 Hello, welcome to this week's legislative update. I'm Jim Baumgart, your co-host, and along with me is Nanette Boulevouche from Elkhart Lake. Yes. Out in the country. You bet. Welcome to the city today. We want to talk a little bit about probably one of the more important things in local government, and that's the people right to select their representative. And our forefathers back in 1850s or before, and in other states decided that it's good to have treasures and county clerks and judges elected by local people because that's the check and balance. You just don't want everything run by the county board or a city council. You want people to elect their own representatives so that you can go to them because you want to have that right. Anyway, so we brought in a county official, John Doulton, who is a county clerk. Yes. And it's an important job, John. Absolutely. I think so. Why don't you introduce yourself to the viewers and how long you've been county clerk? Sure. 14 years? No, no. Five years, I guess. John Doulson, I live in the city of Sheboygan. I first ran for county clerk in 2012 and won, obviously. So I'm one year into my second term, so I've been clerk for five years. A very important job, but elections are probably the most important. And the fact that you are what, secretary or oversee the county board meetings that record all the votes and amendments. So in that sense, you're literally a clerk? Absolutely. So, okay. First and foremost, in the statutes, it's running elections. Second is I'm the secretary to the county board. Yeah. I'm going to arrange for the agendas, make sure the minutes are posted. Full-time job. How many are in your staff? Two and three-quarter gals. So pretty small office. Yeah. Okay. Well, what happened to the three-quarter? Does she have another job? Nope. That's bad. I shouldn't say she. Yeah, it's a she. And I'll bet like everything else in municipal government, you've probably downsized and you've become more efficient thanks to technology and other things. Is that true? Yes. Okay. So I had the opportunity to make some cutbacks and one of the positions was a full-time. And in my table of organization, I had a three-quarter position, and I shifted the work to the three-quarter position. Okay. So tell us, what do you like the most about your job as county clerk? What do I like the most? I think I'm one of the few in the county that actually likes elections. But that intrigued me the most and got me interested in the position. Like what about elections intrigue you? That it's our system of government. That's how we elect our representation at all levels, the municipal, county, and state and federal. But that you can participate in the process and make sure it's a fair and balanced and proper election, and that's extremely important. And it just intrigues me. Well, we do have some elections coming up right now. John, we have county board. I'm a supervisor. Yes. I filled out my nomination. Are you writing again? One more time for sure. Okay. I'm getting older and older. And people need to know they can run against me. Right. And they should. Well, by the time this show is being aired in January. It can be late. It's not too late to run. But it's definitely not too late to be involved and support a candidate. You support and to be aware of the elections. We've got a primary election coming up February. Third Tuesday in February. Yeah. I think it's the 20th. And then the spring election is in April. First Tuesday in April. And what's the most important thing people need to know about these spring elections? Spring elections. The February one unfortunately isn't going to get a lot of turnout. It's state supreme court. A lot of people don't keep track of that. And we could have a primary for possibly the city of Sheboygan. They're changing from 16 alderman, older persons down to 10. We could see some there. There's still all the papers aren't in yet. So we could see a primary for possibly a county supervisory district. Sure. Sure. Not likely. But because you need three or more to have a primary. But then in April. April is the important election locally because that's when we have all of the village races, the town races, school districts, as well as the county supervisory. And these are nonpartisan positions. Correct. But people are running their local municipalities. And why don't enough people run? And we hardly ever get contests in the county board. I was on a school board for two terms a while ago. And I don't even think I had an opponent for one of those. I think several reasons. First, well, they liked you. That was it. I'm sure I was so. There's enough happening that they don't like at whatever level school district or town or municipality. And so they don't want to get involved. They think everything's going well enough. The other portion of people I think are complacent and don't want to stick their neck out. You may be in the paper. You're representing your municipality. So you might get some people that are on your side for a decision and some that are opposed. So you're going to get phone calls and emails, possibly hollering at you because of this or that. And do you want to take that responsibility? That is important. I write it out to a column and I'm not afraid at times if somebody is voted that I thought was wrong. I try not to do that often. But I put county board supervisors' names in my column saying, give them a call. Well, they don't like that. Because you don't want to do that often because they're doing the best job possible. But if they're going to do something that really is environmentally on my part wrong, I'll write their name in and their telephone number. And people don't sometimes want to get so involved that they feel pressure. Tell us about some of the jobs that you have to take care of on the clerk's office because I know you issue passports and other things. In addition to... And you make money doing that? We do. That is the office. We don't know of you. No, you don't make money on that. Aside from secretary to the county supervisors and the passports, the elections, we do passports, which is a main source of revenue for our office, which helps offset the tax levy. Yes. So we do passports, the whole application process, but we are just processing the applications and getting them to the federal office. We don't actually give passports. And then we take photos for those renewing passports. And you charge for that? We charge for the passport photos as well. And we keep that. We're a little bit more than one of the stores. We're a little bit less than a couple other stores. Or people can go to the post office and get that done. They can do it by themselves if they follow the parameters set up by the federal website. No. I could get my own passport on. You can get your own passport photo. The application saw us to go through my office. Unless it's a renewal, you'll do that. And they can find out more information about that by contacting you, going on the website, correct? Correct. We're also listed on the federal travel website. Now, I know that some people have called for positions such as yours to be appointed rather than elected. Right now, you're still elected. That would be very bad. And we know how Jim feels about this. You have burned that. How do you feel? Should the position be appointed or elected? I think it should be elected. I think more government. I think it's a balance of a good balance with what's set up in the state statutes right now. You need some. You can't have a chief county administrator hiring all the positions, especially ones that are... The county executive for that matter. Yeah. Especially the ones that are set up in the state statutes to have that department head follow. Because then you get into cronyism, in my opinion. And I think that's why it was set up. We're not unlike any other states that they have this balance. Some are hired. Some are elected. Would you say our elections are running pretty well here in Sheboyin County? I would say extremely well. Okay. That's an easy question. I think there's some snafus if I don't remember a couple years ago. Well, there was a learning curve. There was some where we were trying a new system and we had some late postings. But the elections commission isn't concerned about when things are posted. And we overcame that at the very next election. And we're going to be implementing new equipment probably in 2018, which would alleviate that issue. We'll leave the Russians in, will we? We will not. Our system is unhackable. Okay. Good. Unless they find a way to hack through the electrical system. The only thing that's connected to the internet and the outside world is the electrical cord. So the point is you are going above and beyond to make sure our elections are not hacked. Absolutely. And the state is as well. In addition, when you have the results on the machines, immediately that night after the polls close, there's a municipal board of canvas. They're double checking the results. All of that information comes into my office. A week later, we have a county board of canvas. And we go over all of the results that are handed from the municipal board of canvas. And we're also double checking again the results from the machines. And then we submit that information to the state. And that will all be going through in the spring elections. Of course, that'll be a smaller turnout. Well, how do we make the spring elections a bigger turnout? They aren't traditionally small. Do you want to encourage people to vote? Do you have any other thoughts also? We try to get the word out. We put an election insert out that goes to most of the households. I would like to... There's some legislation that I'm working with some legislators to allow clerks to use non-subscription-based papers so you can get it out to all residents in the county. A lot of the free ones go to every mailing address. The subscription-based papers, the number of those are going down each year because it's switching to internet viewing. And election notices, governmental notices don't go to the digital version. Would you support online voting like they have in Oregon? I would not support online voting to my understanding of... I don't know all that they're doing in Oregon. Was it Ohio? What a lot of the states are going towards is absentee voting 100%. Washington and Oregon are moving towards that. So you do everything either by mail or... It's all by mail. Where you don't have to come in on a snowy day. I'm not at favor of that. I still think election day is important to the country. And if you... If everyone can just mail in their absentees whenever, then it's kind of election month or election week. John? You take away that importance. We have run out of time. Yeah, it always goes up and down. Whether it's elections or services you provide, when we run out of time we have to end it. I want to thank you for coming in. Thank you. And we'll talk a little bit more about elections in another program. And I want to thank the people for coming and watching because elections are important. County clerk's office and treasurer's office and register of deeds and the rest of them. Very important that you select the person that you want. And please come in next week for legislative update. Thank you. So...