The Capitol Report, produced by WisPolitics.com — a nonpartisan, Madison-based news service that specializes in coverage of government and politics — provides a weekly analysis of issues being debated in Wisconsin state government. It is underwritten by the WNA and produced exclusively for its members. WisPolitics.com President Jeff Mayers is a former editor and reporter for the Associated Press and a former political writer for the Wisconsin State Journal.
By WisPolitics-State Affairs
It’s summer in Wisconsin. Most people are using vacation time, maxing out on outdoor activities and slowing down a little.
But election clerks across Wisconsin are busy because there’s a slew of primaries on Aug. 11 that demand attention to deadlines, spur questions from voters and spike worries about federal actions that could affect how elections are run in Wisconsin.
As the calendar flipped to July, absentee ballots for the Aug. 11 primary were being mailed across Wisconsin. But hanging over a lot of the activity is a legal challenge to an executive order by President Donald Trump that would limit who can receive mail-in ballots and messaging from the U.S. Postal Service. Adding to the uncertainty: a federal judge recently blocked Trump’s executive order, initially signed in March, that directs the U.S. Postal Service to gather a list of eligible voters, or have a state provide them, and refuse to mail ballots to anyone not on the list.
County clerks in La Crosse, Marathon and Milwaukee County told WisPolitics in late June that absentee ballots went out to municipal clerks as usual and that they had heard no reports of issues using the postal service from clerks within their respective counties.
The deputy city clerk for Eau Claire, Waukesha city clerk, and Racine city clerk office staff members said their respective cities had no issues mailing out absentee ballots. In Wisconsin, county clerks offices are responsible for the printing of the ballots, while municipal clerks are responsible for mailing them.
But at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing in June, U.S. Postmaster General David Steiner said the service would stop the delivery of mail-in ballots in states that did not provide a voter list.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin joined her Democratic colleagues by co-signing a letter to the United States Postal Service asking it to not implement the proposed rule required by the executive order. “Ultimately, the proposed rule seeks to create a centralized national absentee voter database with individualized barcodes connected to the voters’ names under the control of the President that contains the voting information of millions of Americans,” the senators wrote. “That information would be ripe for potential abuse or improper disclosure potentially imperiling the integrity of American elections.”
Concerns over issues with absentee ballots by mail are not new in Wisconsin elections.
Following the April 7 election, a survey of 906 municipal clerks by the Wisconsin Elections Commission reported that two-thirds of clerks “observed problems with delivery of by-mail absentee ballots.”
As a result, the Elections Commission sent a letter to Steiner and expressed “concern about mail delays that threaten the ability of our citizens to exercise their right to vote.”
Another issue facing clerks this year will be ballot drop boxes.
New polling by a bipartisan group shows Wisconsin voters across party lines back statewide regulation of ballot drop boxes amid concerns over election integrity.
The polling was commissioned by the bipartisan Democracy Defense Project, which participated in a June 23 WisPolitics luncheon in Madison.
The polling came from the Tarrance Group, a Republican research and strategy firm, and FM3 Research, a Dem-leaning political research firm specializing in campaigns. The poll asked 600 likely voters across Wisconsin May 16-19 about election integrity, with results largely split across party lines. It was conducted over cellphone, text and landline.
However, the poll found that 79% of overall voters favored the creation of such ballot drop box standards, with 76% of Democrats, 83% of Republicans and 76% of independents in support.
“The two questions that you can ask where Republicans and Democrats agree. Question A is, would you support the creation of statewide standards? Question B: Do you like puppies? Those are the only two,” Dave Sackett, Tarrance Group partner, joked at the luncheon.
Over 90% of Democrats were either “very confident” or “somewhat confident” that votes in the Wisconsin November election will be accurately cast and counted as opposed to 46% of Republicans.
Sackett also discussed proposals for federalized election monitoring, such as the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of U.S. citizenship and photo identification at the polls, with former Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Mike Tate.
“One of the most important things that I think that has been the hallmark of how elections have happened in this country, for at least in modern times, has been that we think the people who run the state of Wisconsin are the people that should run our elections,” Tate said.
The polling also asked about the view of election workers and officials across the state, with 63% of all voters classifying them as important volunteers and 37% as partisans who need to be monitored.
Additionally, voters were asked if they thought election officials were knowingly falsifying vote counts with 18% of voters saying “yes, often” and 23% saying “yes, occasionally.”
Marge Bostelmann, retired Green Lake County clerk and member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said “that cannot happen in Wisconsin,” detailing the process for counting and verifying votes in the state.
“It’s not going to happen,” she said.
For more, visit WisPolitics.com
The Capitol Report is written by editorial staff at WisPolitics.com, a nonpartisan, Madison-based news service that specializes in coverage of government and politics, and is distributed for publication by members of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association.
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