Meagan Wolfe Knows Wisconsin Elections Are Built Different

Wisconsin is one of the nation’s leaders in voter turnout — but how do its elections actually work? This week, Ari sits down with Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator Meagan Wolfe to discuss how the state administers elections through nearly 2,000 local election officials. They talk about Wisconsin’s unique bipartisan commission system, the challenges of training clerks across the state, and some of the most persistent myths about election administration. Along the way, Wolfe explains how local officials and volunteers keep elections running smoothly, even during snowstorms and power outages.

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Welcome back to Keepers of our Republic, a new weekly podcast from Keep Our Republic that takes listeners inside the institutions at the heart of American democracy. Every week, Keepers of Our Republic features thoughtful conversations with election administrators and retired federal judges. We explore how elections are really run, discuss why an independent judiciary is essential to a strong republic, and separate fact from fiction in a fast-changing world. Learn more about Keep Our Republic, a nonpartisan nonprofit, at our website, https://keepourrepublic.org 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Keep Our Republic is a non-partisan, non-profit organization. Since the spring of 2020, we've been doing our part to help keep our republic. We do it through hyper-localized civic education. We talk with Americans through town halls, legal seminars, media briefings, and other events. We know a lot of Americans have a lot of questions about how our elections work, what safeguards are in place, and who actually is working behind the scenes on election night as the votes are being tabulated. And that's why we're really glad you're joining us today. Hopefully we can answer some of those questions. Megan Wolf, thanks so much for joining us, and more so, thanks for the work that you do each and every week.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Well, thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Megan, I remember the first time I met you was at a water park, although neither one of us got to enjoy the water park. Uh it's also one of the largest convention centers in the Midwest, uh think Wisconsin Dells. But um Keep High Republic's uh really enjoyed working with the commission and working working with you. So thank you again for taking the time. But um that was, if memory serves me, 2023, which is a decade ago. Um what's changed in Wisconsin election administration uh uh over the last three uh plus years?

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Well, in terms of how elections are actually administered in the state of Wisconsin, I wouldn't say that we've had significant changes. We haven't seen a lot of changes to Wisconsin election law. Um, and so, and we really haven't seen that many significant changes that have been brought about by litigation either in the last few years. And so, for the most part, all of the election administration practices that you've seen in the 2020 election, 2022, 2024, most of those are still in place. But what we do continue to improve is how we train our local election officials. Of course, we're always doing things like adapting our policies and our uh processes on how we protect our technology and systems. And so those things are evolving all the time because they have to, right? There's no finish line there. Um, but in terms of the actual mechanics of what's required under Wisconsin law to run an election, uh, really things have been quite stable over the last few years, which I think helps us to be able to focus on some of the really core aspects of running elections.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Well, thanks so much. We'll get more brass techs uh soon enough. And certainly there's been a lot of questions by uh just everyday Wisconsin residents about how elections are run. And then you know there's been national interest in how elections are run in Wisconsin, uh we can talk a little about that. But um, how did you get in uh into this position and maybe also talk more about the position because it's somewhat different than uh uh the infrastructure that other states have?

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Yeah, absolutely. So I grew up in a home, I grew up in Wisconsin, um in central Wisconsin, not too far from Green Bay, and I grew up in a home of public servants. My mom was a teacher, my dad worked in city government, and I've always had a passion for really serving the people of my community and of my state. I think I made my first pitch to the city council when I was about 11 years old. And so I've always been in that world and seen how important it is.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

What were you pitching? Was it a new uh soccer field or something?

