 Hello, and welcome to an expanded version, I think we can say of the Donahue group. We're here on election night with live election coverage from now until about 10 o'clock. We're broadcasting this evening from the county administration building on the corner of Fifth of New York Avenue, beautiful building, and we'll talk a little bit about that. But I want to welcome our fellow panelists, and you are all fellows, and so it's going to be just a great night. To my far left, Ken Risto, who voted today I think as all of us did. Ken is the social studies person for the Sheboygan area school district. Sitting next to Ken is Tom Paneski, our Republican, suitably dressed in black for tonight. Tom is a professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin Sheboygan. Our dear friend Cal Potter could not be with us tonight, but we have a swell substitute. You're replacing Cal. Yes you are. Now the pressure's on. Now the pressure's on. This is David Gallionetti. David is on the Sheboygan area school board, where he is currently serving as vice president. David is the director of communications at Lakeland College and a former journalist and brings I think a good perspective to all the things that we're going to talk about tonight, which are going to be considerable. We're going to be talking about local races, state races, national races, all sorts of different issues that have come up as we have voted today as a country. So turnout has been great. Before we get started, we're going to go back into the clerk's office and talk to Julie Glancy, who's our clerk of courts, and learn a little bit about the process and how the votes come in, because that's why we're here tonight. So in a very graceful way, I'm taking off this microphone. It's like a seasoned veteran. Isn't that great? It doesn't get any smoother than that. And we're just going to walk back. Look at Barbara Walters. I work with a sassy crew. What can I say? But following back, we're going to go to the county clerk's office in the first floor of the administration building. This is a beautiful building which was built just a few years ago to house all the administrative offices for Sheboygan County. Includes the clerk of courts office, the register of deeds. We all know the treasurer's office, the county administrator, and a lot of other offices. But come right in right now, and we're going to talk to Julie Glancy, who actually is in a race tonight for a county clerk, and we'll talk to her about all of those things and see how she's doing. So welcome. Here we are. This is a room where I have spent quite a few evenings over the course of the years watching the votes come in. You can kind of wax either sentimental or eloquent about voting in the United States because we don't do it often enough and it's full of lots of problems. But in my mind, there's nothing more exciting than watching the clerks from all over the county come in here with their boxes of ballots. And Julie's going to tell us a little bit about how they get registered. We're going to look at the computer where we can see the results coming in. To me, it's exciting and it's affirming of the American experience and I think that's probably enough Abraham Lincoln for tonight. So Julie, I'm just going to scoot over this way. Let me introduce Julie Glancy, who is the county clerk, and Julie, you've got an election tonight. Is that correct? That's correct. But you're unopposed. I am unopposed. It was a tough campaign, but I think I'm okay. We talk a lot about having contested races, but when you're in the office, it's sad to say or sorry to say, it's nice not to have any opposition. Tell us just a little bit about what happens here tonight. Okay, the clerks and the poll workers from the various polling places throughout the county bring all their election results and ballots in here tonight. They need to, you know, have finished all their paperwork at the polling place and then they come in here. When they come in, they'll register at the desk over here. We take the prompt hacks or the results cartridges from their voting equipment and in the corner over there is the computer station where we enter that result into the computer system. And then, as I understand it then, those results show up basically on the computer screen over here. Now I see only one computer tonight. Did you take one screen away? Okay. All right. But people also bring in the paper ballots, don't they? Yes. They bring in all their ballots. They are sealed in the ballot boxes and we store them in our back room for an election like this one. We have to keep those ballots for two years. All right. Because we know that recounts can happen and they can be pretty complicated. Lots of new rules that the county clerk has to follow under the new Help America Vote Act or HAVA as it's called. Can you just briefly tell us what's involved? Has it made it any more complicated for you? Is it a better system? Are we getting more bang for all the bucks that the federal government has put in? Well, I don't know if there's a short way to explain HAVA but there are two main components of HAVA. One is the requirement for the statewide voter registration system. The other is the requirement for handicapped accessible voting equipment. The handicapped voting accessible equipment is a very expensive proposition. That equipment, you have to have one machine in every polling place. I don't know that it really improves the service to the general public. It is a good service to someone who is visually impaired, for example, because they can listen to the ballot so they can vote independently rather than having to have someone read the ballot to them and mark it and maybe not be sure that they're marking it the way they really want it to be marked. So for people with visual impairments, it is a good product to have in place. But it doesn't really improve the way 99% of the people vote. They're kind of unaware of that system. There's additional expense and additional problems for us in programming that additional piece of equipment. The biggest piece though is the statewide voter registration system. That's a huge project. We've been working on it for a long time. This is the first really big election that we've been under this system. I think that in the long run it will be a good system because you will have a database with everyone in it. We found a couple people who voted for years in the wrong place because they live right on the line, but now that we're in this system and you can actually look at address ranges, you can make sure that people aren't voting in the right place, the right school district and things like that. Now there have been some concerns nationally about touch voting and electronic voting and the sanctity, if you would, of the security of those machines. Do we have any issues like that here in Sheboygan County? No, I don't think we have those issues in Wisconsin in general because Wisconsin requires that any touch screen system have a voter verifiable paper trail. So anytime that you vote on that machine, there is a paper record of how you voted. The states that have the issues are states that don't require that. So all you have is what's stored in the memory of that computer and anybody who's ever had a computer crash knows that there can be issues with that. There can be, yes. And we've already had issues with even the Eagle Prom Packs where someone has dropped it on the way in and the results are gone, but we have the paper ballots. You have a record of how people voted so you can always recreate those results. If you don't have a paper record, that's when you run into trouble. We just had somebody, a streaker come through snatching some candy. I will say for the clerk, come from as far away as the town of Sherman, I think, is the longest drive. It's a long drive for these folks to come in late at night and there's always food out here and I know, well, you know, I've got the TV cameras, so you don't want these folks to have too much. I was here in September for the primary. It was kind of the kickoff for the new system and, boy, it took a long time. What time did you finally finish up in September? I left a little before midnight. We finished up shortly after midnight, so we were pretty much done by then. The issue we had in September, which we are going to have again for this election, is in programming the new system. We are not able to electronically merge the totals from the Eagle voting machines with the ballots and the edge, which is a touch screen. We had hoped to have that problem resolved for this election, it's still not resolved. So we still will have to hand-enter those results. So it takes a little bit longer. It's not quite as instantaneous as it has been in the past. So maybe midnight tonight. I haven't seen a polling place yet, and I think in September, we already had several standing in line by this time. It has been busy. Any idea of turnout during the day today? I was predicting about 80%. I'm hoping that it's going to be somewhere between, you know, somewhere around 65% to 80%. Wow, that's terrific. All right. Well, Julie, we love your necklace, your scarf, your pin. And we've just got some nice flags here. So we look forward to working with you and sneaking in from time to time and seeing what the election results are. There you go. So thanks very much, Julie. And I think we're going to just head back out to the lobby and take it from there. I hope she hurries back. We were just talking here as we were watching the interview, that kind of turnout, 80%, 65%, 70%. I was really surprised to hear those kinds of numbers. Well, there's been some times in this county where I think turnout's, you know, when I covered a couple of elections for the paper, where it was as low as 15% or 20%, so 80 is. Yeah, if it's 80%, that's got to be a record, I would think. I don't even know that presidential elections get 80%, 60% and 70%. Yeah, that's what I was thinking, too. And I was very surprised that I know there's a lot, a lot of people engaged in the process this year. They know the two referendum, one is advisory, but the other one, of course, is for