As a young girl growing up in a Midwestern Nebraska community, Lisa Wise had a steadfast, and somewhat unusual, interest in government operations.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember our tax assessor register of deeds came to speak to my third grade class. At the end, I had him autograph my notebook, and I kept that register of deeds tax assessor autograph for like 10 years,\u201d she said with a slight chuckle. \u201cI\u2019ve always been interested in public service my whole life. I was fascinated by things that a lot of other kids weren\u2019t fascinated by.\u201d<\/p>\n
While attending Park College in the late 1990s, Wise briefly planned to become an attorney, believing constitutional law would satisfy her interest in government. But that soon shifted, and she instead pursued a bachelor\u2019s degree in political science and public administration. In 2004, she earned her master\u2019s in state and local government from the University of Nebraska.<\/p>\n
After some successful campaign work for an Omaha mayor and fundraising for a Nebraska senator, Wise was awarded a graduate school fellowship from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. That accolade opened the door to an array of assignments in government public service programs with chambers of commerce, HUD operations, housing authorities and the Omaha Parks Foundation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen a job opened up for deputy election commissioner, which is what I\u2019d always wanted,\u201d said Wise, who was selected in 2006 to become the second-highest official for elections in Douglas County, Neb.<\/p>\n
She served there for eight years before being hired by the El Paso Election Commission in 2015 to lead its elections department.<\/p>\n
Joining an elections team that was trudging through low morale, Wise spent the next four years upgrading the department\u2019s operations. Then, in 2020, her team was slammed by a one-two punch: a COVID shutdown during a historic presidential election with a massive voter turnout.<\/p>\n
In a conversation with El Paso Inc., Wise, 49, reflected on that election, the changes she has implemented and the challenges election workers face in an increasingly polarized political climate.<\/p>\n
Q: When you were hired as El Paso\u2019s elections administrator, what were your initial thoughts? What were the things you wanted to change and how much change have you instituted?\u00a0<\/p>\n
The election commission \u2013 made up of both party chairs, the county judge, the county clerk and the tax assessor \u2013 is the hiring and firing body for the election administrator. I asked them during the interviews, \u201cWhat do you want to see?\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the first things they said was, \u201cWhy can\u2019t we vote anywhere on Election Day?\u201d<\/p>\n
They also didn\u2019t like the DRE\u2019s (Direct Recording Electronic voting system). They were getting all these complaints about them. The concerns were that they were not safe or were hackable (because they stored voting data on their systems and lacked reviewable paper printouts).\u00a0<\/p>\n
The website was also rough. But we did things piece by piece.<\/p>\n
One year, we did the website. The next year, in 2016, we did the hybrid \u2013 the Express Voting ballot system you see now with the ballot marking. In 2018, we did poll pads. In 2020, we moved to the county-wide polling sites.<\/p>\n
Q: During the recent primary elections, the poll pads used to check voters in at polling places went down in many locations. Considering how important it is for you to manage elections effectively, I imagine the malfunctions had a real impact on you.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That is still stuck with me. It\u2019s something that I have to move past. I\u2019ve done 53 elections here. We\u2019ve never had a system like that go down. I\u2019ve never had that happen, even before I came here. So it is still with me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was the human elements of the updates from the vendor, KNOWiNK, that didn\u2019t happen. It was not an error from within our department. There was nothing we could have done.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They (KNOWiNK) have taken full responsibility for that.<\/p>\n
Q: There have been a lot of issues with KNOWiNK in the past, in other places. What are your thoughts on the executives\u2019 statements to El Paso County commissioners\u00a0that it is not going to happen again?<\/p>\n
People have this idea that when we go get products like the poll pads, we have 30 vendors to choose from. There are four products basically that are certified as poll pads in the state of Texas right now, and those don\u2019t have the track record that we have with this vendor. I still think that theirs is the best product.<\/p>\n
There is no perfect system, and I don\u2019t love saying that because it bothers me. I want it to be 10 out of 10.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But if the county wants to have countywide polling places, which is where you can vote anywhere, you have to have electronic poll books, by law.<\/p>\n
Q: Conducting an election during the 2020 pandemic shutdown must have been a tremendous task. How can you describe that experience?<\/p>\n
It was a massive undertaking, it really was. And we had the highest turnout we\u2019ve ever had. It was a lot. I mean, \u201caround the clock\u201d is an understatement. It was nonstop. We were mentally exhausted; we were physically exhausted.\u00a0<\/p>\n
El Paso was what was called a hot zone. If you looked at the map, we were like the reddest of the red for COVID, and we had stay-at-home orders.<\/p>\n
I got sick two days before the election. I had two days with a 105.1 fever. I was delirious. So on Election Day, the 2020 presidential election, I was not here.<\/p>\n
