Election Commissioner Brian Kruse on Election Security

Episode Transcript

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Our elections, How are our electionsaffected by the world around us, and
how do we know our elections arefair and legitimate. Well, to talk
about that, we've brought into thestudio here Douglas County Election Commissioner Brian Cruz.
Brian, first of all, thanksso much for being here. Well,
good afternoon, and thanks for havingme. First question obviously comes from

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Davis County, a Douglas County perspective. Sorry, people in Douglas County know
that this is a pretty interesting district, pretty highly populated here, and it's
important to have a commissioner, sothere's somebody kind of monitoring the election.
So for somebody who's like, Okay, so what's an election commissioner do in
Nebraska, what's your job? Like? So sure, so you know,

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first and foremost, the job isto oversee and conduct elections in Douglas County.
That also includes polling places, pollworkers, that includes voter registration,
all of those types of things.Pretty important job, especially this time around
the last couple of elections. You'veactually also been the election commissioner in Douglas

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County and have you noticed any patternsof change, because it seems like more
and more people are using their civicduty to vote, especially in national elections.
But have you been noticing some ofthat over the last you know,
eight years or so in Douglas County, Absolutely, our voter turnouts on the
increase, There's no doubt about it. In presidential generals last time in twenty

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twenty, we had seventy four pointeight so almost seventy five percent, which
is up from previous years. Lookingfor between seventy five and eighty percent turnout
in November and primaries too, wewere at thirty eight percent four years ago.
I'm thinking thirty five percent this town, and it was in the twenties
in the previous presidential primary. Soit's definitely on the uptick. Speaking with

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Brian Cruz, who's the Douglas CountyElection commissioner, the primary locally that is
happening next week next Tuesday. It'san important one. We'll talk a lot
more about the details on Monday leadinginto that, But what are some of
the details this time around and whatabout this election kind of makes it a

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little bit of a challenge potentially forvoters who might only be really interested in
looking at all the national politics stuffwhen all of these primary situations. Primary
day, you're going to be lookingat a lot of different things on a
ballot besides just Donald Trump or JoeBiden. That's right. We have a
congressional race here obviously, and ofcourse primaries are partisan, so if you're

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Democrat Republican, nonpartisans are allowed tovote as well, but you're voting for
the people in your party essentially thatyou want to advance in the general election.
So also on the ballot on Tuesday, if you live in the city
of Omaha, there are six charteramendments, So you know, elections are

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not just about people, they're alsoabout issues. That's something we're going to
be paying attention to, and againwe'll break down each and every one of
those as we get into next week. Elections are real fascinating. I don't
know if anybody's talked more about theprocess of an election than in the wake
of the twenty twenty election, andbasically since that day, election day in
November of twenty twenty, there hasbeen a murmur, at least under the

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surface, in a lot of places, above the surface and of a lot
of other places that elections aren't necessarilyfair, aren't necessarily legitimate, how can
you explain kind of what those concernshave been in places like Michigan, Georgia,
and Arizona. You know, I'mobviously an expert here in Douglas County
because I know the processes inside andout. You know, in other places

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around the country, we know whenthe past that maybe laws have been changed
close to the elections, or rulesand regulations, maybe we're changed or manipulate.
And I think the important thing toremember is you got to be consistent.
You got to be fair, andyou got to abide by the laws,

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the rules and the regulations. Andas long as you're fair and everybody
has an even playing field and youremain fair and impartial, then voters will
have confidence in the election. Iwill say voters should have confidence in the
election here in Douglas County and Nebraska. Catch twenty two for you, because

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I don't want to put you onthe stand about things that are happening in
Michigan and Georgia and Arizona when you'renot running their elections. Right, but
the rules are different in every singleplace that we're talking about here, right,
that's right. So you know,elections are governed locally, So that's
right, So there's different laws instates. There can be different rules even

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in different jurisdictions from county to countyor city to city. So yes,
that's where it gets complicated. Somestates allow for early voting, Some states
don't allow for early voting. Somestates allow for early voting bolts to be
counted, say on the Monday beforethe elections. Some states don't allow early

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voting bolts to even be opened untilelection day. So yes, it's a
I don't want to say it's aconvoluted system, but it's a complex system.
And you know, it's almost impossibleto be an election expert from coast
to coast because there's just so manydifferent rules and regulations across the United States.

