Wisconsin: Can people bring guns to the polls? It depends where you vote | Alison Dirr/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Do guns and polling places mix in Wisconsin?  It depends where you vote. Wisconsin doesn’t have a statewide law or policy governing the possession of guns in polling places, so the rules depend on the circumstances of each voting location, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said. Many polling places in the state are located in buildings such as schools where firearms are already banned, he said, and those rules apply during voting as well. Guns would also be prohibited in polling places located in private or government buildings with posted firearm bans. “If there’s not one of those policies in place, then there would not be a prohibition,” the Democratic attorney general said. “Although … there are other policies related to voter intimidation that would still be potentially relevant.” No one would be allowed to brandish a gun or use one to intimidate voters in any way, he said.

Wisconsin: Outagamie County ballot misprint may need to be settled by a judge | Patrick Marley/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The state Elections Commission told Outagamie County officials Tuesday they would need to go to a judge to find a way to deal with thousands of ballots that can’t be read by counting machines because of a printing error.While the commissioners said it would be up to a judge to decide, they contended the best solution would be to have poll workers make changes to marks on the edges of the ballots so they can be read by tabulators. That would be more efficient than having poll workers fill out new ballots to replace those that have printing errors, they said. It will be up to the county or others to decide whether to take the matter to court. Otherwise, election officials will have to remake thousands of ballots or count all their ballots by hand. Whatever path they take, counting ballots in Outagamie County and a small portion of Calumet County will take longer because of the printing mistake. That means results may not be available until after the Nov. 3 election.

Wisconsin: Republicans break with Trump on delaying election | Patrick Marley/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Top Wisconsin Republicans broke with President Donald Trump on Thursday over delaying the November election. The Republican president on Thursday suggested on Twitter that the Nov. 3 election should be delayed because of concerns he has about mail voting. Republicans and Democrats alike dismissed the idea, and election experts emphasized that mail voting has not been found to be rife with fraud. Postponing the election drew bipartisan alarm from congressional leaders and election experts noted a president does not have the power to change the date of an election. “The election should not be delayed,” U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Menomonee Falls said in a statement. “The 20th Amendment sets the terms of the election and is clear. The terms of the president and vice president shall end at noon on the 20th day of January.” Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester and state Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald of Juneau also opposed the notion. The two this spring sued to keep the April election for state Supreme Court on schedule after Democratic Gov. Tony Evers tried to delay it.

Wisconsin: Republicans break with Trump on delaying election | Patrick Marley/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Top Wisconsin Republicans broke with President Donald Trump on Thursday over delaying the November election. The Republican president on Thursday suggested on Twitter that the Nov. 3 election should be delayed because of concerns he has about mail voting. Republicans and Democrats alike dismissed the idea, and election experts emphasized that mail voting has not been found to be rife with fraud. Postponing the election drew bipartisan alarm from congressional leaders and election experts noted a president does not have the power to change the date of an election. “The election should not be delayed,” U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Menomonee Falls said in a statement. “The 20th Amendment sets the terms of the election and is clear. The terms of the president and vice president shall end at noon on the 20th day of January.” Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester and state Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald of Juneau also opposed the notion. The two this spring sued to keep the April election for state Supreme Court on schedule after Democratic Gov. Tony Evers tried to delay it.

Wisconsin: Bipartisan Group To Promote In-Person And Mail-In Voting During Pandemic | Laurel White/Wisconsin Public Radio

A bipartisan coalition of high-level Wisconsin politicians has launched an initiative to educate voters about in-person and mail-in voting during the COVID-19 pandemic. The initiative, VoteSafe WI, supports both in-person voting and absentee voting by mail for the August partisan primary and November general election. Voting by mail has been recently criticized by some Republicans, including President Donald Trump. Wisconsin saw a record number of voters cast mail-in absentee ballots in its April election. About 62 percent of all ballots were cast by mail. Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul and former Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen are leading the group. Van Hollen, who served as Wisconsin’s attorney general from 2007-2015, often focused on efforts to prevent voter fraud while in office. Speaking on a call with reporters Tuesday morning, Van Hollen said there has been a lot of “confusion” about voting by mail in recent years, but he believes the public should have confidence in the system.

