(thoughtful new theme music) (driving electronic music) - [Interviewee] Think Reagan said, "Hey guys, guess what?

"You've gotta transfer."

- He was meant for Tony, but a gold advisor.

- Sacrifice that the American people-- - Hospice communities have healthy environments.

- [Interviewee] Trust me, she lived in trafficking for four years.

- I really felt for a lot of reason.

I felt for him, and I didn't have the guts to stand up.

- I'm saying too many smart, 'cause I'm not disrespectful.

(indistinct speaking) - [Interviewee] Ultimately, there will be rewards.

You'll literally save lives.

- As Americans, voting is one of our most cherished rights.

But how does the process really work?

Sure, we go to the polls and cast our vote, but what happens after that?

What precautions are taken to avoid shenanigans and to keep our election process credible?

Well, on this edition of Conversations, we decided to ask the experts, those whose job it is to make our elections in Escambia and Santa Rosa Counties accurate and credible.

Tappie Villane is the supervisor of elections in Santa Rosa County, a role she has held since 2013.

David Stafford is the supervisor of elections in Escambia County.

He has held that position since 2004.

We're pleased to have Tappie Villane and David Stafford on this edition of Conversations.

Thank you both for joining us.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Tell me about your job.

We know supervisor of elections, what does that mean?

(all laugh) - I'm gonna let David go first.

- Oh, thank you, thank you.

Well, thanks for the opportunity to take a bit of a respite from the job and come talk to you for a few minutes.

So the basics of what we do, kind of, or couple of buckets.

One is the most obvious and that is, we conduct elections.

Here in Escambia County, we have agreements with both the City of Pensacola and the Town of Century, our two municipalities.

So all elections that are held inside the county, whether it's we're electing a city council person, a mayor, or the President of the United States, those elections are conducted by our offices.

So that's sorta kinda the main thing, then year-round, we're doing voter registration.

We're registering new voters, we're updating voter registration for people that move, we're doing list maintenance, and then the other part that we deal with are local candidates.

So if you're a candidate for office, let's say you wanna run for state legislature, then your qualifying officer is over in Tallahassee, but anybody who's basically just within the confines of the county, so anybody from county commissioner to ECUA here in Escambia County to the municipal offices, they qualify with us, so we're their qualifying officer, they sign our paperwork, they file their campaign reports and all that, so kinda those are the three sort of main activities.

There's some other associated activities, but those are the three main ones, is the voter registration, the conduct of, the actual conduct of the election, and then dealing with the candidates.

- When you say conduct of election, what do you mean?

- Just the election in general, from start to finish, you know, conducting it, again, like David said, from, again, start to finish.

We, you know, testing all of the equipment, putting a ballot together, testing all of the equipment, which our public test, actually conducting the election, not just Election Day but you know, working, sending out vote by mail ballots, early voting, Election Day, and then of course wrapping everything up, having unofficial results, official results, our audit, all of that comes into play.

And we are very similar to Escambia where our cities actually fall in our regular election cycles as well.

- So Jeff, we actually, we really want three separate elections, but we do 'em simultaneously.

So you think about, the first thing that we do is we run a mail ballot election.

There's states, particularly the West Coast, that's all they do is mail ballot elections, so they mail everybody a ballot and then they're returned and they count 'em.

So we do that.

Florida is a, what's called a no excuse vote by mail state.

We used to called it absentee, now they call it vote by mail, so anybody who wants to vote by mail can.

They just let us know, submit a request and we'll mail 'em a ballot, but not unless they submit a request.

And then we shift, during the early voting period, to basically what's called a vote center concept, where instead of the 79, in our case, 79 individual polling places on election day, you have these vote centers, early voting centers, where voters from all over the county can go to any one of these vote centers and cast their ballot.

The minimum of that, for that period is eight days before an election, or eight days during the period before the election, up to 14 days.

And then we, after we finish that, then we shut all that down and then we go to your traditional polling place election where we open up the polling places all across the county, everywhere from Century down to the City of Pensacola down to Perdido Key, and you have to go to your assigned polling places on those days, so we actually really run three kind of elections, every election, simultaneously.

