Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I gotta start with the fallout of election day. We
look at the we watch or we listen to the
news as the results are being read and are released.
How does the counting process go, especially in a highly
populated area like Douglas County? How do you start counting
(00:23):
these ballots on election day?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Sure? So, actually, we, by luck, can start counting the
day before, on Monday. So we counted the vast majority
of the early votes on Monday, and it was about
fifty percent early voting in Douglas County this time. So
then those are released at eight o'clock and then at
two o'clock on election Day morning, voting ballots are brought
(00:49):
back to our office and then we start counting around
three and then those are released at eight forty five.
And then when the polls close at eight, ballots come
back and then we count till we're done. That was
about three am this time.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Okay, so you're just powering through it the entire time.
How do you count? I know that sounds stupid, but
a lot of states have different ways that you know,
machines or hands that you know are in charge accounting.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
So here in Douglas County, we have what we call
central count so everything's brought back to our office to
one central location, and then we have nine machines. We
have DS eight fifties, Digital scanner eight fifties from Election
System and Software ES and S, which is headquartered right
here in Omaha, Nebraska. And literally it's like a scan tron.
(01:41):
You fill in the oval and whether you did that
early voting or at your polling place, and then we
just sit there and run those through the machine until
we're done.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
So it really is just a it's not somebody that's
just keeping a singular tallly if somebody were tasked for
a recount, and certainly we've had a lot of close
races around the country that a lot of people have
questions about this. It is different every single place that
kind of has this, and that's why it's so confusing.
But what's Douglas County in the state of Nebraska's protocols
(02:13):
for if a recount is necessary?
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Sure, so if there's more than five hundred voters in
the race, an automatic recount is triggered if it's the
difference is less than one percent of the top vote getter.
So in both the Elkhorn and Millard School District races
three and four were within the automatic margin of recount. Now,
(02:40):
the last place individual has the option to waive their
right to a recount, and both of those individuals did
waive their right to a recount. So we didn't have
any recounts here in Douglas County this time, which didn't
hurt my feelings.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
I must say, sure, if you counted, is it just
the same process done over again?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
That's right, it's exactly the same process. I will tell you.
Since I have been there since twenty sixteen, we've never
had a recount that Chad's changed the outcome, lit alone
change votes. In the primary. In May of twenty twenty,
we had a county commissioner race. There was three votes.
We did the recount, it came out to three votes.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Interesting, we're talking to Brian Cruzy's the Douglas County election commissioner.
When you do the recounts or all that stuff, you know,
I think most people would feel like, yeah, that makes
sense that everything would come out the same way as
a guy who knows a thing or two about elections.
You know, there's a lot of people that are paying
attention overnight to a lot of these states and see
(03:44):
all of a sudden, these giant dumps of these votes
that come in, and some states don't even unseal their
early votes until a certain time.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Why they're counting the votes on election day? So can
you explain?
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Maybe I know that you're not in these and I
don't want to put you in a position to have
to speak for other states and their rules, but could
you kind of explain maybe what we're seeing there and
why there are all these dumps that seem to always
generally favor Democrats and some of these races that are
happening at all odd hours of the night in some
of these states.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Sure, so you'd take a state like Florida, you know,
we do it like Florida, and the fact that they
can count their early vote voting ballots before the election.
That's why, you know, after the Hanging Chad deal in
two thousand, Governor Bush down there. There's a great PBS
(04:36):
article about this if anybody wants to google it out there.
But he convened a group of folks and they changed
the way that elections were done in Florida, and really
a lot of other places across the country followed that.
But to your point, yes, some states do not even
allow for the opening of early voting boots until election
(04:59):
day or until polls are closed. So if you have
tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of early voting
bouts that you have to remove from envelopes, not to
mention count them, that's where your delays could be in
some of these states around the country.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
And that would if there was a greater number of
Democrats voting early than Republicans, which has historically been the
case in some of these places especially, that would explain that, oh,
in two in the morning, all of a sudden, there's
this big dump of ballots that seem to favor mostly
(05:39):
the Democrats. That could be explained by the fact that
mostly Democrats early voting in that area and they didn't
get a chance to even count those until the middle
of the night.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
That's right, That would be one explanation. Now, I will
say this time, which we didn't see a lot of that.