real, and I'm admitting the Constitution of Wisconsin. That certainly has got people generating. We know we're going to have a close race for governor by all indications. I think the amendment, I mean, more people talk about that marriage amendment. I was at the Marshfield campus on Monday, and they were having sessions, give and take sessions with faculty and students talking about the pros and cons of the amendment. So I figured that's going to affect them. Those people are anxious and get out and vote. Yeah, it was the same on Lakeland's campus. We had a forum last week, four different faculty members from different disciplines, religion, psychology, sociology, history, and I think actually criminal justice was one that was five, who just gave informational presentations about what it would mean, the historical ramifications, et cetera, et cetera, and the room was filled with college students. So... How often does that happen? And they didn't get convocation credit for it, which was even more amazing. So I think clearly it's got everybody's attention and such. The only thing I feeling, though, is it's kind of disappointing that it takes, it's a real emotional issue. People are really passionate about it, and it's a shame that people can't get emotional and passionate just about the individual races. It takes, and a lot of people think it's a gimmick, a lot of people think the GOP forced it through to get more voters out, to knock Doyle out of office, whatever, but clearly it motivated people, and it's too bad that people can't be motivated just to vote for governor, or to vote for your local state senator, or to vote for whoever. It takes something like this, an emotional thing. Maybe it's a good thing, but to me it's kind of disappointing that people don't have that same excitement and passion for just voting, you know? Well, and I think if you heard the interview... Welcome back. Yes, I'm glad that the three of you managed to carry on without me for that brief period of time, but Julia indicated that she thought voter turnout of 65 to 80%, which is one of the reasons it's 10 to nine, and I think we've just had one clerk go through, and I know Trina from the town of Sheboygan Falls, so it's even no city places in yet. Julia indicated that we'd be here, not live TV coverage, but that we'd be here until probably midnight, if not even longer, because of just the new system and trying to merge the ballots, so... Did you say an electronic voting system with touch screen? Right. That's for the county, but it's not for the city of Sheboygan. It is for the each polling place now in the state of Wisconsin under HAVA is required to have a touch screen, handicapped accessible voting machine so that people who are handicapped or disabled can vote independently. So at the place where I was doing some poll monitoring today, the poll workers told me that somebody who was visually impaired came in and he was able to go to the machine and it talks the ballot through. Now there were some glitches with it apparently, and so he ended up getting some assistance from somebody else, but they had about 80 people who just volunteered to do the touch screen balloting. It does take longer, I was watching, because if you've got a big ballot like we did today, you go through screen after screen after screen, and so it takes longer than just connecting the lines, but it was interesting. The other piece of it that's kind of important as Julie explained is that there's a paper backup. So unlike machines in other states where the Wizard of Oz could be in the machine or bozo the clown or tribbles or whatever, here at least in Wisconsin, we have the assurance of a paper ballot. So I think in some respects that's better. So. Maybe it gives people a lot of assurance. There's lots and lots of nervousness about computers, whether those are well-founded or not, and nobody really knows at this point, but when she was talking a little bit earlier about the Wisconsin registration database, is that used or implemented only when someone comes in to register to confirm that they are in fact... Well, I think this is the whole controversy about the Accenture contract, that the state elections board, well actually Kevin Kennedy, and then post hoc the elections board entered into with Accenture, which is one of the, I think it only has one other state now. It's just not been apparently very effective in terms of coalescing, bringing together all of these registration lists, exactly how it's been done or whatever I don't know, but we're way past the time limit, but so are many other states because it's a complicated process. So it's not being used in this election? It is. It is. But the reason I'm asking is because I'm just wondering, when does that kick in? Because when I voted, which is something out of Norman Rockwell, you know, really, before we go any further this, and you really should acknowledge not only the people that are traveling, you mentioned the clerks and the officials left to drive in, but all these folks that are there at seven o'clock in the morning, and they're working the polls, and I see the same folks, at least at my polling station, more or less the same time, Alderman Jim Graff happens to be working down in my area of the world. It's only in Sheboygan where I can walk into a church basement, and the first thing out of the woman's mouth is, oh, it's Wayne and Beatty's boy. I don't even have to identify. There's no need for me to pull out of your registration or identification. They'll highlight my name, and I voted about 230, was the first chance I got, and I got hollered at for being late. So, by a woman who was much older than me, and I wasn't about to take issue with it, but they really work hard. Yeah, they do, they do. I said that I would. Oh, I guess, anyway, the point was, maybe because they just knew me, I mean, I didn't get a sense that anybody was checking the database to see if I was a registered or... Well, the lists are there. Okay. I mean, they're not connected to it, but those lists are new lists. Oh, all right, because they always have had those lists in front. Right, the old kind of computer, you know, green paper prints out. Yeah, no, those lists are all in place. Okay. And I think from what Julie was saying, is that that part is working pretty well. Merging the touch screen ballots with the other ballots is what has, it is taking some time. Okay. And here comes some clerks in, and you can see they've got their official boxes, so. You know, they're white boxes. I would think that, I guess I had this impression because I've never been down here before. I thought they'd be metal and there'd be, you know, all sorts of seriousness. Yeah, exactly. Something on the Blues Brothers or something, you know. These people are pretty careful with these. Oh, I'm sure they are. I'm sure they're very conscientious. I'm just, it's white cardboard boxes. Some are a little different, but in any event, for big elections, they also have these special carry things that, you know, little carts and things that they can use, but. In talking with the poll workers, at least in my place, they said that they were fairly steady and fairly busy. People didn't have to wait too long. No, I showed up at 2.30 in the afternoon, which is kind of a down time. What number were you? I was about 495 or 450, something like that. Now the poll that I was monitoring today, I went back around 7.30 just to check to see how they were doing, and they had had over 1,200 people. And they had. Where's this? This is the. This was at Ebenezer. Okay. These folks, it would appear, have been there many years, the same in my polling place, but I mean, they've got it down to a science. The message they wanted me to convey is that it would be great if people would register before voting day, because really, even the part that I was watching, it got backed up at the registration table. There were really tons of people who were registering. That being said. That's great. Each person who did come in went through that whole registration process, which under HAVA now, I mean, there are two separate sets of criteria that you have to address when you're registering, and so it is more complicated than it used to be. But every single person was allowed to vote today. And according to the folks that I was talking with, no provisional ballots. That's a process by which if you can't produce the registration information that you need to the satisfaction of the, I mean, there's actually a flow chart. I went through some training about it, and it gets kind of complicated. You can cast a provisional ballot, and which is counted later, but they haven't had to do that either. So I thought that was pretty encouraging just in terms of efficiency of a system where our poll workers are, as you say, it's a long day. Seven in the morning till past eight o'clock at night without much in the way of a break, and so probably when they probably started at six to set out, get there, make sure as the first person walks in. That's true, that's true. But you know, I just can't help but think that with all the things that we can do electronically today, and we talked a little bit about this before, that you know, and perhaps in a smaller, more rural polling place, it doesn't make sense to invest a lot of dollars into the electronics. But as long as there's some kind of a human backup, some paper backup that somebody can look at it, we do everything electronically. We transact huge amounts of money. We make huge purchases. Why can't we vote? I mean, you know, there are geniuses out there who write computer programs for everything under the sun. Put them on this, and invest the money. We don't do anything more important in this country than vote. They fight wars over the right to vote, so put the money into getting the technology or paying the people or what. It's silly to me. 20 years from now, you'll go in, put your fingerprint on the electronic system, they'll register you, then you go vote. And we could ask, and there's redness skin. Or redness skin. And I'm not a genius, but why can't we have that technology now? I'll bet we could, if