Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Another thing that is giving people some anxiety is all
of the rumors, all the things that have been circulating about.
I'm not so sure we can trust our elections. So
I'm going to bring in a guy who does the elections.
He's the director of the election process here in Douglas County,
Brian Cruz. I think the most notable level is people
want to make sure that the election is secure, and
(00:20):
it is safe. So I figured while I was voting
last Thursday, it's the early voting thing. I ran into
our friend Brian Cruz, who is the election commissioner for
Douglas County, and he is joining us in the studio.
I figured this could be an important conversation for some
people to hear. Brian, thanks for stopping in in the
busy time of the year for you.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Absolutely well, thanks thanks for having me, and it was
good to see you last week, along with what about
a thousand of your friends.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Okay, let's go ahead and start there. Early voting is
becoming more and more common. I didn't really know what
to expect because they've never done it before. Sure, I
had a couple hour window to go in in between
my shows and get my vote casts and I was
surprised to see how many people were actually there, and
it took almost two hours for me from when I
(01:03):
got into line to me finishing line. But this is
you know, everybody has to kind of come to the
same place if they want to vote, and you guys
have people that are working very hard. What's that process
like for somebody who isn't planning on early voting Because
I know people are like, why would you even early vote?
And why are there so many people voting early?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Sure? So yeah, you know, we had voter registration going
on as well when you were there, and that deadline
pass Friday. So I will say for folks wanting to
early vote, you come out to our office one hundred
and twenty second in center. The line is moving quite
a bit quicker now because it's just folks voting. You
can either pick up about take it home with you,
(01:41):
or vote in our office. But you know, a lot
of people like to vote early by mail because they
like to get their belt and study it at home.
People like to come to our office and vote early
for a variety of reasons. Maybe they're busy on election day,
but they still want to have that experience of voting early.
(02:04):
You know, about fifty percent of all votes cast in
Douglas County this election will be early voting. So if
you want to go to your polling place, you know,
all the early voting really helps take the pressure off
on election day. Sure, there might still be a little
bit of a wait, but we're not going to see
lines two and three hours long because half the folks
(02:24):
have already voted.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah, it's a good point. I think. The other thing
that I noticed was your poll workers that were there
very up on what is and isn't allowed. So I
noticed that there was a guy trying to vote and
didn't have an updated ID that worked, and they were like,
I can't take a ballot unless you have this ide.
Somebody was trying to get a ballot for someone else
didn't have their ID or properly a copy of their ID.
(02:50):
So for people who might have questions like do these
poll workers really know all of the rules, kind of
what's that that look like, because they feel a lot
of questions throughout the day.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Absolutely, So I cann't tell you. There's intensive training and
we start, you know, early voting started. I believe it
was three weeks ago today, those folks start a month
in advance for that very reason, so they're well versed
in being able to answer questions. All of our temp
workers that work at the office, both full time and temporary,
(03:19):
about one hundred and fifty of those, they all go
through background checks. So these folks have been vetted. They're
part of our team, extensive training, and course we always
have our permanent staff there because occasionally you'll get a
question that'll be out of the ordinary, just when we're
servicing that many people. You know, we've serviced almost fourteen
(03:41):
thousand people in person already, so they'll be one offs,
but we're there to answer those questions. But absolutely, voters
in Douglas County should be extremely confident in the team
that we have there. And also our poll workers twenty
four hundred of them strong, that'll be at the polls
a week from Tuesday. It's a two hour training. They've
(04:02):
got to take a test and so they are as
well have you know, very extensive training.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
We're speaking with Brian Kruse, he's the election commissioner here
in Douglas County. Another thing that I noticed was there
were quite a few people that you could still when
I was there last week take the ballot home, so
you could be there, you can get your registration done.
If you needed to, you could grab the ballot, but
there was an option that you were going to take
the ballot go home. Like you mentioned, there's some things there.
You know, reread it about three four times. Just make
(04:30):
sure you know what you're doing, and then they need
to bring that back or put it into a drop box.
How secure is that? And I think people, especially now
we heard the story today in Oregon that you know,
people are setting the ballot boxes on fire there in
some cases. You know what happens to that? How secure
is it that if I put my ballot, it's got
the envelope at is sealed, it's got my signature on
(04:51):
the outside, I put it in the drop box. What
happens to it after that?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Sure? So our drop boxes are extremely ephens cere. We
have cameras on them twenty four hours a day, seven
days a week. They're monitored, I should say, footage is taken.
