered to vote by October 17th you won't be allowed to vote in the November election.

But every year you need to make sure that your election, I'm sorry, your voter registration is ready to go.

You may have married, you may have moved, and if so, you need to update your registration.

If it's been several years since you voted, you might wanna check your registration.

And then of course you need to decide how you wanna vote.

In Kansas, we're allowed to vote one of three ways.

You can either vote at home with a mail-in ballot which is my preferred method or some people really enjoy that in-person experience.

And we have about couple weeks, two or three weeks that you can go and vote in person at your county election site, sometimes it's just one site in your county but you'll find out from your county clerk or your county election commissioner where that site is and they'll make that available to you.

Otherwise you just go on the polling day and you're gonna hope that you're not sick or that you don't have family commitments that you need to make.

But you go on election day seven to seven, it's in Kansas law that we get to vote all day long from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM.

If you arrive at 6 59 or 7:00 PM and there's a big long line, just stay in line.

You can still vote.

- Okay, that's great to know.

So we're talking about election integrity here, Cille.

So who's helping during that process maintain that there's integrity while people are going through the election process?

- Well, all elections are run by counties.

So it's the county clerk or the county election commissioner just as Susan was saying.

And each of those counties include a number of voters in their precincts or voters in their counties to volunteer to work the polls.

And so it is your friends and neighbors and maybe relatives or family members that are sitting there checking your voter ID at those polling places, and giving you your ballot and letting you put that ballot into the monitor machine or whatever is happening at your particular county election place.

And so it's really a grassroots process because we are county by county, we are not a state run election state.

The state election offices, the Secretary of State have very few people dedicated to elections.

And it is county by county, it's grassroots.

And we look out for each other.

And so all of those trained election workers at your polling place have been trained and know how to make sure that your ballot's secure and make sure that it's counted and each ballot is accounted for before they leave that polling place at eight or nine that evening.

And so it's really a hands-on process.

- So we know about the process and we know how the integrity's being maintained for it.

What happens if somebody is looking and they go and they participate and they see something that's of concern.

Susan, how does someone report or deal with something that's concerning while they're participating in the process?

- Well, if you're at a polling location there's always somebody who is called a supervising judge, the person who's in charge of the group that is working that day.

But if you don't get a satisfaction with that supervising judge, I would definitely encourage you to reach out to your election commissioner or your county clerk who is running the election, overseeing the election for that day.

- There's one other source.

When we go to these bigger elections, the general elections, the Kansas ACLU usually has a hotline for voter problems.

And so those are often posted outside or inside a polling place and it gives you a telephone number.

And the ACLU of Kansas usually has a number of attorneys available to answer questions about voting.

And so when we're on election day in November those numbers should be available to everybody.

- Now, Susan have our elections been compromised or tampered with?

Is there any reason to believe that that's the case?

- Well, not in Kansas.

And actually not only largely in the United States.

We have very good integrity voter for our elections nationwide.

- So how do we have conversations with friends and family that might feel otherwise to not have a conversation where you're attacking anybody but you're just having a conversation like we're having today?

How do you talk to friends and families who maybe feel otherwise?

- And so if you've got something that you need to talk about that might be a little more difficult to talk through, just treat it like you would wanna be treated.

So approach them and in a way that you would wanna be approached.

For instance, if you had said something that wasn't quite truthful, how would you want to be approached by them?

And I'd approach it that way but I would ask them to give me more, what makes you think that, can we talk a little bit more about it and do it in a respectful way so that they know that you're really truly interested in getting to the bottom of whatever it is.

And remember, you may not know everything either and they might have a point of view that you hadn't thought of.

So it's important to have that conversation and be respectful with the folks that are in your lives.

- Now, Cille, what plans are being made now for the upcoming 2023 elections and the 2024 general elections?

- Well, here in Kansas, the Secretary of State is working on increasing the education for the 105, either county clerks or election commissioners.

So it's an ongoing process, but the Secretary of State is working on further education so that if county clerks have a problem they know how to handle it.

They've also enlisted previous Johnson County Election Commissioner to help train the county clerks throughout the state.

And you have to remember that 101 of our election commissioners or election officers are the county clerks.

And it might be a two person office and where they have to do everything that a clerk has to do, including elections.

And so elections may not be their top priority or they may not be given many county funds to run the elections.

But there are measures being taken.

We already know that all the election machines in Kansas have been certified by both the national and the Secretary of State's office, and they've been run through a independent laboratory.

They all have checks on them right before an election and right after an election.

And those are public events.

So if anybody in the public wants to go see or participate in how the machines are validated that they are running correctly, they just contact your county election office and you can do that.

And so those measures are being taken.

- And if somebody wanted to follow up and see all the work and volunteer for the League of Women Voter, Susan, where can they go?

- Lwv.org.

You bet.

- Well, thank you Susan and Cille for joining me today for this important discussion.

That's all the time we have for this episode of IGI.

If you have any comments or suggestions for future topics, please send us an email at issues@ktwu.org.

If you would like to view this program again or any previous episodes of IGI, visit us online at watch.ktwu.org.

For IGI, I'm LeTiffany Obozele.

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] This program is brought to you with support from the Lewis H. Humphreys Charitable Trust, and from the friends of KTWU.