people were willing to spend the dollars. We spend dollars on everything else. Well, HAVA was funded by some billions of dollars, but it is a long, slow process because what you're doing is, as you know, as a local school board person, taking a very local activity, even though everybody has school boards, everybody has school districts, everybody has voting places, we all like to do things our own way. So taking something local and standardizing it at a state level and then even up after that is pretty complicated. Yeah, but you hate to make it too standard because people like to get together. Voting is a voting day. When you get together, you talk at a congregational church. They had all kinds of goodies out that you could buy at a bake sale. So if you wanted to vote and buy some goodies and then talk to them. I can eat a muffin and touch a keypad. No, it gets greasy. Stop it, stop it. Stop it. And it'll alter my vote. Yeah. All right, never mind. You're the reason why your keyboards are shorting up. Crumbs all over the place. Well, we're not having much in the way of local results yet because we've had relatively few clerks come in. We're lucky channel eight is getting really sophisticated and we have Johnny on the spot returns from the nation. And we do have some information about some national races that have been called, which I thought I would run through. Did you guys talk about that while I was in the clerk's office? No, no, no. Before we move on, did we have a lot of absentee ballots? Did you get a chance to ask her? I didn't, but there are a fair number. And what happens is that those absentee ballots are delivered to each polling place, and then those are counted at the end of the evening and fed into the machine. Part of the problem, getting back to the machines again, which we've been on for a while, because the ballots get folded, and this speaks to the wisdom of having an electronic system, although if you're voting absentee, I suppose that doesn't help. But when you connect the arrows in Sheboygan County, when you fold them and put them back in the envelopes, sometimes the black ink wears it off, and flakes off, and so. Where were the hanging chads? Right, well, in the live ham bomb guard recount. Those absentee ballots, many of them had to be hand interpreted. Sometimes people, although it says connect the dots, sometimes people put little Xs, sometimes they circle their candidate. They don't follow the directions, if you can believe it. Kindergarten just, just didn't do this. Classroom teacher, am I surprised to hear this? Put your name in the upper right-hand corner. Circle the dot, where, where. Exactly, so I think those are some of the problems of the absentee ballots, but if there are a lot of them, and I saw at my polling place, they must have had a stack like this in the envelopes, so they open up the envelopes, feed them through the machine, so it does take some amount of time. Let's talk about races. Let's talk about races. Now, called so far is, they are calling Brown in Ohio over to wine. I don't think that surprised anybody. It looks like Brown will have 55% of the vote. That seems about, I'm just looking in my, have you guys been following the polls? The polling data, you know, I just. Brown, Brown, that seat was leaning through most of the polling I've seen in the last three or four weeks toward the Democrats, so that's, if that plays out, that's a seat that's gonna go to, that's one Senate seat that's gonna go to the Democrats, and they've already called Santorum and Pennsylvania as a goner, so that's a second seat. Percentages? You can't tell, because, like you said, it comes in, it might be coming in from Philadelphia and or Pittsburgh or some place, but they already called the seat, so. See, that's what's gonna be tricky when you start watching the local, your local networks on the governor's race, and you see one candidate take a big lead over another. You really don't know what that means, if anything, unless you have some sort of polling model, because, you know, if you, most of them are urban areas, and I remember as a kid being tricked about that all the time. I think in my candidate was winning or losing, miserably, only to find out, it tightens up as the night go on, as the rural votes start coming in. There you go. I noticed, too, the national media, interestingly enough, I was kind of flipping around before I came in, and they're using two different sets of terminology now. Early on, they're saying our projected winner is, and at one point, one of the people on one of the networks, and I can't remember which one, said, well, I think we've called that race, and someone said, no, we're projecting a winner. Remember, the terminology was like, oh yeah, that's right. So they're making a clear distinction between projecting a winner and actually calling the race, and I think to their credit, and finally, probably, they're being careful about, they made a point to say, we're gonna hold off on projecting in that race because the polls in that state haven't closed yet. Makes sense to me. Because they got the daylights beat out of them, so often, especially for those West Coast races where they would just, two hours before the polls closed, they're calling races, and is it turning people away? I don't know if it did or not, but I think that the national media, at least from what I've seen so far tonight, just trying to be more responsible, they wanna get the story, obviously, and if the Democrats take control of Congress, they wanna try to get that, all the networks wanna be the one that breaks that story first, but I think they're doing a good job of being more responsible in terms of letting the process work itself out and reporting the news based on how the process works itself out versus getting the story first. I move closer to Tom, because I wanna be of comfort to him as he watches some of this stuff come in, my old friend. Hey, this is my Irish, no, listen, my Irish sense of doom just makes me think that the Democrats are going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I just, I, I trust the polls. Yeah, I mean, plus or minus, plus or minus a few, I mean, turnout though will make a difference in, I mean, 50-50, and then if one area votes 60-50, that heavier turnout is gonna overcome the, Some of the grid lines of the Senate have been re-elected tonight. You know, nobody even knows, I think that Ted Kennedy was re-elected this evening. They were saying before that a lot of people didn't even, in his district, didn't even realize he was up for re-elect. Well, I think there's some people I feel the way about, you know, Herb Cole. I mean, talk about Herb in a second, but, and, but, you know, Orrin Hatch, I asked around the room, who was running against Herb Cole? Bob Lorge. Bob Lorge. I know that. I saw a couple of them. Can anybody tell me anything about him? No, I have no clue. Well, I saw a couple of the signs in town, though. Related to Gerald Lorge, right? Okay. The Lorge, is that how you pronounce it? I think it's Lorge. Lorge? I think it's Sheboygan. It's called Lorge. I think it's pronounced Lorge. Lorge. Lorge. When you're not sure how to pronounce a candidate's name, he's in trouble. Exactly. All right. Exactly. Well, with that in mind, we just watched Santorne's farewell speech, and that's quite a... I mean, he was really one of the bright shining stars of the Republican Party two years ago. He's in a blue state, and he won squeakers in his previous elections, and this is not a year for a Republican to run, so he lost to a named person, Casey. I guess Casey was a governor. So, yeah, he is a shining star in the Republican Party, but he's still in a blue state. But you really gotta look at it this way. Pennsylvania lost to Senator, but Fox got into the commentator. So, what'd you think? That'd be all right. I think that's probably, well, I should see if I'm not right about this. All right, all right. Some other races. Maybe you'll get appointed to some play, you know, wish you'll appoint him to some important position. Some other races to watch. Ambassadorship. Subtle, subtle. Some other races to watch. Corker versus Ford in Tennessee, and I know we'll talk a little bit later as time goes on about just the really scurrilous level to which political advertising has sunk, in my humble opinion. I don't care if it's business as usual, it's other than- I thought it was a cute ad. Which one? Call me Harold. Just stop it, Thomas. But everything before that was very good, you know, about guns, and they listed about four or five positions that Ford took, and they made, they panned them. And then of course they did the call me Harold one playboy thing. Total receipts as of the end of October. Corker, 13 million, Ford, nine million. It'll be interesting to see as the evening goes on, if the people win, who win are the ones who spent the most money? Not necessarily. It would appear that- Lamont spent a heck of a lot of money and he's not gonna win tonight. Lamont spent, as again, as of the date of this 13 million. Lieberman spent 15.6 million. So there are, we can see whether there's correlation, if not causation, as between the amount of money spent. There was 51% of the voting, it was 52.47 Corker. With half of the voting. Okay. That's pretty tough. There was some polling in Tennessee that whether it was a result of that particular political ad, I don't know. That was leaning, starting to lean toward the Republicans that were starting to pull away a little bit. And then of course the other issue had, there was the issue of polling data. How reliable is it because, you know, when you have an African-American candidate, how often are people gonna tell the pollster, well I will vote for him, but when they get in that privacy, that voting poll, whether they're really gonna do that. Whether they're really gonna do that. They're actually pressing Senator Frist earlier tonight on his thoughts, of course, and whatnot, and of course Chris Matthews brought the ad up, and how horrible he thought it was, and he said, you know, Chris, you're making too much of it, et cetera, et cetera. But he did get Frist