>> The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production you're watching "Her& Now".

>> On day one, she did exactly what she promised.

And now Wisconsin and every other state is dealing with the consequences.

>> Vice presidential candidate J.D.

Vance returns to stump for Donald Trump.

This is just days before yet another appearance by presidential candidate Kamala tonight on here.

And now we check in at the Harris event live in Madison.

And as absentee ballots get sent out this week, so is guidance about local clerks certifying election snapshots of the horse race.

But then what?

We go beyond the data with pollster Charles Franklin.

And finally, a new government program could save time and money filing taxes in 2025.

It's "Here& Now" for September 20th.

>> Funding for "Here& Now" is provided by the Focus Fund for journalism and Friends of PBS.

Wisconsin.

to Wisconsin for Kamala Harris since her bid for the white House began in late July with another big rally, this time in Madison, we turn to senior political reporter Zach Schultz, who joins us on location at the Alliant Energy Center.

And hey, Zach.

So this rally ended about 50 minutes ago.

Set the scene for us.

>> Well, it was quite the event.

The crowds were here late afternoon.

There was a DJ playing.

There were people had color coded bracelets and there were colored lights.

It was really more of a party environment reflecting the intentions of the Harris campaign to treat this as a momentum builder, a motivating factor for these people to volunteer, get out, vote and activate and energize the rest of the Democrats that they know and their family and friends group.

So from that point of view, it was definitely designed to get people excited about this campaign.

>> Well, Madison is always a good place for any Democrats to come to.

It's very friendly territory.

Dane County is the fastest growing county in the state.

Democrats need to run up the score here in order to win statewide, but it's also a place where you can show that energy and motivation to people around the state.

It's really important for Democrats to come here.

John Kerry, in 2004 came in October, Barack Obama in 2012 came in October.

As those big motivating rallies to try and show all the momentum to the rest of the nation.

The question is, then why did Harris come here in September?

Well, because campaigns are earlier now.

We've already seen more than 400,000 absentee ballots being sent out around the state.

Early voting has started in some states.

It starts early.

In-person voting starts in Wisconsin in just a few weeks.

And as Harris said from the stage, the election has already started.

timing because people could already be voting with 400,000 ballots already sent out as to those ballots, though, having dropped out, RFK Jr is in court to get his name removed from the Wisconsin ballot.

He knows it's too late to get those reprinted, but he wants clerks to cover his name up with stickers.

But here's what the City of Milwaukee elections chief said about that.

machines, right?

Because they do have to process through our machines.

And so that is a concern, other concern is what if the sticker moves or, you know, falls off like that?

Just there's a lot about what is putting a sticker on a ballot could do that could really disrupt the process.

>> Just today, as you know, the Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed to take this case directly.

What does this signal?

>> Well, at the moment, the Dane County judge already ruled it's too late for RFK Jr to pull his name off the ballot.

His campaign appealed, trying to go to the Second District Court of Appeals in Wisconsin, a more conservative court, to try and put a stay in place and try to get those stickers in place.

And the Supreme Court took that case directly away from them.

And what, more importantly, what they said is there will be no oral arguments in this case.

The RFK Jr campaign has until tomorrow to finalize their last appeal, and then they will make a decision.

And in this case, the facts and the law are not on RFK Jr's side.

State law does not allow you to pull out as an independent candidate.

The only case for stickers is if the candidate dies, and that's certainly not the case here.

And the Wisconsin Supreme Court said that they expect to issue a decision in writing very soon to give clarity to clerks around the state.

Right.

>> Because, of course, time is of the essence.

But the bottom line here, why does Kennedy want his name removed from the ballo?

>> Well, recently he came out and endorsed Donald Trump, and polling has shown in Wisconsin that RFK Jr is polling around 6%.

Now, that's a little misleading.

Third party candidates always poll better in the summer and early fall compared to what they actually receive in November, but most of that polling has shown also that a large percentage of those RFK Jr voters are also Donald Trump fans, and he was actually pulling those votes away from Donald Trump.

So the Trump campaign specifically, and RFK Jr's campaign, want those voters eligible to vote for Donald Trump and not to be convinced to vote for RFK Jr.

So that's why they're looking to do this at this time.

>> Yeah.

Well, it will be interesting to see what they decide.

And as you said, this is on an expedited schedule because time is of the essence.

Zac Schultz thanks very much.

Thank you.

At the state Capitol today, state Republican leaders held a press conference ahead of the Harris visit, downplaying enthusiasm for the dem candidate and slamming her policies.