Wisconsin: Cities Getting $6.3M In Grants To Help With Elections During Pandemic | Shamane Mills/Wisconsin Public Radio

Five Wisconsin cities will get a total of $6.3 million in grants to help administer elections during the coronavirus pandemic. The money comes from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit voting advocacy group, and will be distributed to Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay, Kenosha and Racine. “We’re obviously thrilled,” said Racine Mayor Cory Mason. “The big winners in all of this are the voters who are going to be able to vote safely this year in the midst of the pandemic.” Long lines at some Wisconsin polling places during the state’s April election, which was conducted under a statewide stay-at-home order, drew national attention as voters and poll workers weighed potential safety risks against civic duty. Next month is the primary for congressional and state legislative races. Usually such elections have low turnout but some cities are seeing a record number of requests for absentee ballots.

Wisconsin: Appeals court reverses Wisconsin voting restrictions rulings | Todd Richmond/Associated Press

A federal appeals court panel upheld a host of Republican-authored voting restrictions in Wisconsin on Monday, handing conservatives a significant win in a pair of lawsuits just months before residents in the battleground state cast their ballots for president. The three-judge panel —all Republican appointees— found that the state can restrict early voting hours and restored a requirement that people must live in a district for 28 days, not 10, before they can vote. The panel also said emailing and faxing absentee ballots is unconstitutional. The state’s photo ID requirement for voters wasn’t in question, although the panel did find that expired student IDs are acceptable at the polls. The court blocked an option to allow people to vote without an ID if they show an affidavit saying they tried to obtain one. Judge Frank Easterbrook, who wrote the opinion, noted that the restrictions don’t burden people in the state, where voters still enjoy more ways to register, long poll hours on Election Day and absentee voting options than in other states. “Wisconsin has lots of rules that make voting easier,” Easterbrook wrote. “These facts matter when assessing challenges to a handful of rules that make voting harder.”

Wisconsin: Five largest cities awarded $6.3 million in effort to make elections safer amid coronavirus pandemic | Mary Spicuzza/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin’s five largest cities are being awarded more than $6 million to help administer this year’s elections during the coronavirus pandemic. The cities of Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Racine and Kenosha are set to receive a combined $6.3 million in grants from the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life. The funding for the “Wisconsin Safe Voting Plan” comes as the state is expected to play a key role in this year’s presidential election. It also comes after some people in Milwaukee and Green Bay waited in line — sometimes for several hours — to vote in the state’s April election, and delayed or missing mail-in ballots frustrated people around the state. The grant aims to help election officials administer safe elections despite budget gaps that have worsened during the ongoing pandemic, and will be used to help the cities open voting sites, set up drive-thru and drop box locations, provide personal protective equipment (PPE) for poll workers and recruit and train poll workers. The grants have been approved by the nonprofit and will soon be awarded to the municipalities. Some of the cities require the Common Council to accept the grants. In Milwaukee, that vote could come as soon as tomorrow.

Wisconsin: New study confirms that Black voters were heavily disenfranchised in April 7 election over COVID-19 fears | The Milwaukee Independent

Researchers from the Brennan Center for Justice say their study is the first to measure the impact of the pandemic on voting behavior. The study found that Milwaukee’s decision to close all but five of its 182 polling places reduced voting among non-Black voters in Milwaukee by 8.5 percentage points, and that COVID-19 may have further reduced turnout by 1.4 percentage points. That would mean the overall reduction in turnout among non-Black voters was 9.9 percentage points. Black voters experienced more severe effects: Poll closures reduced their turnout by an estimated 10.2 percentage points, while other mechanisms — including fear of contracting COVID-19 — lowered turnout by an additional 5.7 percentage points. Those factors combined to depress Black voter turnout by 15.9 percentage points, the researchers estimated. Overall, turnout in the city for the election — which determined a hotly contested Wisconsin Supreme Court race and the state’s Democratic nominee for president — was 32%, according to the Milwaukee Election Commission.