to say, well I'm not defending it, I'm just saying, I think you're making too much of it. And he said, well, we agree on that then, you're not gonna defend it. Oh, that's interesting. You know, I'm talking about an African-American, I was thinking of the Michael Steel Race in Maryland. I haven't seen any numbers on that one. I think that's a bright and shining star in the Republican Party, if he should win. He is just an outstanding person. Turnout in Maryland is really, really high this year. I mean, they were saying, yeah, and everybody, of course, is saying, well that's gonna benefit, you know, both candidates are spinning that this afternoon. The last thing I saw, but it was really early on, was that Steel was behind in that race in Maryland. Is it? Okay, I understand, okay. But the one, of course, is gonna be up all, having us up all night is gonna be the one in Virginia where, you know, Allen and Webb, and last time we had seen anything, it was 66% of the vote was in, and there was only about 6,000 votes separating those two. If the Republicans lose that race, they're in trouble in the Senate then. Yeah, I think the McCaskill Talent Race in Missouri is interesting as well, and I don't think that one's gonna come in anytime soon, so it's interesting, there'll be at least a few more women in the Senate, and Amy Klobuchar is expected to win in Minnesota. Yeah, Olympia Snow got reelected tonight. And I think in Texas, well, And that was a close race for her, the first one. Hutchinson, there was no doubt. Yeah, she was reelected, yes. That she would win. A good friend, Orrin Hatch from Utah, was reelected. So, interesting. And Bob, we should make mention of the President Pro Tempore. The Defender of the Constitution, Senator Byrd got reelected tonight. So, I think he's gonna end up being carried out with his toes pointed out of that chamber. Oh, he said it was his ninth term. Yeah, his ninth term, it's an absolutely amazing run at the Senate. It's the years. That's gonna break Helms' record, isn't it? I think it is. Well, no, not Helms. Who's the older gentleman? That was Jesse. No, it's not Jesse, it's Strom Thurman. Strom Thurman, he was a 100-year-old Senator. Thurman was over a 100-year-old. They said they voted him in, because they just didn't want to kill him. If they'd be lost, they'd just kill him. So, that would kind of raise out the rate. Our own Senator Cole's gonna win handily. Win handily, again. Absolutely amazing. Are we gonna be getting some local returns shortly, do you think, or do you know? Part of it is what we're doing is watching the clerks are coming in. I'm not seeing too many city clerks in yet. I've seen some county towns. There's only been five come in. Right, right. There's not much in. One of the reasons that we're down here tonight is that for the League of Women Voters, every election I come down and watch the ballots come in and then I call into various, the Wisconsin Election Service, just call in vote totals and such. It's a fundraiser for one of my service clubs. And so, I'm gonna be tiptoeing off in a really graceful fashion, remembering, because you guys are gonna remind me to take my microphone off, so I don't drag that in the chair and the cameras and everything along with me. But I'll do that in a little bit, because they usually like to have the first returns in by about 9.15. But my sense is that there's probably clearly less than 25% of the votes in, I would say, right now. And this is odd. I mean, even last, as Julie said, even in September, we had more clerks in here by 8.30 than we've had tonight. So it's the last time we had between 65 and 80% of our turnout. Exactly. That's, I mean, it's a good, on that side, it's a good problem to have, because like we said, people are engaged in the process. Well, and if you're, as you explained, if you're running absentee ballots at the end of the, they'd run at the end of the night, you said, really? Yeah, yeah, usually. So then you've got, you've got those to, if there's a lot of absentee ballots, you've got those to maintain. We're watching the results come in and so forth. Assuming that, let's assume, for argument's sake, and this is my Irish sense of doom saying, don't even say it out loud, but let's assume the Democrats win the House and don't win the Senate. Just gotta go outside and spit. Spinning the full moon. What do you think it's gonna mean? What, I mean, how is the, I mean, obviously we will not have the, the bus is not going to be running down the track quite as fast as it was, but what do you think policy-wise, what kind of initiatives will be different? I don't, Roberta gave me some numbers on the S&P, the change in the S&P in the third term of a presidency. So third year of the presidency. Tell us who Roberta is and what the S&P is. S&P, Standard and Poor's Index for the Stock Market. It's a broad stock market index. Yeah, and Roberta's my wife, but she's a stock, and she's a stock- She must feel big. She must feel big. I understand. But they had some history, you know, the third year of a presidency, generally no matter what the breakup of the House or the Senate, if it's all one party or split, or the presidency, you know, it was all democratic with a Republican president. The change in the Standard and Poor's the last two years is not, it's pretty consistent as far as the economy goes. If it's a split, it's a little lower, you know, but if it's a unity party, all Republicans are all Democrats, it's a little higher. And the reason they suggested that is because people are positioning themselves for the next presidential election and they want to pass economic measures, which benefit the country and benefit their reelection. So as far as the economy goes, I don't know that it's gonna make a big difference. I think there needs to be some imposition of some fiscal restraint. Might I suggest that if? Well, I mean, I think it does. I'm sorry, Tom, I'm being very polite. I think it just makes sense that for the next year or two years, you're gonna see everybody kind of minding their pees and cues because they are setting themselves up for, whoever is setting themselves up for a run at the presidency. You know, obviously we know that the Bush is gone. So everybody's going to be doing whatever they can to warm up their base, get their base excited, but yet not do anything too dramatically bad so that they've earmarked themselves as the bad guy in the eyes of the other party this early. That'll all come. But, you know, it doesn't mean it's gonna be a peace and harmony. Well, you know, you could easily say that if there's a Republican on the White House and the Democrats are controlling Congress, there's not gonna be much of anything that gets done. Just flashed up on the screen if I can interrupt. It's off now, but they had Allen in it, 50% of the vote and Webb at 49%. Well, there's Kagan, what is that? 51 to 49. Is Kagan winning? Yeah, and they had Sensenbrenner winning, though. Sensenbrenner? I think he'll win. They checked him off. There's another one, then. No one's sure if he's even up for reelection. Well, I know Brian Kennedy is. Oh, there it is, the Allen Webb, I think, yeah. Well, I'm just going to scoot into the clerk's office and you guys can carry on, as I know you will. And I'm taking off my microphone now, so it's not to upset anybody, but I think talking about the Kagan guard race would be interesting, so I'll leave you with that. I wanna talk about the governorship. Oh, yeah, we haven't heard anything about the governor's race. The Kagan guard thing, again, you really can't tell because of whose results, if that's the city of Green Bay, for example, or those are the results, then you would kind of expect that to be leaning toward the Democratic side and we'll see how that goes. It seemed to, first of all, I guess we wanna talk, let's talk a little bit about the campaign. All right. Clearly negative both sides. I thought there was a really interesting ad that surfaced in this last weekend that led up to the election. It was a guard ad, it was one of those, I read and approved this ad things, and it was Kagan's peers, if you will, in the medical industry, saying, we do something that Dr. Kagan doesn't do, we accept, what was it, seniors, we accept Medicare patients, and he wouldn't do it, and we know that it's gonna mean less money for us, but it's the right thing to do, and Dr. Kagan didn't do that, and it was pretty biting little ads. Let me ask you, what kind of doc? Profits overpatients. Exactly. I think it was a very powerful ad because then it ties into the Dr. Millionaire one, which runs and stands in the other direction. Exactly. What kind of physician is Dr. Kagan? Anybody tell me? Actually, I don't have no clue. I don't wanna be careful because we're on the air, but someone was indicating to me, and I don't know if this is true or not, so take it for 40 pounds of salt, was that he was a plastic surgeon. So you gotta ask yourself, how many Medicare patients do you really think you're gonna walk through the door, if that's the case, if that is the case, that was a pretty misleading ad, but I think it resonated with a lot of people. Well, it was his peers, it gave you that impression of, geez, the guys, peers don't even support him. Wow, what's wrong with this guy? And that's all those ads are designed to do is, just put that little shred of doubt that, you know, I saw that ad, and so and so said this, and boy, I don't know, he or she seems a little scary to me, I'll go with the other person. That's all those ads are designed to do. And wow, Kagan had it. Kagan? Yeah, he had an ad with seniors saying how well he treated the seniors, so it was a counterbalance, so who's gonna? Well, it tends to be a Republican seat. Yeah. And I think it would take a really, fairly large effort. Kagan, I thought for a while, you know, I don't watch tremendous amount of TV, but I watched my fair share of it in the evening. I thought for a while there was a pause there where Kagan wasn't responding at all to the ads. It went for like three or four or five days and I'm wondering, did he run out of money or did the DNC certainly didn't run out