We don't sit there and monitor them, but we can
go back and get it if we need to. This
year we have actually added dry fire suppression systems in
(05:16):
all of our boxes for this very reason. Hopefully we
never have to use those in Douglas County. But our
slots are extremely small too, so you can only fit
about one or two pieces of paper in there. So
voters should be extremely confident in our drop boxes. Seventy
seven percent of all early voting ballots will be returned
(05:41):
via a drop box. The post office is a valuable partner,
but if you mail your ballot back in the US mail,
one you got to have a stamp, and two there's
a lot of hands touching that ballot before it gets
back to us. It's very important to note the United
States Postal Service has said do not mail your ballot
(06:02):
back to your election office after tomorrow because they need
a week for processing time. So if you've still got
a ballot at home, or you're going to come to
our office and get one and take it home, use
one of our drop boxes to ensure it gets back
on time. Because in Nebraska postmarks do not count. They
have to be in our possession, which is in a
(06:24):
drop box or at our office, by eight pm on
election night.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
All right, it is two forty four. You can you
stick around for another segment?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Absolutely?
Speaker 1 (06:32):
All right. We're speaking with Brian Cruz. He's the Election
Commission of Douglas County. Got a few more questions for him,
so we can just be as confident as possible about
elections here in Douglas County and maybe give some of
his opinions about some of the stuff that we hear
from other places. We'll do that coming up next here
on news radio eleven ten KFAB and.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Maurice Sellner on news Radio eleven ten KFAB.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Still joining us here in the studio is the Election
Commission of Douglas County here in Nebraska. Brian Cruz and Ryan,
I think the you know, natural question for people who
are afraid is they reference the twenty twenty election some
of the states that you know, we are not right
in trying to understand what the election rules are. They're
not the same as ours. And from your vantage point
(07:16):
right here in Douglas County, Nebraska, Yeah, how do you
instill some confidence in people who might have some skepticism
about some of these swing states that are far away
from us, that have completely different rules than we do.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
You know, I go to conferences and I meet these
election officials from across the United States. The vast, vast
majority all of them I've met honestly are good people
and they want to do the right things. Sometimes they
are constrained by state statutes and state laws, and I
(07:49):
think it's very important to remember. You know, in Nebraska,
we're allowed to run the early voting ballots through the
tabulators on Monday before the election, but he sees the results,
not even me until Tuesday night. So that's why we're
able to have the vast majority of our results out
on election night. But some states don't allow them to
(08:12):
open ballots or count those ballots until election day. So
just because it might take a day or two to
get all the ballots counted in other states doesn't mean
there's election fraud. It simply could be a matter of time,
I mean, just physically time.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Was this a thing that was kind of new with
the advent of more highly promoted early voting, or was
this always kind of a concern, especially with mail in ballots,
not really sure where they were coming from, not really
sure about the identification laws. I mean I had to
go when I showed up to vote, I had to
show an ID. Anybody who's getting a ballot has to
(08:51):
show a legal form of ID. Is that not really
the same as a lot of other places, especially when
we're talking about mail in ballots.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
You know, I'm not one hundred percent sure on that.
Thirty five thirty six states in the nation have some
form a voter ID, which leaves fifteen that don't. Obviously,
you know, I think, especially after COVID, when people really
use mail in balloting in huge numbers because of the pandemic,
(09:19):
there were obviously a lot more questions about by mail
balloting simply because of the sheer number of people who
used it. And it's like anything, if you haven't used
it before year old, you're gonna have questions.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
You know. Yeah, And for this now, it seems like
we're kind of moving in a direction maybe mail in
ballots and that number is definitely way down from twenty twenty,
but early voting is up, and we've seen records in
neighboring states like Iowa here in Nebraska of people that
are really excited to vote before election day for our
you know, like you mentioned, I dropped my ballot into
(09:54):
a dropbox and my mind was on the inside of
your building, you have one on the outside of the
building that people can drop off. Is well, like you said,
it's being monitored in our last segment, you're saying that Nebraska,
when the polls closed, we should start seeing those numbers
come out and as tabulated in results in this county,
that are going to include all of those early ballots
basically as we learn the results of the people who
(10:15):
have voted on election day.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
That's right. So one important thing is once you put
your ballot in a drop box, if it's at one
of our thirteen around the county, it takes two keys
to open that two people of differing party. We empty
them every day and then they're put in bags that
are sealed, brought back to the office and there's a
whole process then that they go through. So when Douglas County,
(10:41):
our first release is at eight PM, which is early
voting bouts. That's early voting bouts turned in through noon
on Monday, and then at eight forty five is eight
am to two pm voting on election day nine forty
five begins to PM to eight pm voting on election
(11:02):
day ten forty five, eleven forty five. So let me
go back just real quick. So I say the eight
o'clock result is all early voting ballots turned into noon
on Monday. So ballots turned in Monday night and Tuesday
are not counted until the Friday after the election. The
reason that is is because all of our resources on
(11:25):
election day are focused on our two hundred and seven
polling places and voters across Douglas County. So it's part
of the election integrity process. We have to go through
and signature verify all of those ballots turned in on
Monday night and Tuesday. Then we have to open them
and count them. So all ballots are accounted for on
(11:49):
election night. It just if we get six or eight
or ten thousand, you know that last twenty four hours.
It takes time to do that. So my plea to
the voters of Douglas County is, if you're comfortable turn
those ballots in by Monday morning, your voice is the
first voice heard on election night at eight o'clock, and then.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
There's going to be different people who are going to
be going out of their way to calling races. If
the numbers look certain directions. That doesn't mean that the
rest of the ballots aren't going to be counted. It's
just that the forecasters think that that race may be
decided before we get to the end of the counting, right.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
That's exactly right. You know, we're in the business of
counting ballots. Every ballot that's casts properly, we're in the
business of counting it. The media outlets are in the
business of declaring winners before all ballots have been cast,
and that's perfectly well within their right.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
For sure, we're going to keep track of this. I'm
sure we're going to talk again soon. Brian Cruse, he
is the election commissioner of Douglas County. Thank you so
much for giving us some time. I know it's very
busy this time of the year for you, and thank
you so much for what you guys do. We'll chat
with you again very soon.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Okay, thank you. If you see an election worker in
the next week out there, give a big thank you
to them.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Thank you, absolutely big thumbs up there. Hey, when we
come back, we'll have plenty more for you here with
every songer on news radio eleven ten KFAB
Another thing that is giving people some anxiety is all
of the rumors, all the things that have been circulating about.
I'm not so sure we can trust our elections. So
I'm going to bring in a guy who does the elections.
He's the director of the election process here in Douglas County,
Brian Cruz. I think the most notable level is people
want to make sure that the election is secure, and
(00:20):
it is safe. So I figured while I was voting
last Thursday, it's the early voting thing. I ran into
our friend Brian Cruz, who is the election commissioner for
Douglas County, and he is joining us in the studio.
I figured this could be an important conversation for some
people to hear. Brian, thanks for stopping in in the
busy time of the year for you.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Absolutely well, thanks thanks for having me, and it was
good to see you last week, along with what about
a thousand of your friends.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Okay, let's go ahead and start there. Early voting is
becoming more and more common. I didn't really know what
to expect because they've never done it before. Sure, I
had a couple hour window to go in in between
my shows and get my vote casts and I was
surprised to see how many people were actually there, and
it took almost two hours for me from when I
(01:03):
got into line to me finishing line. But this is
you know, everybody has to kind of come to the
same place if they want to vote, and you guys
have people that are working very hard. What's that process
like for somebody who isn't planning on early voting Because
I know people are like, why would you even early vote?
And why are there so many people voting early?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Sure? So yeah, you know, we had voter registration going
on as well when you were there, and that deadline
pass Friday. So I will say for folks wanting to
early vote, you come out to our office one hundred
and twenty second in center. The line is moving quite
a bit quicker now because it's just folks voting. You
can either pick up about take it home with you,
(01:41):
or vote in our office. But you know, a lot
of people like to vote early by mail because they
like to get their belt and study it at home.
People like to come to our office and vote early
for a variety of reasons. Maybe they're busy on election day,
but they still want to have that experience of voting early.
(02:04):
You know, about fifty percent of all votes cast in
Douglas County this election will be early voting. So if
you want to go to your polling place, you know,
all the early voting really helps take the pressure off
on election day. Sure, there might still be a little
bit of a wait, but we're not going to see
lines two and three hours long because half the folks
(02:24):
have already voted.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah, it's a good point. I think. The other thing
that I noticed was your poll workers that were there
very up on what is and isn't allowed. So I
noticed that there was a guy trying to vote and
didn't have an updated ID that worked, and they were like,
I can't take a ballot unless you have this ide.