>> She's not going to be able to pass herself off, as you know, working class individual.

You know, she's always been part of the elite, and now she wants to become president without telling the American public exactly who she is and what she stands for, what policies she would impose on our society.

So again, the enemy of the Harris campaign and of Democrats in general, is the truth and the reality situation that they caused the open border.

The 40 year high inflation, the weakness that America is demonstrating to our global adversaries, which have literally, literally set the world in flames, certify election results or face legal consequences.

>> That's the message from a group of nonpartisan voter advocacy groups to election clerks in Wisconsin and six other battleground states.

The groups are detailing state specific election laws, including how any clerk choosing not to certify results could be prosecuted.

They say since 2020, more than 30 local election officials across the country have tried or threatened to refuse to certify results.

None of them in Wisconsin.

But the groups are trying to get out ahead of any problems with rogue clerks following the 2024 presidential election, protect democracy is among the groups releasing the rules guidance.

Its Wisconsin lead for policy and litigation on election subversion is Edgar Lin.

So what makes you and others believe that there are election clerks out there that might refuse to certify results?

>> Yeah, that's an excellent question.

And to answer it, I like to just give a little context.

If you don't mind, and talk about two terms canvasing and certification.

You are a voter and after you cast your ballot, there's a robust process to make sure every valid vote is verified and tabulated.

That process is called the canvass.

Certification ends the canvass.

The role of certification is not about verifying the final count, but simply to kind of sign off on the verification process that's already been performed.

So if I if I may use a sports analogy, you can think of the certifying election official as a scorekeeper in a basketball game, a scorekeeper whose sole job is to make sure that the number of the points for each team add up correctly so we know who the winner is, right?

It's the referee and not the scorekeeper who is responsible for enforcing the rules of the game.

And at the end of the game, the scorekeeper doesn't get to go back and say, I don't think X, Y, and Z shots should have counted because I don't believe, the shooter, I believe the shooter traveled or something like that.

It's just not the scorekeeper's job.

So to your question of why would a clerk refuse to certify certification?

Used to be a pretty quiet, mundane part of the election process.

People don't pay attention to it.

Things started to change in 2020 when we saw a rise in election related conspiracy theories and accusations, baseless answer your question, since then, a small number of officials motivated by partizanship or conspiracy certification or the sign off process as a place to disrupt the election when they don't like the results.

So I'll just emphasize that this has happened a few dozen times.

As you mentioned earlier in in various states in the last four years.

But the vast majority of election officials across the country and here in Wisconsin have been committed to performing their jobs, doing their jobs, certifying the election results.

And today, all these attempts have failed.

Courts have promptly ruled against these efforts as they violate the law just because refusing to certify isn't legal.

>> So even in Wisconsin, where Republican false electors scheme played out, as you say, no clerks have refused to certify results here.

And still you you see the need to remind Wisconsin clerks of this.

>> I do, I think part of it is just a also a public education.

There might be folks who are not aware of this, but it's very clear both state and federal law, Wisconsin law says certification is mandatory.

It's a ministerial duty.

In other words, scorekeepers or scorekeepers.

And referees or referees.

Our state law and legal precedent are clear.

Election officials have a duty to follow the law, so but I do think the more education we can give, the better.

>> Are there any legal reasons why a clerk could not certify results?

>> No.

They are required to certify results.

if any?

You know, so-called rogue clerk were to not certify?

>> Yeah.

It would be met with swift legal action.

But let me start with this.

As you mentioned, Wisconsin has not had anybody attempt to not certify or refuse to certify since 2020, unlike other states.

We just had a really smooth primary.

Our local election officials are doing their jobs regularly, fulfilling their roles as stewards to our democracy.

But if a county official refused to certify either in bad faith because of partizanship or baseless claims of fraud, or because they genuinely misunderstand their legal state actors like the attorney general or the Wisconsin Election Commission, and even voters can bring legal actions to compel them or to make them do that job.

It's called a mandamus action.

The attorney general or local district attorneys may also prosecute bad actors for election fraud by election officials.

Again, all failed so far, as I mentioned earlier.

And that's because our courts operate on law and facts and not on conspiracies.

And conjecture.

>> All right.

Well, thank you for the education on this.

Edgar Lin, thanks so much.

Thank you.

For months leading up to Election Day, we hear from Marquette Law School poll director Charles Franklin, whose poll was recently ranked number three in the nation.