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Or well, um, let's say I wasn't probably the coolest kid, but I my my pitch was that um my parents made me wear a bike helmet and uh other kids didn't have to. And so I remember going to the city council and proposing that if kids wore their bike helmet, they would get a certificate for an ice cream, and it did pass. So that was my first foray in in uh municipal government.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

I love it. Well, Wisconsin is the land of many dairy cattle, so uh the uh among other reasons that was a good initiative.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

So so you had you had that bug and that interest in um public life and uh elected government and um just giving back, uh it sounds like from middle school.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Yeah, really it was because I think you know, in in Wisconsin, we have such a tradition of sort of local control and local governments being, you know, really where a lot of the things happen. And so having that as my framing growing up, I knew that I wanted to work in government. I knew that I wanted to serve the people of my state and to be a part of making sure that those critical functions uh were happening. I don't think I always knew that running elections was even a job. I probably didn't even realize that there was an agency that ran elections for the state of Wisconsin. Um, but when I, this was really kind of my first professional um uh position was working in elections. And I was hired in 2011, uh, and I started out as the state of Wisconsin's voter outreach coordinator. So I did a lot of implementing our new photo ID law that was new at the time in 2011, going around the state and talking to our local election clerks, uh talking to voter groups and explaining how this new law was going to work. And then also doing more broad things for the public in terms of explaining how this was gonna work and what our public education campaign was gonna look like. And then from there, I moved into overseeing and managing some of our public-facing technology. So in Wisconsin, we have a website called myvote.wi.gov. It's where you can go and register to vote, request your absentee ballot, view your voter history. Um, I was the one that worked on managing that project and standing up that website. And then I was uh appointed as our deputy administrator and also our IT manager in 2016. And from that perspective, I got to oversee the team that worked on and built our statewide voter registration database. So I have a lot of that perspective as well. And then in 2018, our commission, and I can get into explaining that a little bit too, but our commission appointed me as the administrator for the state of Wisconsin Elections Commission. And that also makes me the chief election official for the state of Wisconsin. So in Wisconsin, how we run elections at the state level is quite different than what you might see in other states. Uh, so in most other states, you'll have a bipartisan elected secretary of state that serves as a chief election official. They're the ones that are able to make those decisions about how they're going to implement election law and things like that. But here in Wisconsin, it's a little different, and my position is very different. We actually have a bipartisan commission. So we have six commissioners, three Republicans and three Democratic commissioners, and they're appointed by legislative leadership. Um, and they make up citizen commissioners. Um, two of the six are actually former clerks, but the others are folks that are appointed by their respective legislative um uh leadership. And my job as the administrator and the chief election official is to first of all, I'm required by law to be nonpartisan, as it's all the staff of the elections commission. And so our job is to bring questions or uh concerns to the commission. So, for example, if there's a new law that passes, or if there's uh litigation where we have an order that we have to implement, we'll bring that to the six-member commission in an open public meeting and we'll say, here's the information. Now you deliberate on how we should implement it. And then they'll take a vote again in a public meeting. You can watch how all the sausage is made, uh, and they'll tell us what they want us to do. And then I bring that back to the team and we implement the commission's directive. And so it makes for a really transparent process and system because you can actually see how all those decisions are made. Uh, all the materials that go to the commission are posted well in advance. And so it's a very transparent process. And I really enjoy the nonpartisan part of it. My job is to be the worker be, to arrange all of that research and materials for the commission, and then to carry out their directives. And uh we have to stay out of the political fray, which again is something that I think I and my team were very well suited for, and just to work with the commission to try to ensure that uh what they direct is is what we what we do and what we carry forth.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Uh thanks very much, and especially uh thanks on behalf of non-Wisconsin uh um uh audience members. So I don't want to assume that that folks know what what what I mean, next door, as you alluded to in Michigan, for example, has a very different system statewide. Uh, when we get down into the local and county level, it's somewhat similar. But what what's the genesis? Or at what point did Wisconsin say we're gonna have a commission versus a secretary of state that's uh either elected or appointed by the governor?