of money? No. But it seemed like there was a pause there where I'm not sure if they weren't sure what to run or what the story was, where I thought that Gard almost suddenly got a little bit of momentum near the race, but just for no other reason, he didn't respond to this stuff. What was a part of it perhaps that, you know, in Gard who had, even though he was a politician on a statewide level, he's a politician, he's a little bit more seasoned, run campaigns before. Again, perhaps not on that big of a level with those kinds of dollars, but I don't think John Gard's campaign coffers have ever suffered from a lack of money. Whereas with Kagan, you know, if he loses today, he's gonna get up and go to work tomorrow. If Gard loses this election, you know, and it's the story of every, you know, you go from the local politics and then you try your hand at the state politics and you get elected and then you are kind of a star on the state level and then you try to make your jumps at the national level. Well, that first time, there's an incredible amount of risk involved because if Gard loses, he's not gonna get up and go to work tomorrow because he doesn't have a job and he's gonna have to find some work. So I wonder if part of it was, you know, just for Gard, again, the seasoning of being a politician, he's been there before. But aside from that, maybe more to lose because longer-term, I'm sure, Gard has maybe a more articulated political career in mind, whereas Kagan, not that he doesn't. But Gard's been building for this for a long time, a long time. And boy, when you finally roll those dice, you better make sure you roll them the right way so they're gonna come up your way. All right, I have some interesting results. They're so preliminary that they're meaningless, but still interesting. With five of 60 precincts in the county, Doyle 1581, Green 1516. So Doyle had- So we can't even project a winner. We sure can. Which precincts? Can you have any idea? It would take me a while to figure it out, but I'm thinking some outliers because we've seen clerks come in from- Well, if they're outliers and it's that close, that's not good for Green in this county. But Falk, 1493, Van Hollen 1628. If those are outlying, that makes sense. Yeah, that would make sense if they're all lying. Yeah. Local four precincts out of 43. Leibhams 1076, Aulik 740. Although- Aulik needs to do better than that. Sheboygan. Unless those happen to be wards one and two. Right. Yeah. I did write down some other- Which are the Northeast side town. Some other results here. And I will find those as I- It's like talking inside the Beltway. Yeah. Oh, here, I had actually with more, with more ballots in, we had Aulik with 1753 and Leibhams 2089. So at least Aulik is in the 45% range. I mean, frankly, if Aulik pulls 45%, that's not bad for a newcomer against- Yeah. I had a chance of waving at him. He was on 14th and Uri Avenue this afternoon, or about 1030 this morning, I should say. I think that was a pretty strong chance. You didn't have any like Van Akron or Jose? I'm a Van Akron. So that would mean you have a city precinct. Right. Van Akron, this is out only two of 19. Terry Van Akron's getting 70% of the vote, and Jose is getting about 30%. Okay. So, I mean, one thing that you have to say, and you may have been talking about this while I was out copying down numbers, is that both Aulik and Leibhams worked, I think, incredibly hard. Yes, they did. And I give them a lot of credit. I was delivering brochures for an unnamed political party, and I happened on three guys who were doing some siding. I was handing my little brochure out, and the guy looked at me and he said, yeah, this guy was here yesterday. He was not too bad. And so I thought, well, I thought, good. It really shows, I think, that people are working hard. I think Aulik is gonna do much better, I think, in Manitowoc County, although I think Joe Leipam has been working hard in Manitowoc, I mean, he's a hard worker. We've talked about it, and David on the program in past times, you can't find a finer constituent politician than Joe Leipam, and I give him credit for that. When you look at, you know, there's a lot of people, not a lot. There are people that obviously don't agree with all Joe's politics, there are people that don't agree with Jamie's either, but the one thing you can't overlook with Joe is the fact that if you call him and you talk to him or one of his staff members and you ask for whatever, this information or this phone number, or can you, it's gonna happen. It's going to happen, and... And when we've talked about a recent poll that the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign either commissioned or put out, indicating that 6%, not 60, but just 6% of polled voters in Wisconsin think that legislators are working for their constituents' best interest. So you have a full, quick, 94% who think that they are not. That is a stunning number. Lawyers are out of the cellar, folks. There's a breed that's below lawyers and used car salesmen, and so I think that the legislature, all political bodies, but I think Wisconsin has got a long way to go in terms of rebuilding and refocusing people's ideas and just the sanctity of the system and so forth. I think, again, just like in Congress, I think when you ask people that general brought question about the legislature or about your lawmakers, they think about the institution and no one likes them. But when they come face to face with their local, their local lawmaker and the kind of levels of constituent service that they do, they're fairly, I think they're fairly happy. Part of it maybe because they really don't have a really strong sense about how their folks are voting down in Madison. I think if the Democrats wanted to be serious about mounting a serious challenge to Joe Lyman, they really need to look carefully at the kind of votes that Joe makes between the parades with the family and the visuals that he presents in the side of a van around election time. And that's just never been done. You had a track record of four years. Alec tried to pin him down on a couple of votes, to be sure. And I think he did a better job and I think that's why he's gonna do pretty well because he made it not about Joe and Joe's personality and Joe's obvious personal people skills. I mean, I feel like I said in the show before I've talked to him several times and like him personally. But I think if Alec gets, like I said, he gets 45% as a newcomer. That's a very good show. That's a very good show. But Joe, as a voter, you've got to cut, you know. When you're running a campaign, when you're running a political campaign, it's like sending letters of reference for a job. You're not gonna send a letter of reference that's gonna say you're horrible. You're gonna ask people who are gonna write, you know, to make you sound like the greatest thing since sliced bread. You know, political campaigns are the same thing. If the only thing that voters are listening to are the messages that are being sent by the candidates, they're missing most of the story. You know, voters have to become more engaged and go out and do their own homework. And that's not easy. People don't have time and they don't want to and they don't know where to get it. Well, I watched the debates that were, and channeled and played some of the debates. I wasn't there personally at the debates, but I got to watch it on channel eight. And I was impressed. I mean, I watched the live them Alec debate. And Joe, when asked a question, gave a direct answer. He didn't, him and all. And he spelled out his position. Alec is still not seasoned, so he was kind of vague on various things. So I guess over time, he could sharpen his message. But if he gets a good number of votes. Yeah, I think Jamie over time will develop some more polished skills. I watched the debates too, because the three of us were elsewhere doing some other kind of public service. But we were able to, I was impressed with how energetic and enthusiastic. It was a little too strident at times. I thought his campaign literature was a little difficult to wade through. And that may be because you're a challenger trying to convey a lot of stuff in a very short period of time or in very short resources. But it was pretty wordy. It was pretty tough to get through. My, oh, my, oh, my, oh, my, oh, my, oh, my, oh, my. I want to double back to the question you asked about, you know, in terms of Congress. And what's going to happen if the Democrats are in charge of the House and the Senate? I don't think, you know, there obviously is going to be some people making their bones with investigations. There'll clearly be more oversight. But the Democrats that are getting elected around this country, unless it's Kagan, because Kagan's probably the most liberal Democrat I've seen running around here. But around the country, both in the Senate and the House races are conservative Democrats. These are people who are centrists in, you know, Emanuel Rahm. Rahm, our friend Rahm. Who is in charge of the Congressional Campaigns, President Clinton's former advisor. Deliberately went out and found veterans. Deliberately went out and found middle-of-the-road people that couldn't be portrayed in the usual way that, you know, there's Democrats who sometimes are portrayed. And I think Jamie, I'll like fit that bill. You know, Iraq were a veteran. He was for concealing Kerry. He just wanted it much more stringent. And he was the last time he heard a Democrat say that. And I mean, other things were typical parts of the Democratic program, you know, agenda, about guaranteeing tuition for kids with B averages and that sort of thing. I think that's going to be the kind of Democrats are going to start seeing coming out of the wood. Now, the progressive wing won't like that. But that's the way it's going to be. Does the progressive wing ever win an election in the US, I wonder? Nutson's Woodrow Wilson. So Woodrow Wilson or Taft, but. He's a Republican, so. There you go. I mean, really, I mean, the progressive wing. Shucks. They just, Cardin wins. Maryland? Maryland. OK. Never mind. Just so Stealed and