Somebody was trying to get a ballot for someone else
didn't have their ID or properly a copy of their ID.
(02:50):
So for people who might have questions like do these
poll workers really know all of the rules, kind of
what's that that look like, because they feel a lot
of questions throughout the day.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Absolutely, So I cann't tell you. There's intensive training and
we start, you know, early voting started. I believe it
was three weeks ago today, those folks start a month
in advance for that very reason, so they're well versed
in being able to answer questions. All of our temp
workers that work at the office, both full time and temporary,
(03:19):
about one hundred and fifty of those, they all go
through background checks. So these folks have been vetted. They're
part of our team, extensive training, and course we always
have our permanent staff there because occasionally you'll get a
question that'll be out of the ordinary, just when we're
servicing that many people. You know, we've serviced almost fourteen
(03:41):
thousand people in person already, so they'll be one offs,
but we're there to answer those questions. But absolutely, voters
in Douglas County should be extremely confident in the team
that we have there. And also our poll workers twenty
four hundred of them strong, that'll be at the polls
a week from Tuesday. It's a two hour training. They've
(04:02):
got to take a test and so they are as
well have you know, very extensive training.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
We're speaking with Brian Kruse, he's the election commissioner here
in Douglas County. Another thing that I noticed was there
were quite a few people that you could still when
I was there last week take the ballot home, so
you could be there, you can get your registration done.
If you needed to, you could grab the ballot, but
there was an option that you were going to take
the ballot go home. Like you mentioned, there's some things there.
You know, reread it about three four times. Just make
(04:30):
sure you know what you're doing, and then they need
to bring that back or put it into a drop box.
How secure is that? And I think people, especially now
we heard the story today in Oregon that you know,
people are setting the ballot boxes on fire there in
some cases. You know what happens to that? How secure
is it that if I put my ballot, it's got
the envelope at is sealed, it's got my signature on
(04:51):
the outside, I put it in the drop box. What
happens to it after that?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Sure? So our drop boxes are extremely ephens cere. We
have cameras on them twenty four hours a day, seven
days a week. They're monitored, I should say, footage is taken.
We don't sit there and monitor them, but we can
go back and get it if we need to. This
year we have actually added dry fire suppression systems in
(05:16):
all of our boxes for this very reason. Hopefully we
never have to use those in Douglas County. But our
slots are extremely small too, so you can only fit
about one or two pieces of paper in there. So
voters should be extremely confident in our drop boxes. Seventy
seven percent of all early voting ballots will be returned
(05:41):
via a drop box. The post office is a valuable partner,
but if you mail your ballot back in the US mail,
one you got to have a stamp, and two there's
a lot of hands touching that ballot before it gets
back to us. It's very important to note the United
States Postal Service has said do not mail your ballot
(06:02):
back to your election office after tomorrow because they need
a week for processing time. So if you've still got
a ballot at home, or you're going to come to
our office and get one and take it home, use
one of our drop boxes to ensure it gets back
on time. Because in Nebraska postmarks do not count. They
have to be in our possession, which is in a
(06:24):
drop box or at our office, by eight pm on
election night.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
All right, it is two forty four. You can you
stick around for another segment?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Absolutely?
Speaker 1 (06:32):
All right. We're speaking with Brian Cruz. He's the Election
Commission of Douglas County. Got a few more questions for him,
so we can just be as confident as possible about
elections here in Douglas County and maybe give some of
his opinions about some of the stuff that we hear
from other places. We'll do that coming up next here
on news radio eleven ten KFAB and.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Maurice Sellner on news Radio eleven ten KFAB.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Still joining us here in the studio is the Election
Commission of Douglas County here in Nebraska. Brian Cruz and Ryan,
I think the you know, natural question for people who
are afraid is they reference the twenty twenty election some
of the states that you know, we are not right
in trying to understand what the election rules are. They're
not the same as ours. And from your vantage point
(07:16):
right here in Douglas County, Nebraska, Yeah, how do you
instill some confidence in people who might have some skepticism
about some of these swing states that are far away
from us, that have completely different rules than we do.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
You know, I go to conferences and I meet these
election officials from across the United States. The vast, vast
majority all of them I've met honestly are good people
and they want to do the right things. Sometimes they
are constrained by state statutes and state laws, and I
(07:49):
think it's very important to remember. You know, in Nebraska,
we're allowed to run the early voting ballots through the
tabulators on Monday before the election, but he sees the results,
not even me until Tuesday night. So that's why we're
able to have the vast majority of our results out
on election night. But some states don't allow them to
(08:12):
open ballots or count those ballots until election day. So
just because it might take a day or two to
get all the ballots counted in other states doesn't mean
there's election fraud. It simply could be a matter of time,
I mean, just physically time.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Was this a thing that was kind of new with
the advent of more highly promoted early voting, or was
this always kind of a concern, especially with mail in ballots,
not really sure where they were coming from, not really
sure about the identification laws. I mean I had to
go when I showed up to vote, I had to
show an ID. Anybody who's getting a ballot has to
(08:51):
show a legal form of ID. Is that not really
the same as a lot of other places, especially when
we're talking about mail in ballots.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
You know, I'm not one hundred percent sure on that.