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Yeah, so there have been a number of iterations of the agency the Wisconsin legislature has decided should run Wisconsin elections. And so if I've got my timeline right, it's it's been since the 70s that a partisan elected official, the Secretary of State, was involved in elections. And then since then, there have been various iterations of the board or commission that run elections at the state level. So there was the state elections board, then there was the government accountability board, and now the Wisconsin Elections Commission is what has been in place since 2016.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

So we have new audience members every episode, so I don't want to assume, but shame on them for not listening to previous episodes. We did sit down with a county clerk in Wisconsin, as well as um more recently we sat down with um the clerk up in uh Green Bay. So uh listeners may or may not know um the roles, but maybe you can just give a primer um because there's also uh hundreds upon hundreds of local election administrators when you go out across Wisconsin's uh counties.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Absolutely. This is my favorite thing to talk about because our local election officials in Wisconsin, they are incredible. And we have more of them than any other state in the country. So here in the state of Wisconsin, we run elections at the municipal level. Most states run them at the county level. And what that means in Wisconsin is every single city, town, and village has a local election administrator, the person that's running elections. And we have 1,851 of those local election officials. And that's in addition to our 72 counties that also play very pivotal roles in helping the municipalities run their elections. So all said and done, we have 1,921 local election, 23 local election officials. Um, that's a lot. We have almost 2,000. And so that just means that, you know, as as I'm sure we'll talk about, when it comes to training or assisting those local election officials, we have a lot more. You know, where other states may have 15, 50, maybe 100 local election officials, Wisconsin has almost 2,000. And so it really does change how we help and administer uh elections with them, but it also means that your elections in Wisconsin are truly and completely run by your local election official. It can't get more local than that. Um, you know, there's communities that may only have a population of 30 eligible registered voters. They still have a clerk, they still have a local election official that's running their elections. And so it's a very unique model. It can offer some challenges with that many people, but it's a really effective model in that people have real confidence in those local election officials because they're their neighbors, their friends, their families, they know them and they know that they do a great job of running their elections.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Well, what is uh, look, it's a common myth that there's an off-season and you know, there's like the week before election day is when uh election administrators uh actually work. That that's so far from the truth. But what is in a typical week, a typical month? Um, how are you liaising with all these people? How is your office? Uh, is it some sort of two-way dialogue or is it standing regular meetings? You alluded to training. Uh how how how is communication happening?

SPEAKER_00 12:40

Yes, when it comes to working with those local election officials, so those 1,923 local election officials here in Wisconsin, we have to use a lot of different methods to communicate with them and to train them. And, you know, some people prefer training or opportunities to engage with us that are in person, others prefer it to be virtual. And so we try to offer a wide variety of ways to train and offer guidance to our local election officials. So I'll give you a couple examples. Um, whenever there is something that the commission wants to tell the clerks, so um just last week there was a court ruling and we needed to tell the clerks about it. And so we'll go to the commission and we'll say, this court ruling came down, we need to tell the commission about it. Here's all the details, here's a draft of a communication, use that to start your discussion commission to tell the clerks how to implement this new court ruling. And so the commission will deliberate in their open meeting and then we'll issue a clerk communication. And that gets sent to all the various clerks, but it also gets posted on our website, uh, elections.wi.gov. And so anyone can actually go and see what is the guidance that the commission has given to the clerks in terms of how to implement this new law or this court decision. So that's one of the main methods for timely things that come up. But we also go around the state and we'll attend the various clerk conferences. Um, so unlike other states where they, you know, may have a hundred local election officials, when you have 2,000, you can't really gather everyone in one spot. But what we can do is go around to their various regions around the state and do trainings with them in person on timely issues and on just routine things because there's a lot of turnover. Um so we do a lot of in-person engagements and then we do a lot of webinars. So we probably have hundreds of different trainings available from for clerks, anything you can imagine from cybersecurity to how to process absentee ballots, um, how to register a voter, um, end-of-night procedures, recalls, recounts, you name it. We have webinars and videos that we do on those topics. And oftentimes we'll do multiple live engagements with the clerks so they have a chance to ask us questions, um, but then we'll also do recorded ones. Because another interesting thing about Wisconsin's clerks is we've got a lot of them. We've got the 1900 and you know, 23 local election officials, but of our municipal clerks, two-thirds of them work part-time. So that means two-thirds of them might be paid by their town or their village to be the clerk for, let's say, five hours a week. And then they have another full-time job that has nothing to do with elections. And so for those clerks that are part-time, which is most of our towns, they have to have an option where they can train and engage with election materials after hours when you know they're they have a chance to catch up on their election work. Um, in addition to that, we do a lot of really engaging scenario-based trainings. We find that for some of our clerks, especially when we're in person, they really like the opportunity to play through scenarios. And so our team for many years now has been going out and helping create tabletop exercises and other scenario-based training. Uh, my team is leaving today to go up to one of our northern counties to do a new tabletop exercise where we're going to work through setting up polling places. Um, but we're always trying to think of creative ways to really engage clerks and not just do the trainings ourselves. Another thing that we have to do is how can we package these trainings up so that the clerks can do it themselves? We can't get to 2,000 places, right? And uh, so we have to figure out how we can package up tools so that our clerks can bring those tabletop exercises or those scenarios and have those same types of engagements with their poll workers or with other clerks in their area. Um, so we have a really multifaceted training approach. Um, you know, there's a lot of clerks, there's a lot of turnover, but it works because that's how it's always been, and we're used to operating in that environment.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