Wisconsin: Appeals court limits Wisconsin early voting to 2 weeks before election, stops voters from receiving ballots via email, fax | Patrick Marley/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

In a sweeping decision that took more than three years to come out, a panel of federal judges on Monday reinstated limits on early voting and a requirement that voters be Wisconsin residents for at least a month before an election. The three judges also banned most voters from having absentee ballots emailed or faxed to them and told a lower court to continue to tweak the system the state uses to provide voting credentials to those who have the most difficulty getting photo IDs. The unanimous decision by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago was mostly a setback for the liberal groups that challenged Wisconsin’s voting laws, but it did give them some victories. The appeals court upheld a decision that allows college students to use expired university IDs to vote and barred the state from requiring colleges to provide citizenship information about dorm residents who head to the polls. A lower court judge struck down many of Wisconsin’s election laws in 2016 because he found they disproportionately affected the ability of minorities to vote. But the appeals judges concluded GOP lawmakers wrote the laws to help their party, and not specifically to discriminate against anyone based on race.

Wisconsin: ‘A consequence that is going to have national implications’: Milwaukee elections in turmoil after mayor’s pick to lead agency withdraws | Mary Spicuzza/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Mayor Tom Barrett’s pick to head the City of Milwaukee’s Election Commission is withdrawing from the appointment after it was delayed by the Common Council. That means with about four months to go until the November election — a race in which Milwaukee is expected to play a key role determining whether President Donald Trump wins reelection — the state’s largest city faces being left with no one running its elections agency. “I respect and fully support the Council’s desire for departments to come forward with clearly outlined plans on how we will work to improve equity for communities of color and to make programming decisions through an equity lens,” Claire Woodall-Vogg wrote in an email to aldermen Thursday night. “However, holding my appointment has jeopardized my ability to lead and evolve the Election Commission. Elections are administered by the hour and day, not by weeks.” Earlier this month, the Common Council voted unanimously to send a series of Barrett’s cabinet-level appointments back to committee for further consideration. Ald. Milele Coggs, who made the motion to further consider the appointments, said her intention was not to hold up the process for an extended length of time but rather for the council to reshape the city’s efforts to serve Milwaukee residents. The move came after unrest following the death of George Floyd, a Black man, under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer. Coggs said the council needed to ensure that cabinet-level appointees have clear plans to address concerns the community has raised, especially about the quality of life for Black people in the city.

Wisconsin: Study: Poll closings, COVID-19 fears, kept many Milwaukee voters away | Dee Hall, Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Significant numbers of Milwaukee voters were dissuaded from voting on April 7 by the sharp reduction in polling places and the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic — with the biggest effects seen among Black voters, according to a new study. Researchers from the Brennan Center for Justice say their study is the first to measure the impact of the pandemic on voting behavior. The study found that Milwaukee’s decision to close all but five of its 182 polling places reduced voting among non-Black voters in Milwaukee by 8.5 percentage points, and that COVID-19 may have further reduced turnout by 1.4 percentage points. That would mean the overall reduction in turnout among non-Black voters was 9.9 percentage points. Black voters experienced more severe effects: Poll closures reduced their turnout by an estimated 10.2 percentage points, while other mechanisms — including fear of contracting COVID-19 — lowered turnout by an additional 5.7 percentage points. Those factors combined to depress Black voter turnout by 15.9 percentage points, the researchers estimated. Overall, turnout in the city for the election — which determined a hotly contested Wisconsin Supreme Court race and the state’s Democratic nominee for president — was 32%, according to the Milwaukee Election Commission. The Brennan Center study raises concerns about disenfranchisement in November, especially among Black residents, as voters choose the president and members of Congress and the Wisconsin Legislature. And it raises fresh doubt about how well states like Wisconsin, which does not have a tradition of widespread absentee balloting, will ensure that all residents can vote in November without exposing themselves to a deadly disease.