- And so, you know, there was so much talk, and there has been so much talk in recent years about the mail-in ballots, and so how do you keep that safe?

How do you prevent fraud, particularly with mail-in ballots?

- So people have to make a request in order to receive a vote by mail ballot.

So that's the first thing, they actually have to request it.

It used to be where we just took their name, date of birth, address, address where they wanted it mailed.

With new, pretty new legislation, they now have to give the last four of their Social, a Florida driver's license or a Florida ID number.

So those are additional pieces of information that someone has to give.

Even if somebody is requesting a vote by mail ballot for a person, they also have to give that information.

So there have been some safeguards, you know, that have been put into place there as well.

Also when the vote by mail ballots are returned, then on that back of that voter's certificate, we compare each and every signature to what we have on file, and if for some reason a signature doesn't match or maybe someone has forgotten to sign that voter's certificate, then we're able to reach out to them with what we call a cure affidavit, so they can cure that ballot.

They have until the Thursday after the election by 5:00 p.m. to make that cure if they choose to do it.

We mail them a letter, if we have additional information such as a phone number or an email address, we can also reach out to them those ways as well.

- So the other thing is, when that ballot comes in, when it's returned, whether it's, 'cause we'll send, we'll start sending out vote by mail ballots first to our military and overseas voters 40, in our case it's 46 days prior to the election, so that's coming up here very soon, and then about a week to 10 days later we'll send out the rest of the ballots to anybody who had requested 'em who's not a military or overseas voters, so those start coming back well in advance of Election Day.

The minute that, literally, the minute that that ballot comes back in and we read it into our election management system, your voter history is marked, so it knows that Jeff has already voted.

So if for whatever reason, you go and you try to go to an early voting location or go to try to vote on, at your polling place on Election Day, when you go to check in, it's gonna say, no, no, no, no, you've already voted.

Same thing holds true if you go to early vote, your voting history is marked and then you can't, and if you try to then submit a vote by mail ballot afterwards or go to your polling place on Election Day, you're prevented from doing so.

- So it keeps you from voting early and often.

- Right, and-- - And same is true for if someone has voted in Escambia County and then they have moved to Santa Rosa, we move them over through our database which we can do, it will tell me if they've already voted in Escambia County, so it's gonna flag that.

- What if they voted in Birmingham, Alabama, and they come to Florida and try to vote as well?

Are there-- - Quite frankly, that's a little tougher.

One of the things that we've, we had petitioned the legislature, formally and informally as well as the executive branch, the Department of State and the governor for years to get Florida to join this, it's a multi-state consortium called ERIC, it's an acronym, and basically what it is, it's data sharing between the states.

So the way the process used to work is, and you probably wouldn't notice this, but when you fill out a Florida voter registration application, they ask you, where was the last place you were registered to vote?

It's an optional field.

You can leave it blank and nothing happens.

If you fill it out, then that, we would reach out, the state actually would reach out to the other jurisdictions in Birmingham, Alabama and let that individual know.

And now, through this multi-state consortium, data, the voter registration data, and then more importantly, driver's license data, is shared and it looks to say, hey, does this David Stafford in Paducah, Kentucky look like the same David Stafford in Pensacola, Florida, and if so, which one is more recent, and then that information is presented, then we get to look at it and say, yeah, we know that's the same person and we take the appropriate action.

And then every even numbered year and then now it's actually gonna, (chuckles) with the, Tappie mentioned some new legislation, it's gonna be actually every year, we do what's called list maintenance, and that's a process that's set forth by not only state statute but the National Voter Registration Act, known as Motor Voter that was passed in the mid-'90s, to where we try to identify people that have moved, people that have, the deceased happens all the time, we get data on deceased persons all the time, persons convicted of felonies who haven't had their rights restored, et cetera, so that process of list maintenance is kind of an ongoing process.

- Why has there been such a pushback about ID, voter ID?

I mean you, it turns into a political hot potato so to speak.

- Florida has had ID for years, - 25, 30 years, yeah.

- at least.

So we don't at least, in my experience, we don't see that a lot with the in-person voting.

We may every now and then have someone, you know, that questions why they have to show their ID, but for the most part, people, they, you know, show their photo signature ID, there're 12 acceptable forms here in Florida, but I know that there are conversations about the ID, showing it at the polls.