As polls dominate the news, we wanted to go behind the scenes to better understand them and the director behind the data, Marissa Wojcik, started by asking how the polls are conducted and what has changed from 2012 until 20 through 2022. telephone, okay, randomly dialing phone numbers in the state, both landline and cell phone.

But that became increasingly difficult because more and more people don't pick up phone calls.

So beginning in 2023, we shifted to a sample based on registered voters.

The list of registered voters you can buy from the state.

And that allows us to send an email and a text message inviting people to take the survey online.

Only the person we've sampled can take it.

They can only take it once.

You can't volunteer to do the poll.

So it's still a random sample of the population.

It's just that we're not randomly sampling phone numbers.

We're randomly sampling people we know are registered voters.

Now about 80% of people complete the survey online, either on their.

Phone or tablet or whatever is convenient, and about 20% if we haven't heard back from them in a couple of days, we start phoning.

So we complete those interviews by telephone.

>> How has that changed the data?

Or has it changed the data?

there are some subtle ways.

There are some advantages to online in that you can ask a slightly more complicated question online that might sound really hard to understand when an interviewer is reading the question, but just reading it, it's pretty clear to the respondent.

The other thing is, we know a bit more about the person that we're trying to interview, because we sample from the voter list.

We know where this person lives, and so we can be geographically more precise in our sample, when we were on the telephone, we divided the state into five big regions based on media markets.

In the state.

Now we divide the state into 90 different regions because we know where these people live.

And so that means those regions are defined by going from the most Republican to the most Democratic, say, within the green Bay TV market.

So we're making sure we get the right percentage of people from the most Republican areas of the green Bay market and the most swingy areas and the most Democratic areas.

>> I wanted to show you Vernon County.

>> So that's one of the changes we've made to try to make sure that we're representing the full range of opinion.

>> It's just really striking how much diversity and heterogeneity we have in opinion, even within a pretty rural Western Wisconsin county.

polling more accurate or better?

>> We think it does.

The reason for making these changes is in part in response to the polling errors that we had in 2016 and others had in both 16 and 2020.

But the proof will come in November when we finally get the vote count, and we'll see how close we are.

>> 2016 and 2020 was a tough set of cycles for many pollsters, not just the Marquette poll.

Some of the explanation for that was people who wanted to vote for Trump didn't feel potentially comfortable telling that to someone on the phone.

Does that mean that kind of might be mitigated?

>> I don't think it's so much the so-called shy Trump voter who somehow doesn't want to admit they're supporting Trump, go to a Trump rally.

There are not a lot of shy folks at a Trump rally.

What I think it is, though, is that Trump appeals to a set of voters, some of voters who have not traditionally voted in elections but are being motivated to vote because of him, and who are very skeptical of mainstream media.

The established political parties and pollsters.

So I think where the problem comes is not so much unwillingness to say who you'd vote for, as it is skepticism about doing a poll at all and therefore falling out of the sample beyond turnout.

>> Do polls ever convince voters who to vote for, or how they should feel about an issue?

>> I I'm skeptical of that.

>> What I would push more is the value of seeing what the polls say about the people in your community, your state, who don't share your views.

It's so easy to be trapped in the notion that everybody I know agrees with me on this.

This is the obvious majority.

And yet the poll can tell you that maybe 30, 40, maybe even 60% don't hold the same view as you on that, it's a bit of a pipe dream to wish people would use polls that way, but I really think that one of the most valuable points of polling is to talk about policy issues, not just candidates, and to try to recognize the wide range of opinion people hold on those things even within a county or certainly within a state that not everybody's on your side on this.

>> How should an average voter use this information?

It can feel a little overwhelming.

It can feel like there's horse race polling and how how do we get value?

>> One fairly serious answer is try to ignore it all.

Make up your own mind.

Talk to your friends and do that.

I think that's a totally valid way to follow this.

>> How has this election really shaken things up for you as for me personally, I have rewritten so many survey questionnaires this year and this summer, especially on the last night, I can make changes before we start interviewing.

to hurry to rewrite the questionnaire for Harris rather fun time for me that way.

>> What do you think is the most important thing for voters to think about in this election as a whole?

Not in polls.

>> I think I really go to the question of this election is important, no matter which side you're on, and paying attention to the candidates and making your own mind up and treating it as seriously as you can is really my main advice.

It's not about the polls, per se.

It's not even narrowly about how the candidates campaign.

But I think this is just the political scientist in me.

