Lawmakers say bill would make voting easier during a health emergency.
Lawmakers want option for change in processes
GREEN BAY – Two area lawmakers plan to introduce a bill designed to boost the likeliness that Wisconsinites don’t get squeezed out of a chance to vote during a public health emergency, like the coronavirus pandemic that affected the spring primary.
The proposal by Reps. Staush Gruszynski, D-Green Bay, and Joel Kitchens, R-Sturgeon Bay, is designed to avoid a repeat of a scene that played out in April in Green Bay and parts of Milwaukee. Numerous voters in those cities waited outside polling places for hours after concerns about the coronavirus caused a shortage of election workers and a shortage of polling places; Green Bay went from 31 locations to two.
Some would-be voters said they left without voting, rather than standing outside for hours and risking possible exposure to the virus.
Kitchens acknowledged moving forward with the April election brought its “fair share of challenges” and “plenty of blame to go around.”
“Instead of dwelling on the past and pointing fingers, we decided to come together and seek sensible, bipartisan solutions to ensure that we will be in a better place if we have to hold another election in the middle of a state of emergency,” Kitchens said in a news release.
The bill would ensure that, during a statewide emergency, a ballot is mailed to each registered voter who has not already requested one. It would also mandate that a certain number of polling places remain open so people who wanted to register on election day could do so.
Mailing ballots would be the job of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, Gruszynski said, reducing the burden on city and village clerks who were inundated by 11th-hour ballot requests as pandemic fears spread in late March and early April.
The bill also calls for development of computer software to help automate the process, and for the state to work with the U.S. Postal Service to enable ballots to be tracked in the mail.
Because of the pandemic, roughly seven of every 10 Wisconsin voters this April cast a ballot by mail — a rate far greater than in any previous election. And overall turnout in the April primary was considerably smaller than would be expected in a November presidential election.
Gruszynski said the bill, modeled after a measure in place in Colorado, “would help the voters, while also helping the clerks by putting the mailing in the hands of the Elections Commission.”
In Brown County, some village and city clerks said pandemic-driven requests created demand for absentee ballots that they weren’t staffed to handle. And a number of voters claimed they never received ballots, some despite multiple requests, or received them too late to return them in time to be counted.
Other voters who received ballots did not vote because they lived alone and faced the dilemma of having another person sign the ballot as a witness at a time where health officials were advising Wisconsinites to stay away from people who weren’t immediate family members.
The Gruszynski-Kitchens bill would allow the Elections Commission to waive the signature requirement.
Gruszynski said the Senate sponsors will be Kathy Bernier, R-Chippewa Falls, and Mark Miller, D-Monona.