Wisconsin: Lawsuits aim to ease rules limiting Wisconsin college voters | Kayla Huynh/Wisconsin State Journal

On the day of the Wisconsin spring primary in February, Peter German was determined to vote. In between strained breaths, German — a freshman from West Bend attending UW-Madison — said he had been running from building to building in an attempt to cast his ballot. “I haven’t missed an election yet,” he said. The previous day, he tried to register to vote at the Madison City Clerk’s office with no luck. He lacked the required form of identification and documents under Wisconsin’s voter ID law, implemented in 2015 after a series of legal battles. On Feb. 18, Election Day, he again could not vote because he did not have a voter-compliant photo ID card. This sent German crisscrossing campus for nearly an hour, where he was finally able to cast his ballot — thanks to a freshly printed student voter card. As German learned, for students living away from home, Wisconsin is one of the most difficult states in which to vote. Student IDs issued by state colleges and universities in Wisconsin are not sufficient for voting, requiring students to go through additional hoops if they wish to vote using their college address.

Wisconsin: Elections Commission approves sending 2.7 million absentee ballot request forms to voters | Patrick Marley/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

State election officials signed off Wednesday on a plan to send absentee ballot request forms to most registered voters despite a last-minute push by a Republican lawmaker to halt the effort. The Wisconsin Elections Commission, which consists of three Republicans and three Democrats, unanimously agreed to send 2.7 million registered voters forms they can use to have absentee ballots sent to them for the Nov. 3 presidential election. No one will be sent an actual absentee ballot unless they specifically ask for one. Ahead of the vote, GOP Rep. Rick Gundrum of Slinger called the $2.25 million plan too costly and said it could lead to voter confusion. In a letter, he asked the commission to let each community decide for itself how it wants to handle absentee ballots. “Municipal clerks are more acquainted with each of their respective communities and are better suited to handle absentee ballot requests in the manner in which they have in place,” he wrote in the letter.

Wisconsin: Officials creates grant programs for local election security efforts | Local government | Briana Reilly/The Cap Times

Wisconsin elections officials on Wednesday signed off on a plan to make available over $5 million in federal funding to beef up local voting security efforts ahead of the November general election. The money — made available under two separate subgrants, one for counties and another for municipalities — seeks to bolster cybersecurity technology and training specifically, rather than tackle costs associated with the COVID-19 crisis. Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe touted the importance of continuing to focus on the importance of localities’ cybersecurity efforts before voters cast ballots this fall, noting currently there’s “a much larger pot of money available” for coronavirus-related costs.” “These are the only funds that are out there that are specific to cyber security and elections,” she said of the federal Help America Vote Act funding. “I just really think it’s important that we not lose light of all the cybersecurity things that still need to happen in our state to make sure that we can continue to keep pace with the cybersecurity threats that change every single day.”

Wisconsin: After Milwaukee had just 5 voting sites in April election, officials recruiting more poll workers so it won’t happen in November | Alison Dirr/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Milwaukee election officials hope to be able to open all 180 polling sites in November’s presidential election — if conditions with the coronavirus pandemic allow. A second surge in coronavirus cases and a level of public fear that drives people away from working the polls — as happened in the April 7 election — would seriously hamper that effort, outgoing Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Neil Albrecht told members of the Common Council on Monday. Unlike the April 7 election, when the city was losing election workers by the day, Albrecht said, the city has more time ahead of the November election to recruit people to work the polls. He’s optimistic that will put the city in a better position. “The contingency plan is we may need to consolidate sites again, but … certainly nothing close to five” election centers, which the city experienced in April, he said. Those five centers, down from its usual 180 voting sites, forced residents to stand in line for hours in the midst of the pandemic to cast their ballots.

Wisconsin: Were absentee ballots without postmarks counted in the April election? The answer depends on where you live | Jake Prinsen/Appleton Post-Crescent

Of the many issues in Wisconsin’s April 7 election — stemming from the coronavirus pandemic, a huge number of absentee ballots and several court challenges — one was created by the U.S. Supreme Court. On the eve of the election, the Supreme Court said absentee ballots had to be postmarked on or before April 7 to be counted. Not all mail gets postmarks, however, which meant some ballots might have been sent on or before the deadline but wouldn’t get counted. In an April 10 meeting, the Wisconsin Elections Commission left it up to municipal boards of canvassers to decide whether to count ballots they received after April 7 without a postmark. Those decisions led to inconsistencies in how those ballots were counted. “We provided guidance to clerks about that, but we can’t review every decision that they make,” Wisconsin Elections Commission spokesman Reid Magney said. “There’s a chance there were some inconsistencies in how that was handled across the state.”