Win. Excuse me for interrupting. Well, there were folks who were running away from Steal in the Republican Party. They found him even a little tiny. I know you like him. I like him. They said he was even extreme for their point of view. Oh, is that right? I didn't pay much attention to that one. What was kind of interesting early on, everybody was kind of predicting that tonight was going to be the big Democrat sweep. Well, in the days, probably this last week leading up, I think people have gotten a little more conservative, if you will, with some of those predictions. Irish sense of doom. Perhaps. But clearly. You flirt with a girl across the hall or across the room. But eventually, you go home with a girl and you brought them to the dance. But what happens at all? And I think that's what happens with voters. Is this another Norman Rockwell comment on your part? Well, you know, they really, for a lot of independence to leave the Republican Party, if they voted the last couple of election cycles for them, for them to really, when you get to that filling in the arrow, pulling the trigger, that's a tough thing to do. They're going to have to be pretty, pretty alienated or pretty unhappy. Well, in worst case scenario tonight for the Democrats is that they walk away without controlling either one. They just miss it by a seat. Exactly. Whereas then, where do you go? Where do you go from there? That this was supposed to be your night of glory. And all of a sudden, you walked away with nothing. We just had a lot of clerks walk in. So I think fairly soon here, we're going to have some more of votes. But Steve, just fed me some new statistics. Village of Usberg, Attorney General Race? Do we have some? Let's see. Let's see, right? I'd like some percentage. I would think Van Hollen by 75% of the vote. I think I saw Falk in a coffee shop there a couple of days ago. All right, you've got 75%. 10 votes. Van Hollen, what percentage? 80%. Really, 80%? I would say probably 80-ish. 84.4%. 84, OK. 15% for Falk. The three Democrats in Usberg must not have been intelligent enough. We have some Sheboygan words, though, with Falk and Van Hollen. Falk, 54% to 45% in Ward 3. That's my word. Ward 5, 58. Maybe for our audience, just tell us where your ward is. If not, don't tell us your residence. Not too far from here. Ward 5, 58% for Falk, and Ward 11, 57%. So the city's Democratic wards are coming in. I think Falk is, we're kind of jumping around here, but that's to be expected as these vote totals come in. But I think that, and here are even more clerks. So pretty soon, we're really going to have our votes in. Things are looking good here. I think that they're looking at us coming in, like we're the men, women and men from Mars. Yeah, well, they've had a long, long day. Because it's 9.30. Do you have live women? No. I like numbers on those same wards. I think I only got a vote in Usberg. I mean, that would be like 99%. I got a few votes in Usberg. If I can get votes in Usberg, anybody can get votes in Usberg. Not many. Those people don't live in Usberg, any harm. Yeah, they don't. They left with the guy who owned the bar. Be gentle. You know, the wounds are hard to heal. And now you've totally. We're talking about Falk. Yeah. It's interesting because Barbara Lawton, our lieutenant governor, is I've met her and I've heard her speak. And her Wisconsin Women Equals Prosperity Task Force was hugely impressive, in my opinion, and produced some good results. You have Falk, who I think is very competent. And these are two strong women who are in their 40s. And I'll just say 40s. I don't know if they're younger or older. But I think clearly have a political future. And so wouldn't it be interesting if four years from now if Doyle doesn't run again, or if he loses tonight, or whatever? We have two women duking it out for the Democratic nomination. I think Kathleen running for governor really got her face out there and got people comfortable with who she was, even though she obviously didn't win. And I think that kind of inoculated against some of the accusations and some of the charges that were being leveled in the ads. Right. Well, and I think that clearly the Republicans did not have as good an enemy in Falk as they would have had in Mountain Shlager. It'd be interesting to see, and I don't know if it would be an indicator for Wisconsin, but down in Illinois, the gubernatorial race in Illinois, where you've got Bart Topinka, the Republican. She's running against Blagojevic, the Democratic incumbent, who is. I'm impressed you can say that. Yeah, that's pretty good. He's from Illinois, so. They called it for Blagojevic, didn't they? Did they? Yeah. Which is interesting, because his campaign, or his whole tenure is just dripping with corruption. I know. And whether or not he could survive, basically, it was a night of survival for him. And if he did, that would be interesting. And what does that mean for? Is it an indicator that a state like Illinois isn't ready for a female governor? She called, I guess she has a quote, Sunday she called, Blagojevic is a loser, just like the Cubs. She said, just like the Cubs. They asked her what he could do, if he lost the election, and she said, well, maybe he can manage the Cubs because they're losers too. Me too. Yes, that's just what we want to say. That's about as good as talking about running on Indian time. We have Doyle losing in the county, 51% to 46%. Well, that's not bad. I don't know what precincts those are. So that will be interesting. I'm going to give all of our clerks, they'll take about 10, 15 minutes to enter some of those votes. And then I think in 10 to 15 minutes, we'll just have a much clearer sense of what's happening in. My sense would be by looking in at what you've been saying is that we're seeing most of the outline areas are probably in already. That looks like a lot of them. And if that's 51, 46 right now, that's pretty good news if you're a Democrat. Yeah, I would have thought that Green would have done a lot better in some of those rural areas. The polling I saw on Green and Doyle near the end was something along the lines of 48, 44, 43. And then the remains were still undecided. So I mean, Green would have to get almost all the undecided to switch his way. Now, there is a theory that says if you're holding out to this point, more often than not, you're going to go with the opposition and vote against the humble. Is that right? Yeah. But you'd have to get everybody. How can people go this long and not be decided? I think these are your average folks who are busy making a living and they're busy paying bills, and they really are probably watching Dancing with the Stars. And all they're getting is the campaign ads and what do you believe when you watch that back and forth? Back and forth. I mean, you'll end up throwing your hands up and saying, I don't know, who? And then you wait for some sort of little thing like you were talking about, like that doctor's ad, which I think really made a big difference. I think Green just made a tremendously stupid mistake when he sort of laid out a trial balloon that he might challenge this election because of the Supreme Court not making a ruling. Whole, who's advising him about that? I mean, nobody wants to have a Florida here. Everybody's willing to say, let's have even a fit. They had ugly fight in the mud, but at the end, there's going to be a winner. A recounts one thing, but another thing to challenge the whole election because the Supreme Court didn't rule on campaign money. I don't know who was advising him about that. I think some of the two, the reason why it's easy to back somebody or pick somebody right away is, and going back to what you said 10 or 15 minutes ago about the high levels of voter dissatisfaction in terms of constituent service, if you called Senator Liebham's office, the chances are fairly good that you could get him on the phone if you really wanted to. When Jim Baumgart was in office, Jim was everywhere. He had personal relationships with a lot of his constituents. He's going to BJ's for breakfast. Right. Try to get Herb Cole on the phone. Try to get Senator Feingold on the phone. Try to get Sensenbrenner on the phone or Petri. It's not going to happen. Try to get to them. Try to have any kind of real, not even necessarily a relationship, but any kind of casual discussion. It's only going to happen under a very controlled setting where they are dictating the message. You can't interact with them. You can't dialogue with them. I think that's where the huge amount of voter disconnect comes. They're unapproachable. They're up there, and you can't get to them. And I think a lot of people get, I don't know, turned off or annoyed by that because you never get an opportunity to really get to know who they are. I have to say, have you ever gone to one of Feingold's little town meetings? We had one. We hosted one that liked him, actually. Yeah, what did you think of that? You think it was pretty contrived and pretty controlled? No. As long as I've seen one or two, I don't think they were. No, I don't think they were. Herb Cole, you can never find those. I think they're pretty approachable. But again, that's a one-day setting in about a two-hour format. Then he kind of whisks in, and then he's gone. No, I give him credit for doing them. But in that sense, he's an odd duck. At least you get that. Most of these people, you don't get anything. Well, Tom knows, as an alder person, that's the essence of local control. Nobody's afraid to call an alder man. Anything. And nobody's afraid to call an alder man. About anything. Or anything. They stop you on the street. I need to talk to you about something. And they're not that afraid to call in school board members. And nor should they be. Because I'm just like they are. I'm not any different than anybody else. That's local control. Well, results on the marriage amendment? Percentages? Well, again, if we're talking about the outlying areas, I would say 65, 35. I would say at least 60, 40. 55, 45. 