I think we're a better society when more of us vote, we're a better society when the majority wins, when we release our final poll before Election Day, the last thing we say is, remember, polls don't vote.

People do.

The election's in your hands.

In the voters hands.

And I still think that is the most important lesson.

>> Governor Tony Evers paid a visit to the UW-Madison campus this week, listening to students discuss their higher education experience as part of a tour of UW campuses.

The governor is using the visits to prop up his planned budget increase of $800 million for the UW system.

Governor Evers also spoke to his reaction of a new policy released by UW system President Jay Rothman in the aftermath of Israel-Palestine war protests on campuses last spring.

The new policy has some concerned about impacts on free speech, as it says university leaders should maintain viewpoint neutrality in any reference to any matter of political or social controversy.

>> It would have a chilling effect on me if I was a Merrick faculty and really didn't know what I should do to be complian.

>> After a trial run in 12 states was deemed a success, the IRS is launching direct file nationwide in 2025, including in Wisconsin.

The free electronic filing system will allow people to complete their federal returns online, and then taxpayers will be taken to the Wisconsin tax filing site.

The hope that taxpayers will save time and money because, according to the U.S. Department of Treasury, the average taxpayer spends approximately 13 hours and $270 to prepare their taxes each year.

Here to detail direct file is Wisconsin Secretary of Revenue David Casey.

And thanks very much for being here.

>> Thank you for having me.

>> I appreciate the opportunity.

>> So why did the government decide to go with this direct file?

>> Well, I think, thanks to Senator Baldwin and Governor Evers here in Wisconsin, we had the investment or, sorry, the Inflation Reduction Act passed that funded some some of the activity at the IRS and technology advancements.

So Direct File was a direct result of that, we here at the Department of Revenue actually started a program, a couple of years ago.

We had some foresight on this and created Wiz tax and online filing tool primary.

You know, motivation for this was to provide another tool for our taxpayers to use.

You know, right now they can use a third party vendor for the pay as you file type software approach, where they can also use our community of tax preparers, which are very helpful, but we saw that there was a niche of taxpayers who were spending too much time and too much money and thought that direct file would be a good solution for them.

>> So how many Wisconsin taxpayers will be eligible to use it?

about 600,000.

Taxpayers will be eligible for the eligibility.

You really just need to be a wage earner with less complicated income.

So no interest income or for example, no real estate income.

So the majority of Wisconsinites have a particular wage income and that's it, and then also some limited credits that you can apply for will have the earned income tax credit and some others, but it's fairly limited at this point.

>> So how does it compare or compete with, say, TurboTax?

>> Probably, you know, from a comparison or it's not really a competition.

It's filling a void that we've had, you know, the pay as you file tax preparers offer an excellent service and they, they provide a service to what we think is just the more the more complicated tax returns, if you've got more complex financial, background and tax obligations, they're a great solution.

What we found, however, was that a number of taxpayers with what we call just the simplified, though the wage earner approach, were paying to file when we could offer that same product for free.

>> So we know it's free.

But is it easy to use?

I mean, people won't get all balled up in the online confusion of it.

>> It's well, we hope it's very easy to use.

We know our wiz tech solution when we piloted that over the last couple of years, grew from a few hundred users the first year to tens of thousands of users the second year.

So it was very popular.

We've also heard from those 12 states that piloted Direct File last year that it's averaging 15 to 20 minutes for a user to complete both their federal and their state return.

One of the ways that we achieve that is that once you file your federal return, you go to the state site.

It's pre-populated with all of the tax information from your federal return, which is the basis of the Wisconsin return.

So we get all of that demographic.

Financial information is all pre-populated.

So it's state return, it's a review.

You review what you have.

You apply for any additional credits that the state may, may offer.

And then you submit it as easy as that.

for whatever reason, are they able to reach out to the Wisconsin Department of Revenue for help?

>> Absolutely.

We have an excellent customer service team that we are training up on direct file.

It will be a new application for us to administer, they'll be ready and waiting for the calls, though frankly, the direct file solution is so user friendly we don't anticipate a lot of need from our customer service agents.

thanks very much.

>> Absolutely.

My pleasure.

>> For more on this and other issues facing Wisconsin, visit our website at PBS wisconsin.org.

And then click on the news tab to see all of our election coverage.

Visit Wisconsin Vote.org.

That's our program for tonight I'm Frederica Freyberg.

Have a good weekend.

>> Funding for "Here& Now" is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS.