welcome everyone to bridge elections FAQ I'm Isabelle lman the host for today we will get started in just a moment we're just letting folks in we're so glad that you spent part of your day with us uh Simon I'm going to start with you just to like get things rolling as we get everything set up what is one thing you did this weekend that you otherwise wouldn't have done well I was up visiting a family up in Gaylord and went on a nice hike in the uh Pigeon River Country State Forest first time there really beautiful area ni thanks thanks I'm glad you got to do that all right we are going to get started welcome to bridge elections FAQ a live discussion where our reporters answer your questions about the 2024 election I'm Isabelle lomman the education reporter at Bridge Michigan a nonprofit nonpartisan newth organization and I'll be moderating today's discussion today we have Capital reporters Jordan hermany and Simon chuster and making his huge first Bridge FAQ debut we have Ron French as well we'll be talking about the recent visits from vice president kamla Harris and former president Donald Trump we'll also have an update on the Goan project and we'll also talk about Ron's recent reporting on US Senate candidate Mike Rogers his history with opioid policy and what we can learn from it we've gotten a lot of questions from you all in the last few days and we're really excited to answer those if you have more questions you can drop them in the chat and we will get to them later later in this discussion if you miss part of this event you can always go back to our website bridgemi.com where we'll have the full recap Simon I know you had some fun this weekend but you also covered the Harris visit yesterday and Trump's visit last week what should readers know about these visits yeah well I mean I think the major takeaway from this is probably somewhat obvious which is that Michigan is a hugely important state in this upcoming election the fact that we had you know between the president and vice presidential candidates four visits over the last seven days is really uh significant now the things that they talked about in the subject of these visits were pretty different when you look at the Republican visits um Trump adj a National Guard conference he spoke about um he came also to Potterville then and talked about electric vehicles as did vice presidential candidate JD Vance when he visited uh Big Rapids and so while they sort of centered on electric vehicles um the Democrats when kamla Harris came to visit during labor day and addressed a crowd of union workers they were talking about protecting workers support for labor unions more broadly and so um there's sort of an asymmetry here but of course uh Republicans are interested in peeling away Union votes from uh kamla Harris and trying to bring more Union voters over to the Republican side and they're obviously showing up more because they really are targeting the state but it I think it remains to be seen you know how confident KLA Harris's campaign is and whether we're going to see more from her because so far publicans are here more often I think it's also important to acknowledge that bridge has been going to each of these events and we've been factchecking what the candidates say in their speeches so if you have questions about what the candidates are saying and if they are true you can go to our website bridgemi.com and it has all of that information Ron you did some really interesting reporting last week about Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers he says his time in the FBI will help him address the opioid epidemic but an investigation by you finds that Rogers Wen Congress supported efforts to expand access to these drugs Ron was Roger views about opua unique amongst lawmakers at the time sure thank you for that question um the 2000s when when um Mike Rogers was in Congress was just an incredibly critical moment in what we now call the opioid crisis um it was a time when when opioid um um prescriptions were increasing and so we were addictions and deaths and something were still battling today uh the reason we did the story is because um when looking back through the records we found that uh Mike Rogers was was a leading Advocate uh for expansion of of opioid prescriptions now was he alone he was not and that's an that's important context to have at that time in the 2000s we didn't know as much as we do now about opioid addiction and what these pills would do to you and um there there was bipartisan uh members of Congress who um supported the same sort of things he did as far as pain um and frankly those efforts did make um access to pain medications uh more prevalent for people who needed them unfortunately the downside of that is it also made made them available for people who became addicted and um and and some of them actually died yeah that's an unfortunate reality of what we saw you also looked into the drug company's campaign contributions into Roger previous campaigns what did you find right well as as as we said you know that he wasn't alone but he was uh considered a champion for the pharmaceutical industry at the time um for for example um Rogers received $226,000 in donations from companies the same companies that are now paying billions of dollars to States including Michigan for their role in in expanding the opioid crisis I he received $162,000 from from um seven opioid Distributors that supplied 83% of prescription opioids to Michigan uh during about a 13-year period so um it's it's it's a you know he it's it's it's you it's hard to deny that that that um that Congressman Rogers was uh definitely involved in some ways both positive and negatively in in the opioid crisis and Ron I've lost count of how many different stores you've written on opioids this year what can readers expect next from you when it comes to opard coverage yeah we've written over over uh um myself and my colleague Robin herb have written over three dozen opioid stories this year mainly focusing on um this huge amount of money that's coming in through the opioid settlement funds we're getting um 1.6 billion dollars coming in and there's unfortunately not much accountability and very little transparency in how that money SP is being spent so what's coming out next Isabelle is something I think will be valuable for for the public um we took it upon ourselves because the state isn't tracking this money uh we spent three months uh talking to communities around the state tracking how they're spending their money and that report should be coming out later this week thanks for that and we also had a reader question over the weekend Alysa slotkin is running against Mike Rogers in the senate race did slot can play any sort of role in the opioid epidemic and or the policies around it no not to our knowledge um she was uh in Congress just recently and so the the policies that that impacted uh the opioid epidemic uh were really put in place either the actions or the inactions were were were taken um during the 2000s and early 2010s before H slotkin came to Congress thanks for that yeah she just took office in 2019 so I'm sure we'll be learning more with time we have other reader questions in here um one question a reader had is they had reservations about voting absentee because their party is not the majority party in their Community Simon what safety mechanisms are in place to ensure that ballots are secure yeah there's sort of a chain of custody that takes place when someone votes absentee first of all before you drop off your ballot you place it in a secrecy sleeve so that it can be readily viewed and that sleeve is signed uh when you then take and drop off ballot your click receives that U either from a ballot Dropbox or through the mail and they can't open the sleeve or they can't look at the ballot until at the earliest five days before election day then they're allowed thanks to a 2022 B proposal to have up to five days of pre-processing which means that they can take the ballot out of the sleeve lay it flat but they can't feed it into the tabulator and when that happens on Election Day when those ballots are being fed into the tabulator and begin to be counted that often happens in larger communities at an absentee vote po processing center accounting board and there there's both uh election inspectors and partisan Challengers that represent both parties provided your political party has submitted some challenges to be present and there people are essentially there to monitor the process and ensure that nothing unto is happening and so there are checks throughout the P the process and independent individuals who are sort of looking for anything that might be unor thanks for that Simon we also had a reader who wanted to know about people who come to the country illegally they want to know if those folks are able to get driver's licenses and if they can then use those licenses to vote the simple fact is no that they cannot Michigan law doesn't allow people who are not in the country legally to either receive a driver's license or a state ID although there has been movements to try to get uh allowing undocumented imigrants to receive driver's licenses that has been moved through the legislature or really been taken up in any sense um you can also register to vote online but again that requires a social security number and if you're not a documented immigrant who's in the country legally you're not able to get one of those and so you're not able to legally register to vote thanks for that RFK Jr is out of the race but he will stay on the Michigan ballot we've had several reader questions about this but when Joe Biden dropped out Harris's name got added to the ballot why yeah I can take that question um so the long and the short of it is uh convention timing right so uh Robert Kennedy was confed confirmed to be his party I believe he's running a part of the natural law party uh earlier this year in April they held their conventions and nominated him as their candidate of choice if you'll remember the DNC did not actually occur until after Biden dropped out of the race which then gives the party the ability to say Hey you know our our new uh candidate of choice is KLA Harris on the ballot because of that you know we kind of just assumed that Joe Biden would be appearing on the November ballot but because he actually was never confirmed as the Democrats 2024 candidate of choice it wasn't actually the case until the convention uh occurred earlier this year I feel like we all kind of learned something new about our political system this cycle and how everything went so thank you for that Jordan we also talked a lot last week about the Goan plant and several readers have written in with questions about that so if you're unfamiliar the Goan plant is an electric vehicle company Plant owned by a subsidiary of a Chinese company and the project has received millions of dollars in state incentives but some res resents are supportive of the program while other residents are not first when are elected officials allowed to sign non-disclosure agreements that prevent them from Talking publicly about these incentive projects you know that usually occurs when these projects are first um thinking about coming to Michigan because as proponents will say they uh these ndas contain a lot of proprietary information you know what the project is what we're hoping the project will achieve the number of jobs who's you know funding it um so they they signed these early there's a bit of contention uh from both sides honestly Republicans and Democrats both have signed ndas both have come out publicly and said that ndas are are bad when it comes to the Strategic Outreach and attraction Reserve fund or sore uh which is what a lot of these ndas are are coming through I believe since that fund started in uh 2021 almost 50 lawmakers have actually signed ndas some of whom have come out after the fact and said you know what I wish I didn't sign uh this is information that my constituents deserve to know or uh the information within frankly was just that you know information it didn't NE uh necessitate an NDA in the eyes of some of those who signed and uh now they're you know completely hand tied on discussing it whatsoever and how long are they handtied from discussing these projects is it forever or just a few years Jordan uh you know I guess it really does depend on the NDA uh so it's usually about five years give or take um so after that they are capable of talking about the NDA or whenever the term of their NDA expires uh but usually after that fact the goal is to either a already have that project in place you know cited and and we're aware of what's going on um or you know the project has crumpled and moved on which we have seen in uh Michigan there was plans for a believe it was a copper mine up in the up that or a copper industry up in the up that you know the deal kind of just collapsed and it it never came to fruition another question mentioned the idea that there's Rare Minerals used to make these batteries if Michigan were to Halt production of electrical Vehicles could the Goan plant be stopped at this point so right now the Goan is actually moving Full Speed Ahead um there was a court decision pretty recently which has allowed the plant to move forward and you know in so far as I'm aware um unless some other court intervenes or you know uh something else happens to stop the project altogether you know the state pulling its funding or if Goan itself just decides to stop there's not a lot that can be done even if Michigan does decide that it's not going to be moving forward with electric vehicles thank you Jordan if you have questions for our reporters about this election you can type them in the chat and we'll get to them we're going to go through some of the questions that readers have submitted we talked a little bit about what you can do once you've submitted your ballot Simon can you talk to me about if if I submit a ballot can I then look up how I voted and if not why not so you can usually track uh when a ballot has been first mailed to you and then when uh your local government entity has received that ballot and that it's been processed right that's but at the same time you can't look at who you voted for readily online I think that there'd be significant concerns about the disclosure of publicly identifiable information if you're able to just put in a few basic amounts of information and then uh see who somebody voted for especially if it's not your own information however whether or not somebody voted in an election is a public record anyone can request that information at any time so leaving that information accessible online is uh generally pretty normal um at the same time if you did want to uh look you know make sure that who you voted for was the uh correct information um a ballot is a public record and so you can file a Freedom of Information Act request but again freedom of the Freedom of Information Act in Michigan has exemptions for person identifiable information an information that would be an unwarranted invasion of individual's privacy so if you were to request your own ballot I think you might be able to see although I haven't tested this myself um who you voted for in the selections on that ballot at the same time uh if you try to do that for another person I don't think that it would work at all well and not to men that there's also the uh concern for security right that if something like that were to exist that information gathered together all in all in one kind of publicly available area um it honestly wouldn't take much especially with how uh prolific some individuals are with computers to access that information which you know then would draw into question the the security frankly of the the privacy of your vote for sure and and then you have to think about you know what harm can come from that so thank you Jordan and Simon and then another question about Goan so we've talked about um you know where the plant stands we've talked about um where community members stand which is kind of all across the Spectrum on whether they support the plant or not Jordan or Simon could either of you talk about if Alysa slotkin and Mike Rogers supports this plant yeah so um Mike Rogers has been a fixture at at Trump rallies and with also JD Vance's appearance in Big Rapids last week and he's dwelt on this enormously he's made this an issue and a passion point for his campaign um but I believe this reader's question was also asking us why we aren't questioning Alysa slackin about this and making it a major issue within the candidacy and the fact of the matter is is that candidates in campaigns uh make uh you know seek public office based upon narratives each of them tries to craft a narrative that they want to base their campaign around right and so we have a journalistic responsibility not to sort of how toow to either candidate's narrative but instead you know do independent coverage that doesn't rely on sort of the talking points and issues that they want to make the individual election about so while we're going to report on the issues that candidates are emphasizing uh we also have to be able to create that balance and ensure that we're not cing to one side and also of of course Goan was not in her District but of course it wasn't in Mike Rogers either thank you for that and you mentioned factchecking Simon could you talk just a little bit about how Bridge goes about factchecking candidates claims yeah I mean we rely on not necessarily we didn't do not rely on the reporting of other Publications but we go and investigate primary sources either analysis from government entities or independent think tanks or resources in order to check this uh some of these claims a lot of these claims often involve numbers and economic data and really delving into white papers and research uh projects in order to try to understand where they're getting some of these conclusions thank you and Bridge is going to continue to fact check um when candidates visit we have a reporter at these events and we think it's really important to make sure that whatever a candidate is saying if we're going to tell you they're saying that that we're able to share whether that is true untrue or it's somewhere in the middle we appreciate you all being here today if you have more questions for us you can always ask us at bridgemi.com where we have an elections tracker and we have a link where you can ask questions we're going to continue to have these events once a week typically on Mondays at 11:30 a.m. so we can continue to answer your questions and if you have a very specific question from this and you want to reach out to a reporter all of our emails are on our website as well thank you for being a bridge reader thank you for spending part of your morning with us if you want even more political news you can go to bridgemi.com signup for our free politics watch letter and if not we'll see you next week