- So I think that's, I think the key and I've said this before, you know, when people talk about this issue and why it really hasn't risen up to the same level that other states have, and I think the reason that, my person opinion and why Florida's works well and has survived, you know, tests in the past, is because the idea is we wanna make sure that the individual who's standing in front of us to vote is the person that's on, the same person that's on our voter registration rolls.

So with 12 different forms of identification, chances are, even if you don't have a Florida driver's license, a Florida ID card, a passport, there's multiple other types of identification that can satisfy that requirement.

Other states are very, very astringent, like it has to be this particular, you know, identification.

I think those are the ones that get challenged in court and sometimes are overturned or there's difficulties with that, and then finally, there's the provisional ballot, so, you know, if your wallet got stolen the day before the election, there is a provision where you can go in and vote, but you'll vote what's called a provisional ballot, it's the same ballot except instead of going into the tabulator, it does into an envelope, and you fill out the form and you say, hey, here's the reason I don't have my ID, I don't have my ID, here's all my information, I voted in the correct polling place, et cetera, I sign my name, that comes back to the Canvassing Board.

The Canvassing Board is the supervisor of elections, a county judge, and a county commissioner.

We look at it, did the person, is the person registered to vote, did the person already vote, did they, are they attempting to vote in the correct precinct, and does their signature match, the signature on for it, so at that point, it almost becomes like a vote by mail ballot, and if all those criteria are satisfied, then the ballot's counted.

- And what are the other forms?

You mention driver's license and-- - Ah, there's a military ID, a government ID, a neighborhood association.

- Public assistance.

- Public assistance, yeah, and people can use a combination of things, so say that they have one that has a photo but maybe not a signature, they can use another one that, acceptable form that has the signature.

- Right.

How is, and maybe not right this minute, but as you look forward, what is the talk, I mean, because there's, you know, and in the business world today, we talk about big data, you know, big data, how is that going to change the way we vote in the coming years?

- Boy, that's a really good question.

(both laugh) We've had, I've had this conversation with you before, so I mentioned earlier, you know, again, not to get too far down in the weeds here, but the National Voter Registration Act, yeah, and you've been around a few years like we have, you remember, that was a big deal, Motor Voter, and that's the reason, when you go to get your driver's license, you are required by federal law to be asked if you want to register to vote or update your registration, same thing if you go a public assistance office, the same requirement holds true.

That was based, you know, if you think about mid-1990s, and that's the basis of how the laws in the various states, federal law and then how it's applied in the various states, is based, and a lot of that's based on the US mail system.

Well, I mean it's, you know, trying to compare where we are today versus the mid-1990s as far as technology and data, it's like night and day, and so I do think there're opportunities, and one of 'em, as mentioned earlier, is this ERIC, is this data sharing, where it just wouldn't have been possible because of the, the data existed but being able to share it was, you weren't able to do it, so I do think there's opportunities, and people have done it, there's been pilots in the past where, I had a colleague in California in Orange County that piloted a program where he used commercial data like Equifax data, and kinda merged that with governmental data to try to make sure that his voting rolls were as clean as possible.

There's limitations on that, but there's opportunities for that moving forward I think.

It's just a matter of public policy catching up with technology.

- Right.

So I think I'm hearing you say that will make the process certainly more efficient, but also probably more sound to prevent fraud and so on and so forth.

- Well, I mean I think that ERIC is a good thing, this data sharing.

As I say often, we only know what we know and we don't know what we don't know.

If somebody's passed away and nobody's told us they've passed away, then I can't remove them from the voter rolls, but if, once we do know that, then we can take appropriate action.

- And many times, people think, oh, I moved away and they are registered to vote in a different state, and so whenever I did that, then they know that I left, and we don't unless they tell us, or they've put it on their new application and then they've made that, that state has contacted Florida, and that sort of thing.

And you know, sometimes that happens and sometimes it doesn't, so like David said, ERIC has been a very good thing.

- The other interesting thing is that if you, I'd suspect if you asked somebody under the age of 25 or 30 what a national change of address form is, they'd look at you like what, what're you talking about?