Wisconsin: Election Commission approves $4 million for vote by mail, lawmaker not happy | Benjamin Yount/The Center Square

Wisconsin’s 1,850 local election managers will share $4 million to mail almost every voter in the state an absentee ballot application this fall. Wisconsin Election Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe made the announcement Friday.  “We are using the lessons we learned from the spring election in April and the federal grant funds to ensure we are prepared for November,” Wolfe said. The money is coming from Wisconsin’s share of the federal coronavirus stimulus package. The WEC unanimously voted this week to send nearly three million voters absentee ballot applications. The WEC will not be mailing actual ballots, however. Mailing ballots “would require the legislature to pass and amend existing law, and the Wisconsin Elections Commission does not have the authority to make these changes,” the WEC said in its announcement.

Wisconsin: Election officials agree to mail absentee ballot request forms to most voters | Patrick MarleyMilwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin election officials agreed Wednesday to send absentee ballot applications to most voters this fall, but the plan could face obstacles next month if Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on the wording of the mailing. The members of the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission voted 6-0 to advance the plan a week after they failed to reach consensus on who should receive ballot applications. Under the commission’s plan, the state will not send actual absentee ballots, but rather the forms voters can use to request them. If voters filled out those forms and provided a copy of a photo ID, they would receive an absentee ballot for the Nov. 3 presidential election. The mailing would also include information about how to request an absentee ballot using the state’s online portal, myvote.wi.gov. Mail voting surged to nearly 1 million in the April election for state Supreme Court as people tried to stay at home as much as possible during the coronavirus outbreak. Mail voting this fall is expected to surpass the record set in April. The state has 3.4 million registered voters. About 528,000 of them have already requested absentee ballots and the state believes about 158,000 of them have moved since they last voted.

Wisconsin: Election officials vow changes to absentee ballot system | Daphne Chen/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Election officials vow major changes to the state’s absentee voting system after ballots failed to reach thousands of citizens in Wisconsin’s spring election, throwing an already chaotic vote into further disarray amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The fixes “will save so much work for the clerk and hopefully save work for the voters,” Wisconsin Elections Commission spokesperson Reid Magney said. The changes follow an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the PBS series FRONTLINE and Columbia Journalism Investigations that revealed numerous breakdowns in the state’s absentee ballot system, including inadequate computer systems and misleading ballot information. The investigation found that voters may have been misled by the state-run election website MyVote, where they could track the progress of their ballot, including the date their ballot was “sent.” That date actually reflects the date the mailing label was generated, the investigation found, not the date a ballot was mailed.

Wisconsin: Glitches, mailing problems mar absentee voting in Wisconsin | Patrick Marley/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Nearly 2,700 absentee ballots in Milwaukee were not sent and about 1,600 in the Fox Valley were not processed because of computer glitches and mailing problems, according to the most comprehensive account yet of what went wrong in the April 7 election. In Milwaukee, 2,693 voters were not sent absentee ballots after technical issues marred their production on March 22 and March 23, according to a report by the Wisconsin Elections Commission. About half of those people eventually voted, either with replacement absentee ballots or at the polls. The others did not vote. The election for a seat on the state Supreme Court, the presidential primary and a host of local offices, put a global spotlight on Wisconsin for holding an election in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. The report highlights the kind of difficulties Wisconsin and other states could face in the November presidential election. A separate problem emerged when about 1,600 ballots for the Appleton and Oshkosh areas were found at a mail processing center the day after the election. It was not clear in the report if the ballots were on their way to voters or on their way back to clerks when they were found. Either way, they were discovered too late to be counted.

Wisconsin: Election officials show support for sending voters absentee ballot forms, but split on who should get them | Patrick Marley/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin election officials inched toward sending absentee ballot request forms to voters Wednesday, but they put off a decision after Republicans and Democrats split on how many people should get the ballot applications. Democrats on the Wisconsin Elections Commission want to send the applications to about 2.7 million people, the vast majority of the state’s registered voters. The Republican chairman agreed ballot applications should be sent out. But he doesn’t want to send them to those who appear likely to have previously voted by mail or who live in communities that are already planning to mail absentee ballot forms to their residents. That would result in ballots going to 1.7 million or fewer people. The commission consists of three Republicans and three Democrats. It was unclear Wednesday if the commissioners could reach a deal on the issue when they meet again in about a week. The commission is not considering the mass mailing of actual ballots. Rather, it is weighing sending applications that voters could fill out and return with a copy of a photo ID. Those voters would then be sent an absentee ballot.