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And that can lend to why somany people are confused about exactly how
results are popping in and how manyso many votes end up showing up late
at night in certain places or evenovernight, and you ask a lot of
questions because you're just not familiar withnecessarily how they do things or speaking with
Douglas County Election Commissioner Brian Cruz speakingof early voting, is that something for

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people who aren't super familiar with theway that Douglas County operates. What are
some of the rules for early votingin the way that people can vote if
they don't vote on election day.Sure, so we do allow early voting
by mail in the state of Nebraska. You have to request a ballot each
and every election, and the voterID component is now done at the time
of the request. So you eitherwrite your driver's license or state ID on

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the early voting request, or youcan send a photocopy of one of those
items or other items in with thatthat would satisfy that. Now the time
to request a ballot has stopped inNebraska, so we're no longer mailing ballots
out, but we mailed out aboutseventy six thousand ballots in Douglas County alone.

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We've still got about thirty thousand outstanding. Those have to be in our
possession by eight pm on election night, which is when polls close, So
you either got to use one ofour drop boxes or bring it to our
office. The United States Post Officerecommends no longer mailing your ballot. They
recommend not mailing the ballot seven daysprior to the election, and that's for

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processing time. We do have inperson voting going on in our office.
So if you want to come toour office at one hundred and twenty second
in Center, you can do thatthrough Monday, May thirteenth. Will be
open a Saturday morning from nine toone as a convenience to voters, And
of course you can always go toyour polling place two hundred and eight of
them around the county eight am toeight pm next Tuesday. Really important to

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keep that in mind. You talkabout all of this and there are people,
I don't want to call them conspiracytheorists, but that the poll workers
or even people above the poll workersare monitoring what these ballots say and sometimes
will be thinking of changing them orcounting them or not counting them. Is
there anything that could disqualify a ballotthat is sent in? Is there anything
as far as identification is concerned thatmight lean like I'm not sure about this.

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A lot of people are fearful that, you know, like illegal immigrants
would have the ability to get afake ID or something. You know,
this is all stuff that is circulatingand people are afraid that the election isn't
fair based on all that information.What from your vantage point is the guy
who's in charge of all this inDouglas County, and how much of that
is true or people need to beworrying about at least on a local level.

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Sure well, first and foremost inthe state of Nebraska, and I
think it's probably true around most ofthe places of the country. If you
can commit any time of type ofvoter fraud, it's a it's a felony.
Whether you vote for someone else,sign someone else's ballot, you register,
you know, any of that,it's all of felony. First and
foremost. In Douglas County, onour by mail ballots, the number one

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reason that ballots are not accepted orrejected is because people forget to sign the
back of their envelope. You gottasign the envelope. It's the state law.
You gotta do that. Now,our office will attempt to reach out
to voters if they don't sign it, and then they could come into our
office and cure that. You know, I never like to use absolutes,

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and I never will. But there'svery little voter fraud in Douglas County and
in the state of Nebraska. Weare very good at keeping our voter rolls
clean. We're constantly doing maintenance onthose every day. We've got the voter
ID now, we check signatures onthe by mail. We check signatures on

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both the application and the ballot,you know, so there's all kinds of
processes and procedures in place. Youknow, there's multiple poll workers at the
polling place that are assisting people.In our office. We just put a
new camera system in. We've gotthirty nine cameras in our office now that

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are monitoring everything as well as onevery drop box. We've got, you
know, just numerous checks and balances, card swipes, card swipe, plus
a pin pad to get into thecounting room and the vault. You know,
there's all kinds of camp what wecall canvas. After the election,
which is essentially an audit, wedo a post election manual audit where we

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actually go and physically get a samplingof the ballots and sit down and hand
tally them to make sure that themachines counted immaccurately. Very secure. Yes,
absolutely absolutely, we're speaking of DouglasCounty Election Commissioner Brian CRUs Last thing
for you, anybody who's looking toget registered and needs to get registered to
vote, and anybody that might beinterested in volunteering on voting day. What's

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some ways that they can get informationabout how to do both of those things?
Absolutely. Our website's are great.To vote Douglas County dot com.
Right on the homepage it says registeredto vote, you go right there.
There's also right on the homepage tobe a poll worker. It's gonna take
us about two thousand election workers nextTuesday, which we've got that covered for

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this, but in November it takesthree thousand just here in Douglas County.
We've got a third of the registeredvoters in the state of Nebraska right here,
so we'd love to have you help. It's a great way to learn
about the process, and I encourageyou to start signing up now because we're
going to need a lot of folksto make this happen on November. The

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website one more time, vote Douglascountydot com. Very easy. Brian Cruz,
he's the Douglas County Electric Commissioner.Great stuff. Really great to meet
you in person, Brian, andwe'll do this again sometimes. Okay,
great, thanks for having me,and remember don't forget to vote on Tuesday.
Do not forget primary day in Nebraskacoming up next week,