Wisconsin: Elections panel retains embattled administrator | Associated Press

A divided Wisconsin Elections Commission voted Wednesday to retain its embattled leader through early spring, thumbing its nose at state Senate Republicans who a day earlier refused to confirm him. One Republican commissioner joined with three Democratic commissioners to retain Michael Haas as interim administrator through April 30. The 4-2 vote sets up a likely legal fight over whether Haas legally holds the position and whether any decisions he makes are legitimate. “You are creating chaos,” said Dean Knudson, one of the two Republican commissioners who voted against retaining Haas. “What is best for the state is not to reappoint Michael Haas.” Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and other Republicans have said they can’t trust either of them because both previously worked for the state Government Accountability Board. The now-defunct agency investigated whether Gov. Scott Walker and others in the GOP violated state campaign laws.

Wisconsin: Republicans oust the state’s ethics and elections chiefs | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Republican state senators Tuesday denied the confirmations of the directors of Wisconsin’s ethics and elections commissions — and the leader of the state Senate said he hoped to remove two civil servants at those agencies next. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) said Republicans had lost faith in the Ethics Commission and Elections Commission because they continue to employ people who worked for the now-disbanded Government Accountability Board. The accountability board participated in a sweeping investigation of Republicans that was shut down in 2015 after the state Supreme Court concluded nothing illegal occurred.  “I wish they’d all resign,” Fitzgerald told reporters of former accountability board employees. 

Wisconsin: Gov. Scott Walker mum on ousting ethics, elections chiefs | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

As Republican state senators prepare to oust the state’s ethics and elections chiefs, GOP Gov. Scott Walker won’t say if he agrees the pair should go. Three times on Friday, Walker sidestepped questions about whether he thought the Senate should deny the confirmations of ethics director Brian Bell and elections director Michael Haas. “I’ll leave that up to them and focus on our ambitious agenda,” Walker told reporters. 

Wisconsin: Ethics, elections heads battle for their jobs | Wisconsin State Journal

The embattled leaders of the Wisconsin agencies that run elections and enforce ethics laws are engaging in a public relations campaign to save their jobs, with a torrent of tweets, media interviews and personal letters to lawmakers offering examples of their nonpartisan credentials. The push comes before an expected state Senate vote Tuesday to reject the confirmations of Elections Commission administrator Michael Haas and Ethics Commission leader Brian Bell. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald says Republicans have lost confidence in their ability to act fairly because they both worked for the now-disbanded Government Accountability Board.

Wisconsin: Heads of ethics, elections commissions fight for their jobs | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Brian Bell removed roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, so the efforts now to force him out of his job as the head of the state Ethics Commission are mild by comparison. “No one’s — at least not yet — trying to shoot at me or blow me up,” Bell said in a recent interview down the street from the Capitol. But the risks for Bell — as well as Michael Haas, the director of the state Elections Commission — are real. Republicans who control the state Senate say they plan to vote Jan. 23 to deny their confirmations as a way to push them out of their jobs.

Wisconsin: Attorney General will take ‘a more expansive look’ at old Government Accountability Board | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

State Attorney General Brad Schimel said he will be taking “a more expansive look into whether there were other illegal activities going on” at the now-defunct Government Accountability Board. Schimel made his comments about the old GAB during a television interview that aired Sunday on “Upfront With Mike Gousha.” Last week, Republican state Senate leaders authorized Schimel to look into activities of the shuttered agency, including wide-ranging probes it conducted with prosecutors of Gov. Scott Walker and other Republicans. The state Supreme Court shut down the investigation in 2015, finding nothing illegal had occurred.

Wisconsin: Professor says voters confused over ID law | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin voters don’t have a good handle on what types of identification they can use to cast a ballot, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor on Tuesday told the state Elections Commission. That’s one takeaway professor Ken Mayer reached after releasing a survey in September about how the state’s voter ID law affected turnout in last year’s presidential election in Milwaukee and Dane counties.  “We found substantial evidence that most voters don’t have good information, accurate information, about the voter ID requirement,” Mayer told the Elections Commission. His study estimated 16,800 voters in those two counties did not vote because of the voter ID law. The $55,000 study — paid for by property-tax payers in Dane County — covered the state’s Democratic strongholds, but not other parts of the state. 