We were talking about scenario planning, tabletop exercises, and if memory serves me, in the not so distant past in Wisconsin has had catastrophic weather events, and yet elections have gone on, and uh folks in pretty remote places have made sure that ballots are cast and ballots are counted.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

That's always amazing to me. So, as you said, in 2025, in the spring elections, we did have some snowstorms in northern Wisconsin, and there were power outages and all the things that you don't want to happen on election day. But I remember on election morning, you know, we have a system where we're able to reach out and survey the clerks and say, are your polls open? Is everybody good to go? Anybody having challenges? And some of the clerks I reached out to, I said, It sounds like your power is out. Are you guys gonna be okay? And they would just sort of pause and look at me like, well, of course we're okay. We just brought the generator down from the farm and everything's good and good to go. So they're extremely resilient. These are people that are really in these positions to serve their communities, but they probably have another job, they run a farm, and they're a clerk. And so they're extremely resourceful and resilient. And we find that when it comes to those types of emergencies, that they're always prepared to be able to go to their contingencies and still be able to run a great election.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

So fully agree. Uh, I love those adjectives, resourceful and resilient. But uh, let's be honest, there's been a lot of turnover, there's been a lot of folks leaving the profession. So um uh does your office monitor trends or is it more anecdotal as you look statewide of the average age of clerks and young folks going into the profession?

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Yeah, I would say, you know, it's it's difficult to track. But even before the last few years and sort of the changing environment around elections, we've always had a high rate of turnover just because so many of our clerks are part-time. We've always estimated that about a third of our clerks turn over every year in just a normal year. And so if you average that out, that's something like 10 to 11 new clerks that come into the system every week. And so while we do think without, you know, we don't have a whole lot of data to tell us if this um change how significant it is, we do think that we have more clerks that are turning over than maybe in a typical year. But the thing is we're we're prepared for it, right? We're prepared to bring in new clerks all the time because, like I said, even during a normal time pre-2020, we were seeing on average, you know, 10 to 12 new clerks every single week. And so we're always ready to be able to introduce those new clerks to the really fundamental concepts about elections. And so it hasn't been too difficult for us to pivot. Um, but I'm always surprised and thankful that in a lot of these small communities, they're still able to find people that want to do this work, that still want to be clerks, being that they're given so little in terms of resources or compensation for their time. Our communities still seem to be very well served by these folks that want to deliver good elections to their communities. So that's great news. So far, we haven't seen um any shortages in those positions that have been extended.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

Yeah, and for that matter, Wisconsin uh is one of the national leaders in overall voter turnout. Um, so my my hat my hat goes off to um everything you all are doing. Uh that should be replicated across 49 other states uh to get though those kind of numbers. Um we've both referenced it. There's been a lot of scrutiny, there's been a lot of curiosity and interest, and some, frankly, more nefarious uh interest in in how Wisconsin administers elections. Um what what what are some of the persistent nagging? I don't want to dwell on a negative here, but kind of persistent nagging myths that we could just kind of rapid fire dispel uh about how Wisconsin administers elections.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