If we saw any of it, you know, I will
say it's because both of the political parties encouraged their
voters to vote early. And there's no doubt that President
(06:10):
Trump embraced the early voting this time and encouraged his
folks to vote. We saw it right here in Douglas County.
We had huge lines for early voting beforehanded her office,
and then on election day we had people waiting in
line to vote at eight o'clock. We usually have some folks,
but we had lines of sixty eighty ninety one hundred people.
(06:33):
And this time around we had a heavier voting in
the eight am to two pm block than the two
pm to eight pm block. And I really attribute that
too to both candidates, but particularly the Republican Party and
President Trump encouraging folks just to get out there and
do that early voting.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Very interesting. Can you stick around for another segment?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Absolutely?
Speaker 1 (06:56):
All right, We'll keep talking to the Douglas County Election Commissioner,
Bran Cruz. We'll finish that conversation coming up next here
on news Radio eleven ten kfab.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Emery's songer Share It with Someone you Love. On news
Radio eleven ten.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Kfab, Let's dig into what the ballot actually looked like
in the Douglas County in the Omaha area. You have
Don Bacon in that highly contentious race that was pretty
tight at first. It did look with the early counting
on some of the results that maybe it was going
(07:32):
to go the other direction and maybe become a blue seat.
But the more that the votes were counted in maybe
in the areas further away from Oma, it kind of
turned out to be close to a two percent victory
for Don Bacon. What can you say about the way
that that counting kind of looked on election night?
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Sure, so that's right when we released the first votes,
the early votes again kind of to your point, earlier,
Tony Vargas had a big lead, honestly, but then as
we got into the election day voting and to your point,
as Saunders started to come in in Sarpye County and
even you know, further voting out in western Douglas County,
(08:15):
then the race began to become really close, and then
it switched back towards Dawn. You know, another thing I
think that's important to point out is, you know, folks
only have to vote for the races they want. So
some folks might walk in the booth and literally vote
for president walk out. They might vote walk in and
(08:35):
vote for Don or Tony and walk out. Because if
you look at what we call down ballot races, look
at your school boards, look at how many people voted
in a school board race as opposed to a president
or a congress you'll see what we call drop off.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Well, and that was one thing that I think a
lot of people around the country are trying to figure out.
Once again, for the second straight election cycle, you had
the blue dot come through for the Democrats in the
presidential race. Kamala Harris won pretty easily and convincingly in
the blue dot, but that same district voted to keep
(09:10):
the Republican representative.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Does drop off explain that?
Speaker 2 (09:14):
I think there's some of that. I also think we
really do live in a very independent district here, and
I think voters vote for who they believe the best
person is, regardless of there's an R, A D, or
or no label behind their name. I just think that
(09:37):
we're a very unique and independent voting block here, especially
in Omaha, and sometimes it's a little hard to figure
them out.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Quite frankly, we were talking about this off air about
you know, just the type of voter that would vote
for Kamala Harris but also vote for Don Bacon.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Those exist, oh.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
One hundred percent, and you know you you go back
and call him the Biden Bacon voter, or this time
you can call him the Kamala Bacon voter. You know,
we've seen it time and time again here, so absolutely
they exist.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, and then we talk about places like Arizona who
are insanely slow and counting the ballots. I mean, do
you have any knowledge as to what exactly takes that
state specifically so long to figure out who's winning what?
Speaker 2 (10:28):
I really don't.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
I even told us before the election it could take
up the two weeks. And it's like, why would you
even tell us this?
Speaker 2 (10:35):
I know, I just I have actually signed up for
a seminar coming up. The election official from Maricoba County
is doing a seminar in like a week and a half.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
And usually I.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Don't do these things, but I was like, I'm going
to jump on this zoom and see what he has
to say to be quite quite frank.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
And maybe can explain exactly what the heck they do
down there, because a highly populated county. They came out
so early and said do not expect results from us
for a week.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Well, right, And the crazy thing is they have their county.
