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Meagan Wolfe: “The clerks are by the custodians of the official artifacts…”

Featuring: Meagan Wolfe, Administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission

On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe

Published December 3, 2021 | Video Starts at 32:00

I mean, we're used to operating in the public sphere of having full transparency on what we do. And I think for the clerks, it even runs a little deeper than that. The clerks are by the custodians of the official artifacts of the election. So they're the ones by law that are responsible for making sure that there's no tampering with no destruction of their ballots, of their poll books, of their absentee envelopes, of all those official materials of the election. (32:00–32:06)

CLAIM

Asserts that clerks are responsible for safeguarding official election materials.

This is an excerpt from a raw transcript. The assertions have not been audited or verified. Tap the video to view the source footage and understand the context.

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Meagan Wolfe

“The turnover, last it was reported to us, is somewhere around one third of those clerks every year.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 21:15-21:22
“2/3 of [our local election officials] are part time clerks.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 21:40-21:44
“For about 1200 of our clerks, [doing absentee voting out of their home] is their scenario.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 37:28-37:32
“The Wisconsin Elections Commission has a unique election system at both the state and local levels.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 02:08-02:22
“I am required by law to be nonpartisan.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 04:08-04:17
“If the commission can't appoint a new administrator in 45 days, then the state senate gets to decide who that person is.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 05:06-05:15
“In 2020, we put out hundreds of documents and memos to work through each step of the election process.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 07:13-07:25
“We had to rethink all of those things in order to incorporate public health best practices in every single step of the election process…”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 07:39-07:52
“No significant fraud has been discovered [in the 2020 election].”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 08:15-08:22
“The commission had to step in and really show leadership in a lot of ways, in places where there were gray areas in the law.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 09:11-09:19
“Every decision is made in a public meeting.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 10:02-10:05
“The first piece [of the law] says that you have to attempt to send special voting deputies to care facilities, but if you can't meet with…”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 11:27-11:40
“We have post-election voting equipment audits where jurisdictions are randomly selected to have the paper ballot total compared against the…”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 13:23-13:34
“We have more opportunities here in Wisconsin than any other state to get involved in the election process.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 13:52-13:58
“The commission met for about 11 hours in open session and went through every single one of those recommendations in the lab report.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 15:20-15:43
“The Commission should consider pursuing an administrative rule regarding dropboxes.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 17:10-17:17
“The administrative rule process typically takes about 14 months.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 18:15-18:21
“If a court does give us additional direction on [dropboxes], then we'll work with all of our local officials to implement the court's…”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 18:34-18:42
“The commission directed that we take a look at that existing guidance [on absentee certificate envelopes] that's been in place since 2016…”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 20:18-20:28
“There were five recommendations that pertain to training.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 20:54-20:58
“We have 1850 clerks. So again, every city, town and village has an election official.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 21:08-21:15
“Later today, we're going to be sending a letter to the Joint Legislative Committee on Audits describing the action that the commission took…”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 22:49-23:01
“The commission has taken steps pretty much yearly to very carefully figure out how to implement all of the ERIC data in accordance with…”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 24:37-24:51
“There's something called a voter participation report that tries to identify voters who may have voted in Wisconsin and another state that's…”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 25:00-25:14
“We also have a statute that says we now have to post the video of that meeting and our minutes to the website today.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 26:33-26:40
“Every time [the commission] make[s] a unanimous decision, that's a bipartisan decision. That means that three Republicans and three…”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 26:53-27:04
“We provided all of the documents that were requested of us. Thousands and thousands of documents were provided.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 29:47-29:56
“All of the public records requests that we issued to others throughout 2020, those were all provided.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 29:55-30:02
“I willingly appeared before the Assembly Committee on Elections and provided testimony about the grant funding in local communities.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 30:09-30:19
“We have cooperated fully and we have said everything that we have to say on the matter [of the investigation].”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 30:37-30:45
“We all have a deep commitment to transparency. And I think that that is what you're seeing play out here.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 31:39-31:47
“They're always trying to balance that security with transparency.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 33:07-33:12
“We need to fund and support local election offices.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 35:41-35:45
“We had a grant program before 2020 where we offered $1,200 to local election officials.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 35:44-35:51
“We had over 1,000 clerks apply for that grant because they were not provided those things by their communities.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 35:56-36:05
“On election day you see a lot of consistency, right? We have to have the polls open during a consistent time.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 36:56-37:03
“The current law is completely moot on anything to do with grant funding or things like, you know, consultants and elections.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 39:23-39:32
“Training of poll workers under state law is a responsibility of each municipal clerk.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 40:29-40:35
“We developed some online training modules that any community can use to train their poll workers.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 41:10-41:17
“In Wisconsin, we have more opportunities to learn from the actual election officials than any other state.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 43:13-43:21
“40 states are overseen by a secretary of state.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 44:43-44:47
“The Commission had almost 40 meetings last year where they made all of those decisions.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 45:05-45:11
“In a lot of other states or agencies, decisions about elections are made unilaterally by a single individual.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 45:26-45:34
“In this case, you've got to get six hyper partisan individuals appointed by legislative leadership to agree, at least four of them to agree…”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 45:35-45:46
“The commission functions as it's designed in law.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 45:46-45:51
“If there's a desire to see a different structure in place, it will require a law change.”
On the Issues: Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe | Uploaded December 3, 2021 | 45:52-45:57