Wisconsin: Lawmakers Push For Recognition Of Tribal ID Cards | Wisconsin Public Radio

Wisconsin lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow members of federally recognized tribes to use their tribal identification cards for voter registration and more. The bill would allow tribal ID cards to be used to pick up medication at a pharmacy, as well as buy alcohol and tobacco products. State Sen. Jerry Petrowski, R-Marathon, said other states recognize tribal IDs as official forms of identification, including Idaho, Minnesota and Washington. “I think this bill is reasonable and I would hope you all would support it,” said Petrowski in a Senate Committee hearing Thursday.

Wisconsin: Bill would allow electronic voting for in-person absentee ballots | The Sun Prairie Star

A bill that would let voters casting in-person absentee ballots use an electronic voting machine is getting widespread support from municipal clerks, who argue the change would reduce costs while increasing public confidence.
Currently, those voting absentee in person must fill out paper ballots, seal them in an envelope and sign the envelope. They then aren’t opened and tallied until Election Day, a timeline some clerks and the bill’s author argued strains poll workers and taps into local resources. Under the bill from Rep. Janel Brandtjen, R-Menomonee Falls, those ballots still wouldn’t be tallied until Election Day, although municipal clerks would have to post a daily tally of ballots cast – if the municipalities opted into giving its voters the option to cast ballots that way. “This is really just about instead of putting it in an envelope, you as a voter have the opportunity to feed it into a machine,” Brandtjen said Nov. 28 at an Assembly public hearing on the legislation.

Wisconsin: Walker makes it harder for candidates to get a recount in close races | Wisconsin Gazette

Gov. Scott Walker has made it harder to ask for an election recount in Wisconsin. Walker last week signed into law a bill introduced in reaction to Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s 2016 recount request in Wisconsin after she finished a distant fourth. Under the new law, only candidates who trail the winner by 1 percentage point or less in statewide elections could seek a recount. If that had been in effect last year, Democrat Hillary Clinton could have requested a recount since she finished within that margin, losing the state by only 22,000 votes. But Stein would have been barred. Democrats argued against the change, saying if candidates want to pay for a recount they should be allowed to pursue it. Stein paid for the Wisconsin recount.

Wisconsin: Bill Would Allow In Person Early Voting In Wisconsin | WPR

A proposal up for a hearing Tuesday in an Assembly committee would allow the use of electronic voting machines for early voting in Wisconsin. Right now, early voting is done by paper ballot. Those ballots are either mailed or turned in to clerks’ offices and stored until Election Day. Under the proposal, local governments would have the option of adding electronic voting machines for early voting. The machines would be fed paper ballots and store the votes electronically until they can be counted on Election Day.

Wisconsin: Voter ID laws discriminate based on race, socioeconomic status | The Badger Herald

Voting in free and fair elections is a cornerstone of today’s version of the American democracy. While voting rights certainly didn’t extend outside white, male landowners when the democratic experiment was written into existence in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as this country has grown, expanded and modernized, so too has the number and scope of people allowed to elect their political officials. As part of the restructuring of the south following the Civil War, the 15th amendment granted African American men to vote. In 1920, women were granted the same right by the 19th amendment after extensive lobbying for a right they deserved equally as much as their male counterparts. Fast-forward to the 21st century, and voting turnouts are despicably low, with the national turnout rate slightly more than 58 percent for the 2016 presidential election. At least 19 states saw a decrease in voter turnout in 2016, a statistic antithetical to previous data showing an increase in voter turnout in presidential races where no incumbent is on the ballot. So, either 42 percent of Americans are disillusioned enough with American politics and the electoral process to abstain from exercising a right so desperately sought after in other parts of the world, or there is something else at play here. Enter Republican-sanctioned voter ID laws.

Wisconsin: Bill to allow early electronic voting gets hearing in Madison | WIZM

Early voting in Wisconsin could be done electronically this year. A bill will get a hearing this week in Madison allowing early electronic voting rather than submitting an early absentee paper ballot that gets opened and counted on election night. It’s just a policy shift that simplifies the voting process, says Republican legislator and bill sponsor Janel Brandtjen. “They already have the machines,” she said. “They’re there. They’re able to be used. Why wouldn’t we take advantage of technology? I kind of look at this as working smarter, not harder.”