Thirty five thirty six states in the nation have some
form a voter ID, which leaves fifteen that don't. Obviously,
you know, I think, especially after COVID, when people really
use mail in balloting in huge numbers because of the pandemic,
(09:19):
there were obviously a lot more questions about by mail
balloting simply because of the sheer number of people who
used it. And it's like anything, if you haven't used
it before year old, you're gonna have questions.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
You know. Yeah, And for this now, it seems like
we're kind of moving in a direction maybe mail in
ballots and that number is definitely way down from twenty twenty,
but early voting is up, and we've seen records in
neighboring states like Iowa here in Nebraska of people that
are really excited to vote before election day for our
you know, like you mentioned, I dropped my ballot into
(09:54):
a dropbox and my mind was on the inside of
your building, you have one on the outside of the
building that people can drop off. Is well, like you said,
it's being monitored in our last segment, you're saying that Nebraska,
when the polls closed, we should start seeing those numbers
come out and as tabulated in results in this county,
that are going to include all of those early ballots
basically as we learn the results of the people who
(10:15):
have voted on election day.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
That's right. So one important thing is once you put
your ballot in a drop box, if it's at one
of our thirteen around the county, it takes two keys
to open that two people of differing party. We empty
them every day and then they're put in bags that
are sealed, brought back to the office and there's a
whole process then that they go through. So when Douglas County,
(10:41):
our first release is at eight PM, which is early
voting bouts. That's early voting bouts turned in through noon
on Monday, and then at eight forty five is eight
am to two pm voting on election day nine forty
five begins to PM to eight pm voting on election
(11:02):
day ten forty five, eleven forty five. So let me
go back just real quick. So I say the eight
o'clock result is all early voting ballots turned into noon
on Monday. So ballots turned in Monday night and Tuesday
are not counted until the Friday after the election. The
reason that is is because all of our resources on
(11:25):
election day are focused on our two hundred and seven
polling places and voters across Douglas County. So it's part
of the election integrity process. We have to go through
and signature verify all of those ballots turned in on
Monday night and Tuesday. Then we have to open them
and count them. So all ballots are accounted for on
(11:49):
election night. It just if we get six or eight
or ten thousand, you know that last twenty four hours.
It takes time to do that. So my plea to
the voters of Douglas County is, if you're comfortable turn
those ballots in by Monday morning, your voice is the
first voice heard on election night at eight o'clock, and then.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
There's going to be different people who are going to
be going out of their way to calling races. If
the numbers look certain directions. That doesn't mean that the
rest of the ballots aren't going to be counted. It's
just that the forecasters think that that race may be
decided before we get to the end of the counting, right.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
That's exactly right. You know, we're in the business of
counting ballots. Every ballot that's casts properly, we're in the
business of counting it. The media outlets are in the
business of declaring winners before all ballots have been cast,
and that's perfectly well within their right.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
For sure, we're going to keep track of this. I'm
sure we're going to talk again soon. Brian Cruse, he
is the election commissioner of Douglas County. Thank you so
much for giving us some time. I know it's very
busy this time of the year for you, and thank
you so much for what you guys do. We'll chat
with you again very soon.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Okay, thank you. If you see an election worker in
the next week out there, give a big thank you
to them.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Thank you, absolutely big thumbs up there. Hey, when we
come back, we'll have plenty more for you here with
every songer on news radio eleven ten KFAB
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