I was at home, and I was on the phone with (election staff) probably 20 hours out of the day \u2013 let\u2019s do this, let\u2019s go here, let\u2019s do this, let\u2019s go there. I couldn\u2019t do interviews because I was so feverish, so I had to have someone else do interviews.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know if we could ever do that again. It was a lot.<\/p>\n
Our staff did beautifully. They did so good. That was stressful, but they did it.<\/p>\n
Q: Politics have become a lot more acidic. Have you noticed a change in the demeanor or the mood at voting centers?<\/p>\n
I started in 2006 in Nebraska, and then I came here in 2014 and started here in 2015, and it wasn\u2019t as heightened.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That started maybe around 2000 with Gore v. Bush. That started to get people to look at the actual administration of elections.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Help America Vote Act took over and encompassed a bunch of different areas and put more federal requirements on states to have statewide voter registration systems, and all the stuff has to be certified by the state, all of your election equipment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That wasn\u2019t always happening. That wasn\u2019t a requirement before.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Q: With those federal requirements in the early 2000s, it seems the operations of elections also became more politicized. Why do you think that happened?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Election workers were almost unknown bureaucrats, like you may not know the department head of parks and recreation, that\u2019s kind of how I thought election administrators were, too. There wasn\u2019t a lot of scrutiny. And gradually, little by little, it started changing more and more.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is probably one of the toughest times for election officials. There\u2019s a constant daily barrage of not just questioning the process\u2019s integrity but also the integrity of the person running the elections, challenging pretty much every step of the way.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That\u2019s happened, to the extreme, to a lot of election officials.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Q: Can you recall some examples of that?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some of my peers in Texas, they\u2019ve been doxxed. Their information has been put out there as some sort of threat. One of my peers, after the primary, had to have the sheriff take her to and from her home every morning because of death threats for how she ran the primary.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Q: Has something like that happened here in El Paso?\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve had to have a couple of people who were threatening us taken from the courthouse, taken from our office.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a couple of times over the last five years. This last year was at least one.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve told our staff, \u201cIf you\u2019ve helped them and you\u2019ve asked them to leave and they won\u2019t, you need to go get law enforcement.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It becomes so threatening, and people can become incredibly aggressive for a lot of different reasons. We\u2019re talking about increasing all the security in the elections office. That was never an issue before.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We had a man removed from the courthouse, I think it was in 2020, for threats against us. And he somehow got back in here, and he was back in this hallway, and this door had open access, and that is where he was caught.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a constant threat, and that was not always the case.<\/p>\n
Q: Why do you think that threat has emerged? What is pushing people to these extremes?\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s really hard to pinpoint one thing. I think starting back as far as 2000, people started to say, \u201cWell, with the \u2018hanging chads\u2019 and Gore v. Bush, what is happening that is affecting the election?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
People were thinking, \u201cWho are these people that get to decide these rules?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It became a question of who\u2019s making that choice, and why does this person have that control?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Over the years, people, either elected officials or respected officials, really began to say, \u201cHey, I think there is an issue.\u201d There were questions in 2016, questions in 2020, questions in 2024 about what\u2019s going on. I think people started to think, \u201cWell, if my elected officials are not trusting the system, then there has to be something.\u201d<\/p>\n
Q: So how do you address that?\u00a0<\/p>\n
The election code pretty much is our playbook. There\u2019s very little discretion that we have outside of that. So when people ask us, \u201cWhy this or why that?\u201d It\u2019s in the code. It\u2019s not an office policy.<\/p>\n
Q: How does the misinformation spread about election integrity affect people\u2019s perceptions of elections?<\/p>\n
I think a lot of that comes from states that run their elections differently. We have people who may come from New Mexico, may come from California, may come from Arizona, and it\u2019s not the same in those states. The deadlines are not the same. The ballot-by-mail process is not the same. The voter registration is not the same. So there\u2019s this idea that when you come to a new place, you have an idea, but that\u2019s not how it is. That may not be the law here.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I would argue Texas probably has the most safeguards in this country for voting.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Q: What about the concerns people have with the integrity of electronic voting machines?<\/p>\n