Wisconsin: Elections officials hoping to restore jobs that were cut | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The Wisconsin Elections Commission asked for three more workers Monday because it has seen its staff cut by 28% over two years. In the most recent round of cuts, Gov. Scott Walker in September used his veto powers to eliminate five jobs from the agency. In all, six jobs were lost because lawmakers had already agreed to trim one position. Since 2015, the agency has lost 10 positions, reducing its ranks from 36 to 26. “These realities pose a risk to the smooth administration of elections in Wisconsin, and also create a greater challenge for the agency and local election offiicials to meet their legal obligations to fully implement federal and state laws,” Michael Haas, the administrator of the Elections Commission, wrote in a recent memo. 

Wisconsin: Elections head says reduced staff poses risks | Associated Press

The head of Wisconsin elections wants the Legislature to approve hiring three additional staff, with two focused on bolstering security following news that the state’s voting systems were targeted by Russian hackers. A 28 percent reduction in staff since 2015 weakened the ability of elections workers to address voter safety and eroded fulfilling all other state and federal law requirements, Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Michael Haas said in a memo released Friday. “The agency for an extended period of time has been operating with less than optimal staffing,” Haas said in an interview. “We are falling behind with just our regular day-to-day responsibilities so we can be prepared for the 2018 election.”

Wisconsin: Report: Robin Vos confronted John Kasich over Wisconsin redistricting position | Wisconsin State Journal

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos confronted 2016 presidential candidate and Ohio Gov. John Kasich in September over his stance on partisan redistricting in Wisconsin, according to a report published Sunday in New York magazine. During a meeting of national statehouse leaders in Columbus, Ohio, Kasich “got into a tussle” with Vos after the Republican from Rochester brought up the U.S. Supreme Court case involving redistricting in Wisconsin, the report said. According to the report, Vos “amicably” approached Kasich, who is also a Republican, during the meeting and then swore at him for supporting the challenge to Wisconsin’s legislative districts, which opponents say unfairly benefit GOP candidates.

Wisconsin: Elections chairman: State must ready for more Russian attempts to hack election systems | Wisconsin State Journal

Wisconsin’s election IT infrastructure must be better secured before the 2018 election after federal officials said “Russian government cyber actors” targeted it during last year’s campaign, state elections commissioners said. “We now know from (the federal Department of) Homeland Security that the Russian government attempted to gain access to the Wisconsin election structure — and that they’re going to come back again,” commission chairman Mark Thomsen said. How the state should respond will be the topic of a special elections commission meeting next month. But Thomsen, a Democratic appointee to the commission, said Gov. Scott Walker’s decision to cut funding for the commission in the state budget will make the task more difficult.

Wisconsin: Voter Suppression May Have Won Wisconsin for Trump | New York Magazine

Close elections almost by definition conjure up countless explanations of what might have changed the result. As the fine voting-rights journalist Ari Berman notes, one of the more shocking and significant developments on November 8, 2016, was Donald Trump’s win in Wisconsin, a state that had not gone Republican in a presidential election since the 49-state Reagan landslide of 1984. Explanations were all over the place: Clinton’s stunning loss in Wisconsin was blamed on her failure to campaign in the state, and the depressed turnout was attributed to a lack of enthusiasm for either candidate. “Perhaps the biggest drags on voter turnout in Milwaukee, as in the rest of the country, were the candidates themselves,” Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times wrote in a post-election dispatch that typified this line of analysis. “To some, it was like having to choose between broccoli and liver.” Virtually no one, says Berman, talked about voter suppression, even though Scott Walker’s hyperpolarized state had enacted and fought successfully to preserve one of the nation’s strictest voter ID laws, expected and designed to reduce minority turnout.

Wisconsin: Elections official blames Schimel for keeping him from talking | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The head of the state Elections Commission says the attorney general is effectively stopping him from participating in a forum on Wisconsin’s gerrymandering case — a move that he says amounts to a top Republican limiting the speech of a Democrat. Attorney General Brad Schimel counters he is simply following a rule for lawyers to make sure one of his clients doesn’t talk to opposing attorneys without his own lawyers present. The dispute comes as state officials adjust to a new elections agency that is split evenly between Democrats and Republicans. Mark Thomsen, a Democrat and chairman of the commission, was invited to speak Friday on a panel that also features attorneys challenging Wisconsin’s election maps and voting laws. Thomsen wanted to participate in the forum but Schimel barred Thomsen and the attorneys from appearing together because Thomsen is a named plaintiff in the lawsuits at issue.

