Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 65. Sunrise is 7:24, and sunset is 5:51, for 10 hours, 27 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent, with 13.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater School Board holds a budget hearing at 5:45 PM, goes into closed session shortly after 6:15 PM, and resumes open session at 7 PM. Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1886, US president Grover Cleveland dedicates the Statue of Liberty.
While no one knows the future, we should be able to assess the present accurately. Henry Redman reports Experts, officials confident in voting system despite efforts from Trump, others to sow distrust:
Unlike most other states, Wisconsin’s election system is decentralized. Administration of elections is handled by the 1,850 municipal clerks working across the state. Each clerk is responsible for the election within their community.
At a virtual event hosted on Friday by Keep Our Republic — an organization that has spent four years trying to rebuild trust in the election system by explaining to skeptics exactly how the system works — former Wisconsin Congressman Reid Ribble said that if a person can’t trust politicians that the system is safe and secure, they should trust their local clerk and their friends and neighbors who volunteer as poll workers.
“Elections in Wisconsin are fair and safe and the 1,800 county and municipal clerks that are running those elections, and the thousands and thousands of local volunteers and poll workers, are working very hard to do their jobs in a non-partisan manner,” Ribble said. “I’ve often told friends of mine and other citizens … I get it if you don’t trust politicians. One person you should be able to trust is that — usually a senior citizen — poll worker at your local precinct that’s checking your ID and giving you a ballot and making sure that everything is done correctly. You often see these people at your grocery store. They might sit two or three rows in front of you at church and these are your friends. They’re your neighbors. They’re people that are concerned about defending democracy and seeing it unfold in front of their very eyes.”
Once polls close on Election Day and the votes are tallied, unofficial results get sent to county clerks, who report those preliminary numbers. It’s from those initial reports that media organizations use statistical processes to “call” races, declaring who has won. But the actual winners aren’t officially declared until the results are certified at multiple levels.
This multi-step process gives election experts another layer of assurance that despite continued conspiracy theories, Wisconsin’s system is resistant to meddling.
No one can be certain, but we in Wisconsin can be confident.