WAUKESHA, Wis. — Keeping your vote safe is what the city of Waukesha says it is doing at every step of the process when you cast your ballot.
“It is very interesting to see the checks and balances that go on,” said Pat Hanke, who has been a volunteer poll worker for more than three years.
Pat signed up to be a volunteer poll worker in Waukesha after the 2020 election. Her main job has been dealing with absentee ballots.
“They go from being safe at City Hall to the polling place. We open them, and nobody has access to them. There is always somebody with the ballots,” said Pat.
“You said you have a partner with you; you can’t open the ballots by yourself?” asked reporter Rebecca Klopf.
“There always has to be two people there,” said Pat.
Linda Gourdoux is readying all the ballot printers for in-person absentee voting. She has watched over elections for decades.
She retired as the Deputy Clerk of Mukwonago, and now she is serving as the Interim Clerk for Waukesha.
She showed us how she sealed the machines and how she would know if they were touched with a special pressurized sticker that indicates when someone tries to open the machine.
“If you pull it open it definitely shows it has been tampered with,” said Linda pointing out how the word void appears on the sticker if it has any pressure.
Watch: Keeping your vote safe in Waukesha County.
Then, they took Rebecca and went behind two sets of locked doors to see the machines that count the ballots called the voting tabulators.
They will arrive at the polling locations locked and sealed. It will be up to the chief inspectors to make sure there are no ballots in the machine and that this reads zero on Election Day before any votes are counted. By law, no ballots can be counted before Election Day.
Finally, Linda took Rebecca into the locked room where the returned absentee ballots are stored. Pat will eventually help count those votes, but right now, she is still sending out ballots for mail-in voting.
“Most of us just think we go and vote, but what goes on behind the scenes is unbelievable—the work that has to go into it,” said Pat.
You can see the voting tabulators work for yourself. The public test is next Tuesday, Oct. 29, at 9 a.m. at Waukesha City Hall.
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