Maricoba County has the second most voters in the United
States behind Los Angeles County. So you know, early on
they were talking about this presidential election. You know, certain states,
you know, going certain ways R and D, coming down
to possibly the blue dot. I mean, can you imagine
(11:31):
if this thing would have come down to Arizona and
we had to wait two weeks for the results. I mean,
it'd be chaos. Literally.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
I would wonder if there's something that they can you know,
resolve that with because it was so strange, you talk
about down ballot.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Donald Trump wins handily in Arizona.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
We were able to call that race pretty quickly, and
not that it really mattered because he had won all
the other swing states. But Kerry Lake, who's very Trump like,
was defeated fairly by the very liberal Democratic candidate. Many
people say, are shenanigans going on here? From a guy
who knows elections, did you have any weird feeling about
(12:09):
that or is this just something that you think that
there are a lot of voters who probably just didn't
vote for Kerry Like to vote for Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
That's right, there's just a lot of voters, and I
think the polls probably showed that going into the election.
Now we know you have to be very careful with poles.
There was a polster in Iowa, oh the week before,
said Kamala Harris was winning by three. Donald Trump ended
up winning by what thirteen? So she was off by sixteen,
(12:36):
So you do have to be very careful. But in Arizona,
I think, yeah, I think if you were following that
at all, I don't think it was a terribly big
surprise that she lost that.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
And it's good to talk to somebody who knows when
need to have that a Maricopa County you know, seminar
that you're talking to when that.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
When is that?
Speaker 2 (12:58):
I believe it's a week from today.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Okay, Actually, can you can you talk to us after that,
because I think all of us are pretty curious as
to what that person would have to say. Sure, sure,
because I mean, I mean I'm curious personally about like
what the heck are they doing and why is this
so different than the rest of the country.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
I mean, there's no doubt.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Because we're gonna hear I'm gonna hear from him firsthand.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
That's gonna be awesome. Well, Brian Cruse, we appreciate all
this information. Can't wait to chat more about some of
this with you. We're gonna have you on a get
very soon after that, and also to continue to kind
of delve into what we saw this election cycle. Thank
you so much for what you're doing, for being so
transparent with us.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Okay, great, Thanks for having me appreciate it.
I gotta start with the fallout of election day. We
look at the we watch or we listen to the
news as the results are being read and are released.
How does the counting process go, especially in a highly
populated area like Douglas County? How do you start counting
(00:23):
these ballots on election day?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Sure? So, actually, we, by luck, can start counting the
day before, on Monday. So we counted the vast majority
of the early votes on Monday, and it was about
fifty percent early voting in Douglas County this time. So
then those are released at eight o'clock and then at
two o'clock on election Day morning, voting ballots are brought
(00:49):
back to our office and then we start counting around
three and then those are released at eight forty five.
And then when the polls close at eight, ballots come
back and then we count till we're done. That was
about three am this time.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Okay, so you're just powering through it the entire time.
How do you count? I know that sounds stupid, but
a lot of states have different ways that you know,
machines or hands that you know are in charge accounting.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
So here in Douglas County, we have what we call
central count so everything's brought back to our office to
one central location, and then we have nine machines. We
have DS eight fifties, Digital scanner eight fifties from Election
System and Software ES and S, which is headquartered right
here in Omaha, Nebraska. And literally it's like a scan tron.
(01:41):
You fill in the oval and whether you did that
early voting or at your polling place, and then we
just sit there and run those through the machine until
we're done.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
So it really is just a it's not somebody that's
just keeping a singular tallly if somebody were tasked for
a recount, and certainly we've had a lot of close
races around the country that a lot of people have
questions about this. It is different every single place that
kind of has this, and that's why it's so confusing.
But what's Douglas County in the state of Nebraska's protocols
(02:13):
for if a recount is necessary?
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Sure, so if there's more than five hundred voters in
the race, an automatic recount is triggered if it's the
difference is less than one percent of the top vote getter.
So in both the Elkhorn and Millard School District races
three and four were within the automatic margin of recount. Now,
(02:40):
the last place individual has the option to waive their
right to a recount, and both of those individuals did
waive their right to a recount. So we didn't have
any recounts here in Douglas County this time, which didn't
hurt my feelings.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
I must say, sure, if you counted, is it just
the same process done over again?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
That's right, it's exactly the same process. I will tell you.