Wisconsin: Questions linger as new research suggests election was linked to rise in coronavirus cases | Daphne Chen and John Diedrich/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Research on the effects Wisconsin’s spring election continues to emerge — and not all of it agrees. A study released Monday by economists at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and Ball State University suggests that in-person voting may have led to a “large” increase in the rate of positive coronavirus tests weeks later. The report, which has not been peer-reviewed, is at least the third to come out since the April 7 election, and the first to conclude a positive link, giving the public a front-row seat on the messy, uncertain and sometimes lurching progress of science. Epidemiologists and infectious disease experts in Wisconsin previously said the spring election did not lead to a feared spike in COVID-19 cases, though they warned that the effects may be hidden in the data and difficult to ever detect. Investigations involving contact tracing by public health officials were similarly inconclusive. Last week, Milwaukee County epidemiologists said they found 26 county residents who may have been infected with coronavirus during in-person voting. However, they said their attempts to prove the link were complicated by a lack of data and the fact that the election took place around Easter and Passover, which led to more people gathering in general.

Wisconsin: In-Person Voting May Have Led to ‘Large’ Increase in Coronavirus Cases, Study Suggests | Meghan Roos/Newsweek

new study published Monday suggests in-person voting during Wisconsin’s primary election on April 7 may have led to “large” increases in the state’s number of COVID-19 cases. Though the data gathered by economists at University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and Ball State University was not complete, the researchers said their assessment of COVID-19 cases by county thus far indicates a strong connection between each county’s number of in-person polling locations and spikes in positive cases. The real impact of in-person voting on rising case numbers could have been even broader than the data suggests, researchers said. “Across all models we see a large increase in COVID-19 cases in the weeks following the election in counties that had more in-person votes per voting location,” the study authors said. “Furthermore, we find a consistent negative relationship between absentee voting and the rate of positive COVID-19 tests.”

Wisconsin: Sweeping lawsuit seeks to have absentee ballot requests sent to all Wisconsin voters | Patrick Marley/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A disability rights group and others sued Wisconsin election officials Monday to try to ensure the state has enough poll workers and guarantee voters who want absentee ballots receive them, adding to a cascade of litigation over how elections should be run as the coronavirus pandemic persists. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Madison, seeks to ensure people have ample opportunities to vote in person or by mail for the August primary and November general election. It aims to force election officials to hire more poll workers, send absentee ballot request forms to all registered voters, set up secure drop boxes for absentee ballots in every community and notify voters if their ballots won’t be counted so they have time to fix any problems. Bringing the lawsuit are Disability Rights Wisconsin, Black Leaders Organizing for Communities and three women who say they were prevented from voting or faced numerous obstacles in the April 7 election for state Supreme Court. That election caught worldwide attention because of a lack of poll workers, shuttered polling places and long lines in Milwaukee and Green Bay. The lawsuit contends the way the state plans to run this fall’s elections will violate the U.S. Constitution, the Voting Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Wisconsin: Nine lessons from Wisconsin’s chaotic spring election | Susan Benkelman/American Press Institute

Wisconsin’s election on April 7 was a test of how a democracy functions in a pandemic. Democracy held on, but at a price. The election offered a window into the logistical challenges of trying to forge ahead with voting at a time of social distancing, and it was a closely watched battleground in the larger war over voting rights. It also holds lessons for journalists, who in Wisconsin had to report on plans that were changing by the hour, then consider how much risk they were willing to take to their own health and safety to cover the voting. Two legal battles in state and federal court pitted Democratic Gov. Tony Evers against Republican legislators. In both cases, the governor lost, requiring the state to hold the vote as scheduled on April 7 and to count the absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day. These battles were fought in the last few days and hours before the election, creating uncertainty and chaos both for people who wanted to vote by absentee ballot and for the local elections officials who were trying to keep up with the on-again-off-again scheduling.

