Sara Peeters waited at the First United Presbyterian Church in De Pere for an hour to register and vote in Tuesday’s recall election. It didn’t deter her from casting a ballot — “I came here for a reason,” she said — but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t an inconvenience.
“It’s not an efficient system,” Peeters said. “I work in a pharmacy. No one would put up with that in a pharmacy.”
Lines at several precincts in the region topped an hour in Tuesday’s high-turnout races, a dry run for clerks and poll workers to test some of the new voting laws the Republican-led Legislature recently approved. Voters had to sign a poll book and were asked to show a form of identification, although the latter wasn’t required.
It slowed down voting quite a bit, De Pere clerk Char Peterson said.
Some Brown County municipalities had three chances to test out those requirements, giving them an advantage going into the 2012 election cycle, when voter IDs will be mandatory.
Areas of the state without recalls won’t get their first stab at the new rules until February.
Kinks still must be worked out.
“What we need to do is sit down and have the local clerks come together and look at the process flow,” said state Rep. Chad Weininger, a Republican representing Green Bay and a former clerk for the city. “November (2012) is coming around pretty soon, so we need to have processes in place so we don’t have long lines.”
Full Article: Recalls let clerks test new Wisconsin voting rules | Green Bay Press Gazette | greenbaypressgazette.com.