Since I have been there since twenty sixteen, we've never
had a recount that Chad's changed the outcome, lit alone
change votes. In the primary. In May of twenty twenty,
we had a county commissioner race. There was three votes.
We did the recount, it came out to three votes.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Interesting, we're talking to Brian Cruzy's the Douglas County election commissioner.
When you do the recounts or all that stuff, you know,
I think most people would feel like, yeah, that makes
sense that everything would come out the same way as
a guy who knows a thing or two about elections.
You know, there's a lot of people that are paying
attention overnight to a lot of these states and see
(03:44):
all of a sudden, these giant dumps of these votes
that come in, and some states don't even unseal their
early votes until a certain time.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Why they're counting the votes on election day? So can
you explain?
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Maybe I know that you're not in these and I
don't want to put you in a position to have
to speak for other states and their rules, but could
you kind of explain maybe what we're seeing there and
why there are all these dumps that seem to always
generally favor Democrats and some of these races that are
happening at all odd hours of the night in some
of these states.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Sure, so you'd take a state like Florida, you know,
we do it like Florida, and the fact that they
can count their early vote voting ballots before the election.
That's why, you know, after the Hanging Chad deal in
two thousand, Governor Bush down there. There's a great PBS
(04:36):
article about this if anybody wants to google it out there.
But he convened a group of folks and they changed
the way that elections were done in Florida, and really
a lot of other places across the country followed that.
But to your point, yes, some states do not even
allow for the opening of early voting boots until election
(04:59):
day or until polls are closed. So if you have
tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of early voting
bouts that you have to remove from envelopes, not to
mention count them, that's where your delays could be in
some of these states around the country.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
And that would if there was a greater number of
Democrats voting early than Republicans, which has historically been the
case in some of these places especially, that would explain that, oh,
in two in the morning, all of a sudden, there's
this big dump of ballots that seem to favor mostly
(05:39):
the Democrats. That could be explained by the fact that
mostly Democrats early voting in that area and they didn't
get a chance to even count those until the middle
of the night.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
That's right, That would be one explanation. Now, I will
say this time, which we didn't see a lot of that.
If we saw any of it, you know, I will
say it's because both of the political parties encouraged their
voters to vote early. And there's no doubt that President
(06:10):
Trump embraced the early voting this time and encouraged his
folks to vote. We saw it right here in Douglas County.
We had huge lines for early voting beforehanded her office,
and then on election day we had people waiting in
line to vote at eight o'clock. We usually have some folks,
but we had lines of sixty eighty ninety one hundred people.
(06:33):
And this time around we had a heavier voting in
the eight am to two pm block than the two
pm to eight pm block. And I really attribute that
too to both candidates, but particularly the Republican Party and
President Trump encouraging folks just to get out there and
do that early voting.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Very interesting. Can you stick around for another segment?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Absolutely?
Speaker 1 (06:56):
All right, We'll keep talking to the Douglas County Election Commissioner,
Bran Cruz. We'll finish that conversation coming up next here
on news Radio eleven ten kfab.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Emery's songer Share It with Someone you Love. On news
Radio eleven ten.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Kfab, Let's dig into what the ballot actually looked like
in the Douglas County in the Omaha area. You have
Don Bacon in that highly contentious race that was pretty
tight at first. It did look with the early counting
on some of the results that maybe it was going
(07:32):
to go the other direction and maybe become a blue seat.
But the more that the votes were counted in maybe
in the areas further away from Oma, it kind of
turned out to be close to a two percent victory
for Don Bacon. What can you say about the way
that that counting kind of looked on election night?
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Sure, so that's right when we released the first votes,
the early votes again kind of to your point, earlier,
Tony Vargas had a big lead, honestly, but then as
we got into the election day voting and to your point,
as Saunders started to come in in Sarpye County and
even you know, further voting out in western Douglas County,
(08:15):
then the race began to become really close, and then
it switched back towards Dawn. You know, another thing I
think that's important to point out is, you know, folks
only have to vote for the races they want. So
some folks might walk in the booth and literally vote
for president walk out. They might vote walk in and
(08:35):
vote for Don or Tony and walk out. Because if
you look at what we call down ballot races, look
at your school boards, look at how many people voted
in a school board race as opposed to a president
or a congress you'll see what we call drop off.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Well, and that was one thing that I think a
lot of people around the country are trying to figure out.