Wisconsin: Voters Brave Pandemic Again for Special Election | Andy Monserud/Courthouse News

Voters in northern Wisconsin braved the coronavirus pandemic Tuesday to cast their ballots in a special election to fill the vacant 7th Congressional District seat, just a month after the state saw record absentee voting in a virus-stricken presidential primary. Polling places in the towns of Hudson and Somerset near the state’s western border saw a steady trickle of voters choose between Republican state Senator Tom Tiffany of Minocqua and Tricia Zunker, a Democrat who is president of the Wausau School Board and justice on the Ho-Chunk Nation Supreme Court. Lines were rare and short at polling places in the two border towns despite Wisconsin’s consolidation of polling locations to save personal protective equipment. With two polling places each, local officials in Hudson noted that the in-person turnout was much lower than it had been during the state’s presidential primary and Supreme Court election on April 7.  The mood at Hudson’s firehouse, which hosted voting for two-thirds of the city’s voters, was easygoing early in the morning, with Police Chief Geoff Willems and Finance Director Alison Egger making casual conversation with voters in the parking lot.

Wisconsin: Clerks Plan Protective Measures For In-Person Voting In Congressional Special Election | Rob Mentzer/Wisconsin Public Radio

Voters in the 7th Congressional District can expect to encounter protective barriers, strict limits on the number of people at polling places and other protective measures as they head to the polls for Tuesday’s special election. “The clerks in our district are taking the safety of the voters extremely seriously,” Oneida County clerk Tracy Hartman said Friday on WPR’s “The Morning Show.” Besides adding clear-plastic partitions between voters and poll workers and limiting numbers in polling locations, clerks will offer hand sanitizer stations and make pens single use, one per voter. Many of these practices were put in place statewide for Wisconsin’s April 7 presidential primary and state Supreme Court elections. Hartman said some clerks have used the last month to implement new safety measures. “We took April, we learned from it and we’ve improved upon it,” she said. “Overall, at least in Oneida County, it was a positive experience and we kept the voters as safe as possible.”

Wisconsin: What would it take for Wisconsin to hold a mail-in election? | Briana Reilly/The Cap Times

In Wisconsin, some harbor a lofty goal when they look at the remainder of the 2020 cycle: implementing a system by which voters cast their ballots almost entirely by mail. But with both chambers of the Legislature controlled by Republicans who have signaled they’re not interested in a plan pushed by a handful of Democrats, the idea is essentially dead on arrival. Even if the proposal had the backing of both political parties, though, there are a series of hurdles to putting it in place just three months before the August primary and six months before the November general election. It’s no easy task to transition to a vote-by-mail system. Five states have done so, but it’s a big undertaking that, according to the federal Election Assistance Commission, includes more than 100 tasks that states would have had to begin last month to be on track for Nov. 3, according to a recent EAC project timeline. And an election security expert with New York University Law School’s Brennan Center for Justice said Wisconsin “already has a great framework” in place given that it, like 29 others, allows voters to cast ballots by mail without providing a reason why they can’t vote in person on election day.

Wisconsin: Madison logs over $100,000 in extra costs for April 7 pandemic election | Abigail Becker/The Capital Time

Madison spent an extra $108,000 to help voters cast ballots in the spring election as local officials statewide worked to secure supplies and cover sometimes heightened labor costs for contests held in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s around 21% higher than the $504,000 originally budgeted for pulling off the April election, city finance director Dave Schmiedicke wrote in an email. Madison logged 56% turnout among absentee and in-person voters. But while Madison’s costs soared, Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell said the county’s expenses for setting up the elections were not as affected by the pandemic. Municipalities, which are responsible for mailing absentee ballots, faced the brunt of additional expenses like postage, staff time and safety equipment like Plexiglass shields.  “April expenses were not too out of line for the county as we were already planning on large turnout due to the Democratic primary,” McDonell said, noting the county ordered extra ballots. It’s still unclear how Madison’s figures compare to other large municipalities in the state, which saw increased requests for absentee ballots and, in some cases, large lines on Election Day as polling locations were consolidated amid staffing shortages and other concerns.