So literally, a lot of the, as I mentioned before, the National Voter Registration Act and a lot of the processes are based on data that comes from the US Postal Service, but someone has to make that initial contact with USPS to say, hey, I've moved from point A to point B, and a lot of people simply don't do that because they don't use the mail system like we used to.

- Right.

Well, so when a ballot comes in, so let's just say I'm in the military and I'm in, you know, Germany or somewhere and I vote, the ballot comes in, take me through the process, so you were talking 'bout this earlier, that it actually goes into the electronic system, and then I guess it's recorded, and then what happens to the physical ballot?

- So we check the ballot in whenever it comes in, obviously verify signatures and that sort of things, and then it's, we have Canvassing Board, as David mentioned, which is made up of both of us, county commission and, county commissioner and then judge, and then at those meetings, we're able to canvas those vote by mail ballots, so able to get those opened and processed through our high-speed scanners, and we're able to do that obviously well in advance of Election Day, and so.

- And so yeah, that's what, so the ballots themselves, and they come in the, physically they're, the ballots are in a return envelope, the return envelope has the voter's information on the outside, just their basic information as well as their signature, and once they're sort of okayed for processing, they stay secured, in our case we've got a secure basically vault within our secure warehouse where they sit, and so like publicly noticed Canvassing Board, so all these Canvassing Board meetings are open to the public.

So at that meeting then, the ballots are brought in by batch, ours are about 250 to a batch, they're opened, the envelopes are opened, the contents removed, and that's a separate process, so you can separate the ballot from the person's envelope to maintain voter secrecy, and then that second step is then preparing the ballots themselves, basically unfolding them, removing them from their secrecy sleeves, unfolding them, getting them ready for tabulation.

Once the tabulation, in our case and I think, I know in Tappie's case as well, the tabulation happens, so that means the ballots are run through the tabulator, and then something new that we're doing is we have a secondary system that's a audit system where we then scan those ballots a second time into a completely separate audit system, and then once that happens, then they literally go in their retention boxes, so they're sealed in their retention boxes, either, unless they're pulled for a manual audit or a recount, where they will stay for 22 months.

So in our case, usually the ballot itself is exposed to the air for maybe 20 minutes, and that's from the time it's opened, removed, tabulated, run through the scanner, and then back in their permanent retention box.

- So take me through the process on Election Night.

So you've got the mail-in ballots, you've got the early voting, and then I go to the polls, 'cause I like to go on Election Day usually, I just kinda like the vibe that it gives off, you know?

- You're the one, huh.

(all laugh) - So the polls close and around here, seven o'clock, Central Time, so what is your process like, what's your day like at that-- - So the first results that will be posted will be the vote by mail results that have already been processed up until that time Election Night, and then also our early voting results, because we have closed early voting.

We both, typically our last day is the Saturday before the election.

So we've closed that down so we're able to post those results first, and then we will post precincts as they come in.

- [Jeff] Okay.

- And those, just to be clear, those are well over, normally well over half the votes.

So we're, by law, by Florida law, we must report all tabulated vote by mail ballots for that point, like for instance, we make a afternoon, early evening trip to the US Postal Service here in Pensacola and gather any ballots that they have there sort of last minute, and this time we had a couple hundred, which is somewhat unusual, but, so all of the, so probably 99%, 95% of all the vote by mail ballots will be reported, and then all of the 100% of the early votes because that had shut down, so we're, by law, have to report those within the first 30 minutes.

So one of the things, and I know that the legislature and the governor are both big proponents of this reporting early, getting as much in as possible, and in Florida, we've been doing that for years, and you know, not to cast aspersions on how other states do it, but you know, you have other states, particularly some of them on the West Coast, where they're literally still counting ballots, and there's valid reasons why, but they're counting ballots weeks after Election Day, and the policymakers in the state of Florida years ago decided that we wanna front-load that process and get as much in and get those results out as quickly as possible, and I like our system, I think that it works well, and you're now starting to see other states kind of adopt that where they're gonna allow that pre-processing like we do of the vote by mail ballots.

- And I hate to even bring this up but I'm going to anyway.