Once again, for the second straight election cycle, you had
the blue dot come through for the Democrats in the
presidential race. Kamala Harris won pretty easily and convincingly in
the blue dot, but that same district voted to keep
(09:10):
the Republican representative.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Does drop off explain that?
Speaker 2 (09:14):
I think there's some of that. I also think we
really do live in a very independent district here, and
I think voters vote for who they believe the best
person is, regardless of there's an R, A D, or
or no label behind their name. I just think that
(09:37):
we're a very unique and independent voting block here, especially
in Omaha, and sometimes it's a little hard to figure
them out.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Quite frankly, we were talking about this off air about
you know, just the type of voter that would vote
for Kamala Harris but also vote for Don Bacon.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Those exist, oh.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
One hundred percent, and you know you you go back
and call him the Biden Bacon voter, or this time
you can call him the Kamala Bacon voter. You know,
we've seen it time and time again here, so absolutely
they exist.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, and then we talk about places like Arizona who
are insanely slow and counting the ballots. I mean, do
you have any knowledge as to what exactly takes that
state specifically so long to figure out who's winning what?
Speaker 2 (10:28):
I really don't.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
I even told us before the election it could take
up the two weeks. And it's like, why would you
even tell us this?
Speaker 2 (10:35):
I know, I just I have actually signed up for
a seminar coming up. The election official from Maricoba County
is doing a seminar in like a week and a half.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
And usually I.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Don't do these things, but I was like, I'm going
to jump on this zoom and see what he has
to say to be quite quite frank.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
And maybe can explain exactly what the heck they do
down there, because a highly populated county. They came out
so early and said do not expect results from us
for a week.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Well, right, And the crazy thing is they have their county.
Maricoba County has the second most voters in the United
States behind Los Angeles County. So you know, early on
they were talking about this presidential election. You know, certain states,
you know, going certain ways R and D, coming down
to possibly the blue dot. I mean, can you imagine
(11:31):
if this thing would have come down to Arizona and
we had to wait two weeks for the results. I mean,
it'd be chaos. Literally.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
I would wonder if there's something that they can you know,
resolve that with because it was so strange, you talk
about down ballot.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Donald Trump wins handily in Arizona.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
We were able to call that race pretty quickly, and
not that it really mattered because he had won all
the other swing states. But Kerry Lake, who's very Trump like,
was defeated fairly by the very liberal Democratic candidate. Many
people say, are shenanigans going on here? From a guy
who knows elections, did you have any weird feeling about
(12:09):
that or is this just something that you think that
there are a lot of voters who probably just didn't
vote for Kerry Like to vote for Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
That's right, there's just a lot of voters, and I
think the polls probably showed that going into the election.
Now we know you have to be very careful with poles.
There was a polster in Iowa, oh the week before,
said Kamala Harris was winning by three. Donald Trump ended
up winning by what thirteen? So she was off by sixteen,
(12:36):
So you do have to be very careful. But in Arizona,
I think, yeah, I think if you were following that
at all, I don't think it was a terribly big
surprise that she lost that.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
And it's good to talk to somebody who knows when
need to have that a Maricopa County you know, seminar
that you're talking to when that.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
When is that?
Speaker 2 (12:58):
I believe it's a week from today.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Okay, Actually, can you can you talk to us after that,
because I think all of us are pretty curious as
to what that person would have to say. Sure, sure,
because I mean, I mean I'm curious personally about like
what the heck are they doing and why is this
so different than the rest of the country.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
I mean, there's no doubt.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Because we're gonna hear I'm gonna hear from him firsthand.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
That's gonna be awesome. Well, Brian Cruse, we appreciate all
this information. Can't wait to chat more about some of
this with you. We're gonna have you on a get
very soon after that, and also to continue to kind
of delve into what we saw this election cycle. Thank
you so much for what you're doing, for being so
transparent with us.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Okay, great, Thanks for having me appreciate it.
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