Wisconsin: How We Got to Gill v. Whitford, the Wisconsin Gerrymandering Case | The Weekly Standard

We Wisconsin political watchers are used to having the Badger State’s redistricting fights end up in court. So used to it, in fact, that some form of court has played a role in the matter since 1931. What is surprising this time, is that redistricting has ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court. While much of the political world has their attention focused on Gill v. Whitford, the case which could decide the constitutionality of partisan gerrymandering, the reality for most Wisconsinites is that the case is nothing but the culmination of decades of backdoor deals, partisan incumbents protecting their own, recall elections to try to overturn previous election results, more. In other words: Politics as usual.

Wisconsin: Plaintiffs in Wisconsin redistricting case get send-off | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Two days before Wisconsin’s elections maps will be argued in what could be a landmark case before the U.S. Supreme Court, folks upset over what they say is a rigged system rallied in Milwaukee. Holding signs “Democracy Demands Fair Maps” and “Fair Maps for Fair Elections,” a crowd of around 150 people cheered and applauded speakers at the rally at Plymouth Church on Milwaukee’s east side. “I’m sort of insanely excited,” Mary Lynne Donohue said shortly before the gathering. Donohue, a resident of Wisconsin’s 26th Assembly District in Sheboygan County, is a plaintiff in the suit and is flying to Washington, D.C., Monday morning.

Wisconsin: Authorities didn’t tell Wisconsin about Russian hacking for a year | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin officials for a year were not told about specific attempts by the Russian government to gain access to the state’s voter registration database, the leaders of the state Elections Commission said Friday. Friday’s statement from the commission comes after a week of conflicting reports about what Russian agents attempted to do and when state and federal officials knew about it. Wisconsin systems were targeted in July and August 2016. Wisconsin officials were aware of the attempts but not that Russian government actors were behind them, according to Friday’s statement and public records. In one of the incidents, the attack was targeted at a different state agency, not the Elections Commission.

Wisconsin: State has made progress heading off hackers but more could be done | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Russian hacking attempts grabbed headlines this week, but they weren’t the Wisconsin elections agency’s first cyber attack with an international flavor. For a day in August 2011, an older version of the state’s elections website and several other state sites were knocked out of commission by a cyber vandal. The elections site had its homepage plastered with the phrase “hacked by sovalye” — a phrase that appeared to refer to the Turkish word for “knight.” Since then, the state government as a whole has gotten more serious about protecting itself from internet attacks — efforts that may have paid off last year amid Russian attempts to influence, or undermine confidence in, the November elections. 

Wisconsin: Variety of intelligence points to Wisconsin elections threat | Associated Press

A variety of intelligence gathered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, including some that is secret, led to the conclusion that Wisconsin’s elections system had been targeted last year by Russia, state election leaders said Friday. Elections officials repeated, as they said last week, there’s no evidence that Wisconsin’s elections systems were compromised or that Russian scans of state websites resulted in a security breach. “These scanning attempts were unremarkable, except for the fact that (the U.S. Department of Homeland Security) later identified their source as being Russian government cyber actors,” said Michael Haas, the state’s elections administrator, and Mark Thomsen, chairman of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, in a joint statement. The commission’s update Friday was the latest effort to explain fully what happened with the reported Russian run at Wisconsin’s systems, and the first to cite intelligence as a foundation for the federal report.

Wisconsin: State treasurer to Legislature: Penalize Dane County for funding voter ID study | Wisconsin State Journal

Republican State Treasurer Matt Adamczyk on Wednesday called on the Legislature to penalize Dane County for funding a UW-Madison study on the effects of the state’s voter ID law. Dane County spent $55,000 on the study by UW-Madison political science professor Ken Mayer. It concluded nearly 17,000 registered voters in Dane and Milwaukee counties may have been deterred from voting in November because of the controversial law. In a statement, Adamczyk called the taxpayer expenditure “a complete waste of money” partly because nearly three in four of those surveyed lived in Milwaukee County. He called for cutting $55,000 in shared revenue Dane County receives from the state in the next budget. The county receives about $3.9 million in shared revenue.