71, 28. Yeah, like I said, these are the outlying areas. That's true. The rural communities, I would say yes. And I don't know what they are. And like I say, in another five minutes or so, I'll go and trust the wisdom of the people. There you go. But trust the wisdom of the people. That's very Jeffersonian of you. I do. They do make. The marriage amendment. They figure out all this in the bottom line, and they get right to the point. I think there was, and getting back to the amendment, I mean, if you were looking at candidates and information you got about candidates in the ads, I think the media, and I think the debate about the marriage amendment at least was reasonably got the issues on the table. I mean, I think everybody understood that there was a reasonable differences about how to interpret the second part. I think there was, I think most people had, I think, came to the polls with a sense of what is they, what is that was all about. The death penalty really got lost in the shuffle. Isn't that amazing? Except he'll knew the year, but it was only advisory crowd. So it was the stakes. The stakes are not as big, though, because it was only an advisory vote. Whereas the marriage one is on the books. This is Sherbrooke County now. And you get Dane County, and you're going to swing the other way, probably even more so. But one of the interesting things to me is that they talk about activist judges. Well, there are activist judges who are progressive or liberal, and there are activist judges who are conservative. Here's the phrase that a legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized in this state. I'm telling you, that's a full employment act for lawyers. That's a, when you say similar or substantially similar, we're on our way to the races here. It will be if it's- That's going to have to be hacked out case by case and issue by issue. It really will. I have represented people who are not married, but who have contractual relationships. I don't know. They weren't identical. Were they substantially similar to that of marriage? I don't know. Businesses and school boards, and they're going to provide benefits to same-sex partners. I don't think they just know better. I mean, they know, you know, they're in it for a profit or the school boards in it, you know, or things like that looking, trying to be fair. Well, in more central city wards, Alec is holding his own with vibe him. 50% to 49% in ward 11. Ward 5 is 53. 47 for Alec. Ward 16, and I should know by now where all of these are, but is 51% for Alec? Ward 15 is 49% for Alec. 50% for- He needs to be winning bigger than that if he's actually going to win, though. But the fact that he's staying that competitive, yeah. Yeah. But this, I don't know. That's pretty good because this is Joe's base. Right. This is Joe's base. And if Joe is losing in his base, that makes it... In his first election, though, he won the city. Yeah, that's what I mean. He won the city. So this is not especially good. I do remember he managed to run that campaign without ever using the word Republican. Yeah, this is, Alec's winning in the city that he made inroads. And then Alec has Manitowoc as another city driver. Yeah, exactly. So, but in any event... Well, that'd be something. As I say, the referendum and the whole concept of, quote, activist judges, quote, unquote, I think has become very distorted. But there are judges who are on both sides of the political spectrum. And I believe that most judges, they don't necessarily put that aside, but they pay attention to the law and to the principles of law, which is presidential, paying attention to precedent, and so forth. I think most judges, whether they're elected or appointed, really have that level of integrity. There are a few who don't, but I think they're truly in the minority. Now, you may have a view of life that slants your decision-making in one direction or the other, but this question one is... See that, see that. It's a legal minefield. It's gonna be fun. Let's put it that way. Let's, that's the house. Those words are the house and let's put the furniture in the house and I think it's gonna be an interesting process. So, and so in any event, well... Yeah, that's interesting. So, Sheboyne County is strongly in favor of a marriage amendment. Well, and Carrie blesses hard is bringing these figures in and I'm not sure how many words are reporting, how many precincts are reporting that number, but and where they are necessarily. The computers in the clerk's office really break it down for you, precinct by precinct and town by town and some towns have two precincts or two voting wards, most have just one. The city of Sheboyne Falls has got, I forget, nine and we have 16 and we're here within the city and so there really are, I think 60 precincts altogether that some just have a couple of houses and so forth, and they're not really that strong, but in any event. But going back to Sheboyne County, you know, I was, they were doing exit polling at the first congregation church where I was, but I think, yeah. Sheboyne County. No, it was they. There was somebody outside. I think it was channel four. Okay. But, and I filled out the form I participated, but Sheboyne County is kind of a swing county or a bellwether county. I mean, they voted Democrat. They vote Republican, where some other counties are always Democrat and always Republican. Well, the city, typically will vote Democratic and the county will always vote Republican. But as a group, there's enough movement that they go back and forth. It's like Ozaki's always gonna be Republican. Ozaki's always Republican. Republican, right. So there's some, when you talk about the green and Doyle race, it'd be kind of interesting which way the county's tipping. Right. Yeah. So, well, it looks like Senator Clinton has her race sewn up 69-29. Yeah. So. The question I had tonight was, you know, is there's showing gonna be strong enough to make that White House run in two years? Oh, isn't that going to be just quite the amazing process here? And I, for one thing, that Barack Obama needs to spend a little more time in the Senate, kind of learning a little bit more before he launches off. And I think there is something about the seasoning that time brings that, I mean, this guy's pretty unseasoned, but. And he's gotten a pretty easy ride of it. Well, no kidding. He's got an easy ride. When you go on a national campaign. Boom-ba-dee, boom-ba-ba. They pick you apart. Slice and dice. They slice and dice. No kidding. No kidding. So it was interesting when Falk jumped into the governor's primary so late and did really quite well considering how late she was when she came in. So those spoilers are kind of tend to be irritating. Let's talk a little bit. You know, we don't, well, and there is Senator Barack Obama. Just interesting. I, it's, we only have 15 minutes left. I told you the time would go quickly. I know, wow. And I wish we had a few more results for our audience, although I'm sure that people who are listening to us have a few other things on as well. Maybe we could go back and before we go, kind of take a peek. Take a peek. Get some stuff. And we'll do that. And I should do that for the, for the league anyway. While I'm doing that, do you guys want to talk a little bit about? Thanks folks. Oh, very good. Oh, we've got printouts. These are like official. Campaign finance reform. No, I don't want to talk about campaign finance reform. I'm appalled. I'm appalled at how much money was spent on the race. Over the country, the entire country, $2.2 billion. $2.2 billion. Yeah, I mean, I got some numbers today. A little over $2 billion in ad spending. Just in ads. We're not talking about streets, we're not talking about signs in the lawns and the flyers in the bullskies. In those areas where there were particularly hotly contested races, the media owners in those areas are gonna see between 45 and 60% increases in ad sales. Just from the election along. Well, the Green Bay Television stations have more money than the Packers, though. Exactly. Okay, okay, all right. All right, well, some of the printouts here are from various different places. Word 15 is probably complete. Doyle, one-handedly, 56% to 41. Okay, there you go. Falk, 53% to 46, but let's switch over to Sheboygan Falls, words one and two. Doyle, 38%, Green, almost 60. Wow. Where was that? It says Sheboygan Falls, words one and two. Yeah, Falk, 37%, Van Hollen, 62%. I think that's very interesting. Owlik, 32%, Liveham, 67%. Owlik was very close in word 15, but just close. 49.4% to 50.6%, so that's, I mean, that would be a more typical democratic stronghold. Here we have Elkhart Lake coming in. Doyle, 44%, Falk, 41%, Owlik, 39%, almost 40%. What? Elkhart Lake is 44% Doyle. It's interesting. I don't think that that would be more skewed Republican. Right, right. Really? Yeah. Okay, well, let's get some more numbers. Yeah, things keep piling in here. I'm not. We have word three, my word. Doyle, 55%, Falk, 54%, Owlik, 47%, with 52% for Liveham. Terry Van Akron in all of these is winning handily. Jose was under the radar screen until the debates. Right. And then you use, when you're talking about family values, for better or for worse, you're going to ride that sled, you can't use the word veto or. That's just not going to work. I mean, that kind of is sending a little mixed message, I think, to your brothers and sisters, to you. I just thought it was such an interesting phrase. I really don't think, and I really don't think, that the ad, it wasn't so much it was racist, it was just so amateurish, that it just hurt him. I think it actually put him up and raised his visibility, where people almost started paying attention, saying, whoa, we don't really know much about this. That's what really got him really on the map, was just, I think, that people were stunned at, yeah, amateurish is a good word, that just, you can't come up with anything more sophisticated than that. 73 to 27, Terry Van Akron, okay. Okay, are we getting. This is channel four. Okay, are we? Have a little look at channel four. Are we getting any Kagan and guard numbers? Well, while I was gone, the numbers came in, and they were what? It was really early though. It was really early. Kagan was up, and it was