Wisconsin Assembly sends election bills to Gov. Evers, who is sure to veto them

MADISON - Assembly Republicans sent bills to Gov. Tony Evers on Tuesday that would prevent election clerks from filling in missing information on absentee ballot paperwork and require disabled and elderly voters to show ID to vote absentee.      

The Democratic governor has signaled he will veto the bills. 

The legislation comes amid a nationwide fight over election laws. In Wisconsin, Republicans have launched two reviews of the 2020 election even though recounts and a slew of court rulings confirmed Joe Biden's narrow win over Donald Trump in the state. 

Advocates for the elderly and disabled called the bills — all of which passed on party-line 60-38 votes — unfair. 

"These bills make it harder for voters who already face significant challenges to have their voices heard and their votes count," said a statement from Beth Swedeen, the executive director of the Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities.

Republicans who control the Legislature said their legislation is meant to prevent problems and instill faith in the state's voting policies.

"The goal is to make sure at the end of the day that every single person has a chance to vote, but that we guarantee the confidence in the election, which has been severely undermined by the actions of a few over the course of the last election cycle (and which) hopefully are a thing of the past.” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester said.

Correcting absentee ballots

Senate Bill 212 would bar election officials from filling in the addresses of witnesses on absentee ballot envelopes if they were missing. Under current law, ballots can’t be counted if that information is missing.

At the behest of Republicans, the state Elections Commission in 2016 told municipal clerks they could fill in missing witness addresses on ballot envelopes if they knew them. After the most recent election, Republicans balked at the practice and are seeking to end it. 

New ID rules for disabled voters

The most sweeping bill Assembly Republicans approved was Senate Bill 204, which would require elderly and disabled voters to produce IDs to vote absentee in many cases.

For the last decade, most Wisconsin voters have had to show an ID to vote, but the requirement does not apply to voters who say they are indefinitely confined to their homes because of age or disability.

The bill would require confined voters to show an ID to get absentee ballots in most cases, just like other voters must. Confined voters who do not have an ID could instead provide a statement from a witness to confirm their identity. 

Under current law, confined voters can have absentee ballots sent to them automatically for every election as long as they say they need them. The legislation would require them to apply to have ballots sent to them every year. 

Under another part of the legislation, the state would no longer recognize voters as indefinitely confined if they claimed that status during most of 2020. Those voters would have to apply anew to be treated as a confined voter. 

Republicans are focused on the issue because about 215,000 confined voters cast ballots in November, up from about 67,000 in 2016. They question whether the voters last year were actually confined. Groups representing the disabled and elderly say it's no surprise so many more people had to stay in their homes during the coronavirus pandemic.

Another part of Senate Bill 204 would require ordinary voters to fill out more paperwork when they vote absentee.

Wisconsin voters have long been able to fill out a single form on an absentee ballot envelope that serves as both an application for the ballot and a certification that they are the one who filled out the ballot.

The bill would require voters to fill out two forms — one to apply for an absentee ballot and one to certify they filled out the ballot.

Republicans are targeting absentee ballots after the state saw a surge in mail voting because of the pandemic. In November, 41% of Wisconsin voters cast ballots by mail, compared with 5% in the 2016 presidential election.

The bill would also require voters to provide a copy of their ID every time they ask for an absentee ballot. Now, voters have to provide a copy of their ID the first time they vote absentee but not after that.

The bill would also bar election officials from sending unsolicited absentee ballot applications to voters, as the state Elections Commission did last year with bipartisan support. Under the legislation, applications could be sent only if voters requested them.

Voting in nursing homes

Senate Bill 205 would create a backup system for voting at nursing homes if poll workers are unable to visit the facilities. 

Poll workers known as special voting deputies visit care facilities to help residents cast absentee ballots. Typically, the deputies work in teams of two, with one Democrat and one Republican.

The bill would allow nursing home workers who got election training to fulfill those duties if the voting deputies could not visit, provided the nursing home workers belonged to different parties. 

The measure is a response to problems that emerged last year after nursing homes banned visitors, including voting deputies, because of the pandemic. Election officials sent absentee ballots to nursing home residents instead of visiting them.

Observers during recounts

Senate Bill 210 would allow observers during election recounts to sit or stand within 3 feet of poll workers. Currently, they are not allowed to be within 3 feet of the table where they work but cannot be told to stay more than 8 feet away from the table. 

Under the bill, a clerk who intentionally obstructed an observer's view could be jailed for up to six months and fined up to $1,000. 

Livestreams of vote tallies

Senate Bill 292 would require municipal clerks who livestream vote canvassing to maintain recordings of the livestream for 22 months after the election. That's in line with how long they must keep other election records. 

No Arizona-style audit of election

The flurry of legislation comes about two weeks after four Wisconsin lawmakers visited Arizona to observe a recount of Maricopa County's ballots ordered by Republicans in the Arizona Senate.

Vos said he did not believe lawmakers here would seize any Wisconsin county's ballots because the Legislative Audit Bureau is reviewing the state's election practices. 

"I think that's unlikely at this point because we're already doing a forensic audit," he said. 

In addition to that review, Vos has also hired three former law enforcement officers, including one with a partisan past, to examine aspects of the 2020 election.

Democratic Rep. Mark Spreitzer of Beloit argued the bills approved Tuesday were "designed to add more hurdles for voters to overcome."

"These bills are actively hostile to voting, to voters and the right to vote itself," he said.

Rep. Rick Gundrum, a Republican from Slinger and a chief sponsor of one of the bills, said Democrats were distorting Republican attempts to make elections more transparent. He said Republicans were not attempting to reinstate Trump as president.

“Nowhere in the bill is there a provision that says Joe Biden is not president and that Donald Trump is,” he said.

Returning absentee ballots

Also Tuesday, the Assembly approved a bill that would limit who could return absentee ballots for others.

Senate Bill 203 is meant to prevent what Republicans disparage as ballot harvesting — having political groups collect absentee ballots so they can deliver them to election officials.

Large-scale ballot collection didn’t happen in Wisconsin last year, but a Republican ballot-collection scheme in North Carolina in 2018 led to the invalidation of a congressional election and criminal charges. 

Another provision of the bill would prevent activities like "Democracy in the Park," which allowed Madison voters to return their absentee ballots last fall to poll workers who were stationed in more than 200 parks. 

The Assembly passed a different version of the bill than one the Senate passed in May because lawmakers wanted to make clear that voters could return absentee ballots through commercial delivery services such as UPS.

Because of the change, the bill has to go back to the Senate before it can go to Evers. 

Contact Patrick Marley at patrick.marley@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @patrickdmarley.