Wisconsin: State to end use of ballot-counting machine that had flaw highlighted in recount | Wisconsin State Journal

State elections officials plan to end the use of a type of ballot-tabulation machine after the statewide 2016 recount linked the machine to vote-counting discrepancies in the last election. State elections commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to de-certify the machine, the Optech Eagle, immediately after the 2018 election. The commission also required that if those machines are used in a recount before then, a hand recount would be required. A Wisconsin State Journal analysis of the recount results, published in January, highlighted the problems. The Optech Eagle, which processed about 10.6 percent of the ballots in the state, produced a higher error rate than other machines — likely because some voters didn’t comply with instructions to use a certain kind of ink or pencil to mark their ballots.

Wisconsin: In reversal, DHS says Russians did not seek to hack Wisconsin’s election system | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The federal Department of Homeland Security reversed itself Tuesday and told Wisconsin officials that the Russian government had not tried to hack the state’s voter registration system last year. Instead, Homeland Security said, the Russians had attempted to access a computer system controlled by another state agency. The development — disclosed during a meeting of the Wisconsin Elections Commission — came four days after federal officials told the state that Russians had tried to hack systems in Wisconsin and 20 other states. Juan Figueroa, a member of Homeland Security’s election infrastructure team, on Tuesday told state officials by email that Wisconsin’s voter registration system had not been targeted in a hacking attempt after all. He said Russians had tried to access a computer system run by the state Department of Workforce Development.

Wisconsin: UW Study: Up To 23,000 Didn’t Vote Because Of Voter ID Law | Wisconsin Public Radio

Sites in 20 Wisconsin cities took part in National Voter Registration Day efforts Tuesday. The event comes a day after a University of Wisconsin-Madison study showing the state’s voter ID law lowered turnout last year. The study from UW-Madison estimates that up to 23,000 people in Dane and Milwaukee counties did not vote in November 2016 because of the state’s voter ID law. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that between 16,800 and 23,250 voters in two of the state’s most Democratic counties did not vote because of the law. Shauntay Nelson of the group Wisconsin Voices says part of the problem was just confusion, and she says events like National Voter Registration Day can cut through that. “Our intention is to partner with as many people as possible to educate individuals and to really begin to help them to understand that there really are avenues,” Nelson said.

Wisconsin: Strict ID Law Discouraged Voters, Study Finds | The New York Times

Nearly 17,000 registered Wisconsin voters — potentially more — were kept from the polls in November by the state’s strict voter ID law, according to a new survey of nonvoters by two University of Wisconsin political scientists. The survey, summarized on Monday on the university’s website, is certain to further roil an ongoing debate over whether Donald J. Trump’s narrow victory in Wisconsin over Hillary Clinton was a result of efforts to depress Democratic turnout. Mr. Trump defeated Mrs. Clinton by 22,748 votes out of more than 2.9 million ballots cast. The November turnout in Wisconsin, 69.4 percent of eligible voters, was the lowest in a presidential election year since 2000. The study summarized on Monday specifically does not make that claim, its principal author, Prof. Kenneth R. Mayer of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in an interview. But neither did he rule it out. “The survey did not ask any questions about how people would have voted or about their party identification,” he said. “But it’s certainly possible that there were enough voters deterred that it flipped the election.”

Wisconsin: Elections Commission to consider new security after hack attempt | Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

The Wisconsin Elections Commission Tuesday will consider increasing its cyber security efforts, a move that follows reports that Russians unsuccessfully attempted to hack the agency last year. On Friday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security notified Wisconsin that it was one of 21 states that Russians attempted to hack during the presidential elections.Elections Commission members and the news media will be briefed on this attack at the agency’s Tuesday board meeting, spokesman Reid Magney said. The new security would include encrypting WisVote, the statewide voter registration system used by local clerks, and requiring two-factor authentication for clerks and state workers signing into that system. That two-factor system requires both a typical password and then a second code that is sent as a text to a user’s cellphone or an email to their private account.