fair, yeah. 51, 49, something like that, yeah. Okay, the village of Adel went for Mark Green, 61%. And went for J.B. Van Hollen, 65%. So Cedar Grove. Okay, 80%. Doyle, 22%. V. Barrett. I did better than Jim Doyle. Forge of Cedar Grove. Oh my, Kathleen Falk, 17%. I did, well, we won't go into that anymore. But in any event, and there really weren't any other contested races of any size, and Waldo, 35% for Doyle, 62% for Green. Falk, 35%, Van Hollen, 64%. Those are deeply, deeply, deeply Republican numbers. Is the county, I'm thinking the outlying county gets more and more conservative as time goes on. I don't remember the county being, I don't remember the county being that conservative. So those are interesting numbers. Ward 10 in the city of Sheboygan, typically a Democratic, 60% for Doyle, 55% for Falk, but only 46% for Oleg. Only 46, I think. Yeah, 53% for Liebhand. Do you have a Ward 1 and 2, just for the heck of it? Yeah, no, we haven't gotten those yet. But the guys have been really good about bringing those in, so pretty soon we'll have all of those. That's the Northeast side, that stuff. So, but Ward 3, my ward is typically fairly Democratic. I was gonna ask you, how would you characterize your ward? It's, we are a heterogeneous ward. I mean, all different kinds of housing and types of people and things like that. So, I just think that the county is getting more and more conservative. Which is okay. There you go. There you go. There's some sanity going on in the world. You're wearing black. I mean, that's how you look at it. You're wearing black. I'll be in mourning today. So we're gonna let him have his do. Yeah, exactly, that's only fair. We'll just quietly hang our heads and say, there you go. Congratulations to the Democrats. But it's not untypical they said that Democrats in the third year of an election, or that there's a switch in House seats and Senate seats. Well, you remember the tearing of hair and the renting of clothing in the 94, the 94 congressional races. I mean, that was terrible. That's when the Republicans had a message. Nobody had a message this year. It was, I'm against Bush or you guys are rotten. Where was the message? Exactly. It was the war, that was it, the war. No, I was just showing that with 22% statewide, the dial was at 56% with 22% statewide reporting. But didn't that show that Van Hollen was winning? At 53% with 22% reporting. And in fact, now Channel 4 is projecting dial as the winner. All right. Not calling the race, but just projecting. Interesting. Okay. 61 to 39 statewide. So in the marriage amendment. With 20% and 61% already, yeah. That's a big number, okay. That's interesting in the death penalty as well. So Paul Ryan has been projected the winner. Of course, that's no surprise. Neither is Tammy Baldwin. She's really become, I think, pretty entrenched in her area. And kind of, I think, as well. Oh yeah, the incumbents in Wisconsin, except for the Green Bay. Yeah, we'll see the Green Bay one here. Sensenbrenner, yeah. Exactly. More coming up here. Exactly. I should tell you that I got some writing votes for Congress. Very good, Ken. You did. Yes, I've been told that the individuals, because there's no challenger to Congressman Petri. Some people wrote in my name. So we really can't talk about that race because of the vehicle. Just Kagan at 52%, with 35% reported. Wow. That's early yet. And that Reynolds. That's early. That's early yet. That Tom Reynolds and Sullivan race was really, was pretty ugly. We have just five minutes left. Well, if Falkin's Speed, if Falkin's Speed, what, is it just the television ass portrayed as opening up the prison doors and we all are going to be knee-deep in criminals? Well, people need to remember that the attorney general generally has no real role in law enforcement. Exactly. I mean, you had Peg Lautenschlager going up north to try that case, but that was highly unusual. It was such a highly, highly publicized case. Right, so that the best that you can really do with, I think, with an attorney general is to run a good crime lab. And I think that was a surprisingly vulnerable issue because, I mean, those are just services that get cut back. When there's a budget deficit, you get cut back. And that's just the way it is. But that issue caught on with people, I think. Well, what happens is when Peg's out of the picture, she's in charge of the crime lab. Now that you've got two newcomers, where does that issue go? You can't pin it on anybody. But I think he worked that at least a little bit. And I know that during the beginning of the real campaign, that was something of an issue. It's just one of those races that it's just, if you're a traditional Democrat or a traditional Republican, it's just easy to vote the party. Right, because if you're looking at it just on the outside very casually, you don't know what the attorney general does day to day. They're kind of involved in law enforcement, I think. But they're probably just people that want to be governor someday, and they have to do something before they can be governor. I don't think Falk counterpunched very well. I hate to put it in those terms, and I don't like those negative campaign ads, but if you don't respond to it, yeah, exactly. But I mean, yeah, but I think you have to make that case. I think I was an executive. I ran Dane County. I made budgets work, and she's done a great job. All accounts, she's balanced budgets. She's made a double choices. But attorney general don't do that. I mean, they protect spotted owls, and consumers from being ripped off. They do education, and they do a variety of other things, and those are just the things that they do. But you know, she worked in the attorney general's office for how many years as an assistant? Right, right, and she was like, you know, that's. And that got lost. I mean, that was something that she could hang on her shoulders. I'm knowledgeable about the office. Right, it just didn't seem like she put out there any kind of a clear message, or clearly articulated her credentials. She just kind of got lost in the shuffle. Let me put you guys on the spot just as, kind of closing up arguments or closing up comments. What would you hope to see in the next two years in terms of what your local and state and national legislatures can do for us? That's a pretty broad question, so take a run at it. And we have to be quick about it. And we've got four minutes. Okay, we'll have three and a half. I'll take this. You all watch my stream. Okay, yeah. Locally, I think we need to come to an intelligent decision about how much money we're gonna spend on the police department. Here, here. And the second issue is we need to figure out how we're gonna run the city without a tax increase, because that seems to be where we're going. So those would be the two big issues. Statewide, I think we have to get real about the budget and figure out how we're gonna resolve that same. It's gonna be budgetary issues and nuts and bolts issues. And I think that's the big, big issue in Wisconsin and, you know, gay marriage will go in the distance till the lawyers have at it with it. Nationally, I think it's going to be what to do with the Bush tax cuts that they want to extend and the Democrats are gonna be put in a bind about how they're gonna handle that, because if they, if those tax, if those are extended infinitely, this budget is gonna balloon in the deficits as far as I can see at a very time we need surpluses for Social Security. I think the Democrats and the, and I think we have to look at the Baker report that's coming out about what to do in Iraq. I think those are gonna be the two big issues. Well, that kind of covers the territory. I mean, he covers the gamut. I would add, I wish our state legislators, or I wish the state would take in to look at shared revenue. We have too many governmental entities that eat into this pie. And Scott McCallum, plus his party, he lost on that issue. He tried to tackle that issue to get local municipalities and villages and townships to work together by cutting back on shared revenue. And, but everybody complained. We want our money. We want our money. We want our money. Yep. And that's what I would like. That's tough. That's a tough one. That's the Social Security one. Okay, see if you can beat me now, Dave. Well, it's a sickness. In addition to the things that Ken and Tom mentioned, healthcare on a national level and even a state level to a degree and even on a local level. And it's harder on a local level because it's such a harder subject to get your arms around. But we've got to figure out a way that people can have reliable, affordable healthcare. That's not going, you know, that any kind of a salary increase you get is already gone because you're gonna see a double digit increase in your healthcare. Union, non-union, whatever. It's irrelevant. We've got to find a way to get healthcare. And it's the issue that everybody talks about that nobody wants to deal with. When's the last time you saw a politician truly deal with healthcare? They put all these proposals out, but when push comes to shove, they don't want to deal with it. So I think healthcare is a big one. Yeah. And I get to get off the hook because I'm gonna spend our remaining few seconds just to thank some people. First, to thank Julie Glancy and their staff for opening up the lobby in their office and make the voting process a little more transparent for Sheboygan County or the city of Sheboygan residents. I'd really like to thank the Channel 8 people, a little round of applause as they hauled endless cable and microphones and cameras and just really put themselves out here to have a live and online look. And so we wanna thank you. David, thanks for joining the Looney Bin here. It was fun. We can talk and talk and talk. It was fun. Yeah, yeah. And thank you to all of you for watching. If you've watched the whole hour and a half, we've certainly covered a gamut of issues and personalities and challenges, but the whole voting process really in a nutshell, from my perspective, if you're talking patriotism, you're talking voting. And so for that, we thank you. And we'll see you in 08.