With our machines, you use the Express Vote. What you use to vote, the marker, doesn\u2019t hold votes. The machines don\u2019t hold or tabulate anything. It\u2019s literally just so that you can mark it, and it then prints the paper record of the votes.<\/p>\n
Q: As I understand it, the Express Vote system is the technology that allows people to go to any polling station and have access to their specific precinct ballot. That is what makes countywide voting possible?\u00a0<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what provides that. You don\u2019t have to go to your precinct. Voters love being able to go anywhere to vote.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We have over 100 ballot styles, and so we don\u2019t know if you\u2019re from precinct five or precinct 35. We have about 230 precincts. So you can just put in the precinct that you\u2019re in and it just comes up with the races for that.<\/p>\n
Q: Some people have said they believe the most secure way to vote would be going back to pen-and-paper voting. If that was done, would there no longer be countywide voting?<\/p>\n
If you want to go back to pen and paper, you have to go back to precinct voting because there\u2019s just no way to have all of the ballots ready for 230 precincts, and not know how many voters from each precinct are going to show up.<\/p>\n
Q: What do you wish more people knew about elections and the people who put it together?<\/p>\n
This is all being done by your community members, by your neighbors, by your friends from church. These are human beings.<\/p>\n
Even though it\u2019s changed, and even though there\u2019s a lot of antagonism out there, I still love it. It\u2019s just this constant drive. I still want to get better.<\/p>\n
And there are days of burnout, especially in Texas. Not every state has five elections a year, so the burnout here in Texas is real.<\/p>\n
When you start working on an election 90 days out, and you have five elections a year, you\u2019re double dipping. There\u2019s no time without an election.<\/p>\n
But pressure is a privilege. It\u2019s there because people believe you can do it.<\/p>\n
Q: There are sometimes people who say they were allowed to vote twice, with these Express Voting machines. Where does that belief come from?<\/p>\n
There is a lot of misinformation. We had people last election who voted on the Express Vote, and then they go put it in the tabulator. It\u2019s like putting a dollar in a vending machine. You have to gently put it in, but they would jam it, and the corner folds. That\u2019s what is called a spoiled ballot. All of these spoiled ballots go into a sealed bag to make sure they\u2019re all accounted for, so that we know we didn\u2019t give you two ballots.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So we give you another paper, and you have to go back and enter your votes again on the Express Vote machine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll give you a clean ballot, you\u2019ll vote, you\u2019ll review it, you\u2019ll feed it to the DS200 (vote tabulator), and that\u2019s when it\u2019s tabulated. But these people were like, \u201cI voted twice.\u201d But they did not vote twice. You could \u201cvote\u201d a thousand times on that Express Vote and it doesn’t matter. That Express Vote machine is not the voting machine. That doesn\u2019t tally anything. That doesn\u2019t hold anything. The only thing that\u2019s in there is the ballot styles.<\/p>\n
After the ballot is printed, and inserted into the tabulator, that is your vote.<\/p>\n
Q: I\u2019ve sometimes spoken with people who work for elected officials, and they are hesitant to vote for a different candidate because they are afraid their elected boss will find out. Is there any way that a ballot can be traced back to an individual voter?<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no way to trace the ballot back to the voter. Before a system can be certified in the state of Texas, that\u2019s one of the requirements. Some people see the code on the ballot and ask why it has a barcode on it. That barcode is what tells the ballot marking device that you\u2019re precinct 15, or whatever precinct. All it does is match that barcode to what your ballot style is.<\/p>\n
Q: What about time stamps? Is it possible for someone to see a voter at a polling spot at a certain time, and then match their ballot to that time?<\/p>\n
The only timestamp is on the poll pad (voter check-in device). If I know person A went into the courthouse at 9:05, I know they checked in at 9:05, I could tell you they went in at 9:05 to vote, but the ballot doesn’t have a time stamp on it.<\/p>\n
But where you vote, that is public information.<\/p>\n
Q: Can someone find out how a person voted on a mail-in ballot?<\/p>\n
We have had people who have sent in their ballot by mail before and made identifiable markings on that ballot. If somebody got a court order and they wanted to see those ballots, we would redact any identifiable markings, and that\u2019s allowed by law.<\/p>\n
Q: What about the talk about outdated voter rolls, and dead people voting. How accurate are the voter rolls?<\/p>\n
We clean these rolls daily. We get daily imports from the state, the Social Security Administration, the county clerk\u2019s office, from DPS. The list is clean. And every year, this process gets tightened up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a young girl growing up in a Midwestern Nebraska community, Lisa Wise had a steadfast, and somewhat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,1060,140,139,96690,96689,5691,96691],"class_list":{"0":"post-257044","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-el-paso","8":"tag-el-paso","9":"tag-el-paso-county","10":"tag-el-paso-headlines","11":"tag-el-paso-news","12":"tag-elections-administrator","13":"tag-lisa-wise","14":"tag-public-service","15":"tag-voting-systems"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}