There are people that say, well, and clearly because there are lawsuits and everything that're going on right now, that somehow somebody would be able to get into the computer software and manipulate things.

Is that possible?

- No.

(laughs) Our systems are, you know, they're, so we have a choice between two voting systems here in the state of Florida, and our systems are not only certified at the federal level, but also certified at the state level, and go through very, very stringent testing, and so we follow all of those processes, procedures, and security measures that are set forth, and then obviously have our additional processes that are followed as well, so-- - So the other thing that happens, Jeff, is that we mentioned sort of, you know, briefly, but we do a pre-election test, so we test 100% of our voting equipment, and that's done through a pre-audited, so let's say 50 ballots per precinct, and we pre-mark them so we know what the result's supposed to be, we run 'em through the tabulator, does the actual results match the expected results?

We do that for 100%, any piece of equipment that's being used.

Then, we do a publicly noticed test where we invite the public in to come, in a random selection, and we do it again in front of the public, and then once we complete that testing, then all of the tabulators are all sealed until they're rolled out for Election Day.

After the election, we then do, we've been doing hand count public, I mean hand counted audits of a percentage of our ballots.

Since 2006, every election that's been held in the state of Florida since 2006 has either had a manual recount, like we had three of them in 2018, or a manual audit.

- And also, keep in mind that Election Night, everything is still unofficial.

We still have things we have to do, we have a meeting of, well, we usually do ours on the Thursday after the election when provisional ballots are due by, provision, if you have any information for a provisional ballot that you need to bring in, then you can do that by five o'clock the Thursday after the election, also the cure affidavits by five o'clock, so there are still things that we're doing.

The day after the election, we have to reconcile everything, all of the precincts, all of the numbers, so things are still unofficial.

We still have a lot of work to do after the election, and so it's funny because a lot of times people will come in the day after the election and say, "Well everything's over, "I figured y'all would be closed today."

(all laugh) So we still have a lot of work to do, so it's definitely a very secure process, and as David said, our Canvassing Board meetings are open to the public, and-- - We have the ability now, through a new change, and we've mentioned this a couple times, a change in the law, that now, individual members can come in and basically come in and do a audit of our signature checking on our vote by mail ballots, up to an hour before we, and then we have people do it and look and you know, kinda checked our work.

- Got a little less than two minutes left.

Let me ask you, get both of you comment on this, what do you want the voter to know about what you do and what your office does to make sure their vote really counts?

- I think the most important thing is if people have questions or concerns or maybe they've heard something on TV or maybe from a friend or on Facebook, if they're not sure, to come to us, come to our office, use our office as the trusted source of information, either call us, come by, visit our website, send us an email, but ask us if people have a question or concern so that they can get it straight from us and what we do.

- Well, I mean I think, you know, you mentioned it in your lead-in, the right to vote is one of our most precious rights that we have as Americans.

You know, we, lot of the world lives, most of the world in fact lives in places where they don't have the opportunity to choose their leaders.

And so we take that process very seriously.

Florida has a very mature election system, one that's been modeled in other states, and so voters should have confidence.

Are we perfect?

Absolutely not.

But we strive for perfection and you know, the public are the ones that actually help us run elections, these poll workers that we didn't even mention, 6, 700 of your neighbors are the ones that actually are out there on Election Day running elections.

- And unfortunately I'm out of time, I wanted to get into that, (both laugh) and I know, because I know you spend a lot of time with them training, 'cause you just came from a training session too, - Yep.

(laughs) - to the show, and thank you, thank you both.

This was interesting, I mean, you know, we all go vote but I don't think we always realize what goes on behind the scenes and what you guys really do.

(Jeff and Tappie laugh) So it was a pleasure.

David Stafford, he is the supervisor of elections in Escambia County, Tappie Villane, supervisor of elections in Santa Rosa County, we greatly appreciate you guys spending some time with us and thank you for all you do.

- [David] Thank you Jeff.

- [Tappie] Thank you.

- By the way, you can see this and many more of our conversations on the PBS Video App, and the WSRE.org/conversations.

I'm Jeff Weeks, thank you so very much for watching.

I hope you enjoyed the program.

Take great care of yourself, and we'll see you soon.

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