Evers wants absentee ballots for all voters
County clerks warned advice may break law
MADISON - Gov. Tony Evers on Friday called for every registered voter in Wisconsin to get an absentee ballot just as the clerks of the state’s largest counties were warned they could be advising such voters to break the law.
Evers called on lawmakers to provide the ballots to prevent further spread of coronavirus at the polls on April 7 — a task top Republicans characterized as impossible to pull off in fewer than two weeks.
The request by the governor for more absentee voting came just as the state
Legislature’s team of researchers and legal experts issued a memo saying Dane and Milwaukee county clerks could be putting absentee voters at risk of prosecution.
The county clerks this week told absentee voters they have the option to declare themselves “indefinitely confined” if necessary, allowing them to vote without showing a photo ID, under Evers’ order to stay home to slow the spread of coronavirus.
That guidance is inconsistent with state law and could lead to challenged votes and even criminal penalties, the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau says. And late Friday, the state Republican Party of Wisconsin asked the state Supreme Court to intervene in the dispute.
Clerks say their advice is aimed at people, particularly the elderly, who are at risk of developing a serious illness if they contract coronavirus and do not have technology at home to provide proof of photo identification.
Voters who request absentee ballots online may be required to take a photo of their ID, then save it to a computer or other device in order to upload the photo as part of their request for a ballot.
“Many senior citizens, for example, pride themselves on going to vote in person. Now with the governor’s order to stay home they’re put in a no-win situation,” Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson said in an interview Friday. “They’re going to follow the governor’s order and the law and now they’re incapable of exercising their right to vote, and that’s what this law is designed for.”
Evers on Friday said he was calling on lawmakers to take action that would provide every registered voter with an absentee ballot to ensure the spread of the virus is limited, and especially to protect poll workers who are often over the age of 60.
“The bottom line is that everybody should be able to participate in democracy. Period,” he said in a video announcing his request. He did not call for an absentee ballot-only election.
Republicans who control the state Legislature immediately rejected the idea.
“Governor Evers just proposed procuring, printing, verifying, and mandating the mailing of millions of ballots
within 10 days. Even he knows that’s not logistically feasible,” Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said in a statement. “In pitching this idea, the governor is lying directly to Wisconsinites about this even being remotely possible. Acting like this is doable is a hoax.”
Evers said he wants lawmakers to allow ballots be postmarked the day of the election and to extend the time clerks may count the ballots.
His request came after 19 municipal clerks in Milwaukee County sent a letter to Evers and GOP legislative leaders asking for a mail-in only election.
“Every municipality within Milwaukee County is suffering from a devastating loss of election workers,” they wrote in the March 26 letter.
But the task of converting an election that is fewer than two weeks away to mostly or all mailed ballots could be enormous, Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator Meagan Wolfe told commissioners this week.
Wolfe on Tuesday said election officials in states that conduct elections by mail, like Colorado, Oregon and Washington, are cautioning states that are contemplating a switch amid the coronavirus outbreak.
“In everything I have seen from them, they caution states about jumping into it without planning carefully, saying things like, ‘don’t try to build in a month what has taken us years to create and we are still working through issues,’” Wolfe wrote in an email to commission chairman Dean Knudson and commissioner Ann Jacobs.
Wolfe said the governor’s office had not contacted the commission as of Tuesday to discuss how to conduct votes entirely by mail.
“There is a lot of infrastructure we would need to discuss that we currently do not have in place,” she wrote. Evers is not proposing to restrict voting to
absentee voting only, however.
Fitzgerald also said Friday in a separate statement the advice to absentee voters being given by Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell and Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson was inappropriate.
Fitzgerald, who in the fall is running for the seat in Congress being vacated by Rep. James Sensenbrenner, said, “The liberal clerks in Dane and Milwaukee counties are encouraging people to vote illegally by not providing proper identification.”
“It is completely inappropriate for them to use a pandemic to advance their far-left agenda,” he said. “At a time when our state should be coming together, it's sad that liberal clerks see it as an opportunity for political gain.”
McDonell on Friday he was confident that he had given voters sound advice.
He said GOP leaders were trying to create headlines that would scare people from taking a step that would allow them to vote.
The Legislative Reference Bureau's researchers said because people are allowed to leave their homes under Evers' order, the clerks' advice misapplies the law.
“The order does not even require that those who are ill from COVID-19 or at high-risk for becoming sick from it stay at home, but, instead they are ‘urged to stay at their home or residence to the extent possible except as necessary to seek medical care,' “the researchers wrote in a Thursday Fitzgerald.