Wisconsin Republicans to vote on election law changes

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By SCOTT BAUER
Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature was scheduled to vote Tuesday on bills that would make it more difficult to vote absentee — proposals that are all but certain to be vetoed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers but that GOP lawmakers say are needed in response to situations that arose during last year’s presidential election.

The bills are part of a national push by Republicans to change voting laws following former President Donald Trump’s defeat in November and his bogus claims that there was widespread fraud and abuse. Trump lost to Joe Biden by about 20,600 votes in Wisconsin, an outcome that withstood a partial recount and numerous state and federal lawsuits.

Other Republican-controlled states, including Georgia, Iowa, Texas, Florida and Arizona, have passed laws largely meant to alter the rules governing mail-in voting. Republicans in other states have defended the changes as bolstering security and trust in elections, while critics have said the true intent is to raise hurdles to absentee voting to tamp down turnout.

Wisconsin Republican lawmakers have introduced more than a dozen bills making changes to state election law. Evers has signaled that he will veto any that pass the Legislature, preventing them from taking effect.

One bill up in the Senate on Tuesday would prohibit local election officials from filling out missing voter information on absentee-ballot certifications, which also serves as the envelopes that voters use to return ballots.

Trump sought to disqualify about 5,500 absentee ballots in Democratic-leaning Dane and Milwaukee counties after learning election clerks had filled in missing address information on the certification envelopes.

Clerks had been allowed to fill in this sort of information for a dozen elections before November’s, according to guidance from the Wisconsin Elections Commission. After Trump lost, Republicans questioned the legality of the practice, noting that state law doesn’t specifically allow it.

Under the bill, any absentee ballot missing information would be returned to the voter to fill in. Officials who fill in the missing information would be committing election fraud, which is punishable by as much as a $10,000 fine and three years in prison.

Another bill up for Senate approval would disallow ballot-collection events from taking place more than two weeks before an election. Such events would also have to be held near the local clerk’s office and run by workers from there.

That change comes in response to the Democracy in the Park event held in Madison city parks last year in which volunteers collected absentee ballots before the early-voting period started two weeks before the election.

The bill also would prohibit someone other than a member of the voter’s immediate family or a legal guardian from returning a completed absentee ballot for another person. Violators of this rule would be guilty of a felony.

Trump argued in a lawsuit that no ballots should be counted that were collected at the Democracy in the Park events, or when election officials added missing information. On both of those claims, the Wisconsin Supreme Court said Trump had raised the issues too late and that his claims lacked evidence to back them up.

Three dissenting conservative justices said the laws need to be clarified, leading to the bills up for a Senate vote.

In a third bill that previously passed the Senate and would head to Evers if passed by the Assembly, counties and municipalities generally would be prohibited from accepting grants or donations from private entities to help run elections.

If the state elections commission received a private grant, it would have to award it to each municipality in the state on a per capita basis.

That bill comes after the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life awarded more than $6 million to five Wisconsin cities to help them with the November election. The nonprofit’s $250 million in grants awarded nationwide were paid for by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife. Conservatives sued to stop the funding in Wisconsin, but they lost in federal court.

Republicans have raised particular concerns with how the money was used in Green Bay. State lawmakers have ordered a state audit of the election, in part to find out what exactly happened in Green Bay. This proceeding is expected to take months to complete. The Wisconsin Assembly has also ordered an investigation.

Various other election bills have been introduced but haven’t advanced yet out of committee for votes in either the Senate or Assembly. Those would restrict who can qualify as indefinitely confined, limit the number and location of ballot drop boxes, and require absentee voters to provide an ID for every election.