Yeah, I think there's a couple of really, you know, and you know this from talking to other election officials, elections can be so complicated. And I really try to have a lot of empathy for people that are out there trying to sort through the noise and figure out, you know, what is the truth. Um, and so trying to boil down some of the fundamental concepts can be difficult. But I would say there's there's a few things that we hear pretty often that seem kind of persistent. Um, one is this idea that in Wisconsin, ballots can be added to the totals after election day. That's not true. In the state of Wisconsin, all ballots have to be received by your clerk by 8 p.m. on election day in order to count. And the only exception to that is provisional ballots. And in Wisconsin, we have very, very few of those because we're exempt from, and I won't get into the details, but the National Voter Registration Act. And that means that um we don't have the ability or the Laws to support issuing as many provisionals as many other states do. And so there's very few provisionals in the state of Wisconsin that can be added after election day if somebody provides their appropriate ID. We're talking about less than 100 in a presidential election. But other than that, all ballots that are cast and added to the total have to be returned by 8 p.m. on election day. We don't have any sort of late return. Another thing that we hear often is claims that, for example, that the state of Wisconsin, that we at the Elections Commission are the ones responsible for maintaining the voter list or issuing absentees. And oftentimes people will make claims that our office is handling those in a way that they might not agree with. Well, we like to explain to those folks that that's not true. At the state, we don't issue absentee ballots. We don't register voters. And uh we actually don't have a lot of statutory authority over maintaining the voter rolls. All of that happens at the local level by those 1,851 municipal clerks. They're the ones that register voters, they're the ones that issue absentees that count the ballots and that maintain the voter lists and ensure that they're accurate. And they do that all day, every day. They're getting data from state and federal agencies that tell them if there's a change made to somebody's record, and they're they're keeping those lists up to date within their communities. And I think in Wisconsin, it makes for a really unique and really effective process because those local clerks, they know their communities, right? They know the people within their communities. They have that granular level of detail. And so they're really well suited to do that list maintenance. Um, but you know, we do hear a lot of claims that people are confused about who runs those processes. Um, and so they're always relieved when they hear that, you know, it's actually done by your local clerk and you probably know them. They're probably your neighbor, your friend, your family. And so you probably know the person that's carrying out those responsibilities.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

So but does the state have a role? Let's say I turned 18, I grew up in Oshkosh, I registered, but now I'm off at school at UW Madison, and now I decide to register again. There must be some sort of coordination between uh these two jurisdictions.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

Absolutely. So if somebody moves between jurisdictions in Wisconsin, or even they move out of states and they become ineligible to vote in Wisconsin, let's say they're convicted of a felony or any other matter of things that could make it so somebody should no longer have an active record in a jurisdiction, every day we're running checks and reports at the state level in our system. And then we present that information to the appropriate local election officials. They take a look at it and using their statutory authority, they determine if this is the same person, and then they're able to take action on deactivating the voter or sending them some type of notice or whatever the appropriate lawful action might be. Um, but yes, we are the ones that have built and maintained the statewide voter registration database. Uh, we help with looking for and running queries to make sure that if there are any questions about the data, that that's immediately brought to the attention of the appropriate local election official who can remedy it.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

Well, you've been super generous with your time. And as I mentioned, there's there's never a slow time uh to for your office uh and for the 1900 plus who are in this um the world of Wisconsin elections. Uh so final question other than a water park in the Wisconsin Dales, what is your favorite spot in the great state of Wisconsin?

SPEAKER_00 25:49

Favorite spot in the great state of Wisconsin. Well, I would say that I've really enjoyed, since I was a little kid, spending the summers up in northern Wisconsin in the Eagle River area. And up there you'll see a chain of 20-some lakes, and you can, you know, go out to dinner, go play golf, whatever you want from the boat. And so I think that's one of the really cool things about Wisconsin. You've got lakes everywhere, and there's always a great opportunity to get out on the water.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

And I assume you have Eagles doing their own fishing.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

Yes, absolutely. There definitely it definitely lives up to its name.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

So that's an added bonus. All right, well, Megan, thank you so much uh on many levels.

SPEAKER_00 26:27

Yes, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

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