Weekend absentee voting would end and voter identification requirements would return under a sweeping new election law package partially inspired by issues in Racine. The bill from Greendale Republican Rep. Jeff Stone covers a wide swath of election-related territory, including numerous procedural changes for how electoral recounts are run. Those changes are partially the product of last summer’s recall recount in Racine, where tensions ran high and allegations of election fraud repeatedly surfaced, according to Stone’s office. Speaker of the Assembly Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said his office helped shape the final bill, bringing together what he called “a bunch of different ideas regarding elections to make them hopefully easier and more fair.” The result is the wide-ranging proposal planned for committee debate Tuesday.
A fair portion of Stone’s bill takes Racine’s experience with the recall recount as a sort of lesson.
Justin Phillips, currently with Stone’s Assembly office and formerly on Wanggaard’s recall campaign, said several of the provisions look at “questionable things that went on in the ballot situations,” including ballot bags that weren’t sealed, supplemental poll books that were not signed by voters and blank ballots that were initialed by poll workers when they shouldn’t have been.
The proposed bill, he said, “highlights the idea of making sure these things are actually in state statute and done properly.”
Full Article: Recount spurs voting reforms.