June 11, 2020 at 4:10 p.m.
Millions in federal stimulus aid to be used for absentee ballot request mailing
Republican lawmaker says commission is misappropriating tax dollars
Millions in federal stimulus aid to be used for absentee ballot request mailing
The commission vote was 6-0. The panel has three Democratic members and three Republican members.
The informational mailing won't include an actual absentee ballot but a request for one. Voters who fill out the applications in timely fashion and send along a copy of a photo ID will receive a ballot for the Nov. 3 election.
The mailing will reach 2.714 million registered voters. According to the WEC's spending recommendations, the total pool of registered voters in the state is 3.4 million.
Of those, 528,000 already have an absentee ballot on file for one or more elections in 2020 and therefore, in the WEC's view, have demonstrated the ability to submit a valid request for an absentee ballot. Even more, WEC stated, those voters may not have the need to make any further requests for calendar year 2020.
Another 158,000 have been assigned to the active mover's list, meaning the state received information that the voter may have moved, mailed the voter a mover's letter in October 2019, and the voter has not taken any action, including re-registering or confirming their address, to respond to the mailing or to vote.
Removing those two categories of names leaves about 2.7 million registered voters. The cost to mail the packet was estimated at about $2.2 million.
The voter mailing is designed to inform voters who have not already requested an absentee ballot for November about their voting options, WEC administrator Meagan Wolfe said.
"We want voters to know what their options are, and for anyone who is considering voting by mail to make their request as soon as possible so clerks are not overwhelmed right before the election," Wolfe said.
The WEC says the informational mailing will go out later this summer. The voting options are absentee voting by mail, in-person at the clerk's office, and voting at the polls on Election Day.
For most voters, Wolfe said, the MyVote.wi.gov website is the easiest way to make an absentee ballot request any time prior to Oct. 29, while for voters who are not comfortable with or do not have access to technology, a paper form will be their best source of information.
MyVote.wi.gov is also where voters can register to vote, find their polling place, view a sample ballot, or contact their municipal clerk to learn about in-person absentee opportunities, Wolfe said.
Matthew Rothschild, the executive director of the liberal Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, praised the WEC's decision to undertake the mailing.
"Wisconsin voters should never again be put in the situation that they were in on April 7, when they had to choose between sacrificing their right to vote and risking their lives to exercise that right," Rothschild wrote on the WDC website. "Making it easier for people to vote by absentee ballot in the time of this pandemic is a moral imperative and a democracy imperative."
Rothschild also said the vote was somewhat of a surprise because the commission was deadlocked on the issue the week before.
"It was also a surprise since Senate majority leader Scott Fitzgerald had signaled his displeasure with the effort to boost mail-in voting, and Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear that he opposes mail-in voting and is eager to punish states that enable it," he wrote. "The mailing of the applications can't get underway yet, though, because Republicans on the commission insisted that they need to sign off on the wording of the letter that the staff is going to mail out with the applications."
Not happy with the vote was state Rep. Adam Neylon (R-Pewaukee), who called the decision a misappropriation of millions of tax dollars.
"If Wisconsin is going to spend millions more tax dollars on the election, which is what the elections commission voted to do yesterday, it should be used to ensure election integrity and voter safety at the polls," Neylon said. "This move by the elections commission will reverse the steps we have taken to bolster election integrity, at the taxpayers' expense."
Specifics
All totaled last week, the WEC approved spending $7.3 million in federal CARES Act, or COVID-19, stimulus dollars, including a $4.1 million block grant program to help local election officials and voters prepare for the autumn elections.
"Wisconsin voters and election officials need to be ready for anything this fall," Wolfe said. "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."
According to the WEC, the $4.1-million block grant program will help municipalities deal with significant unbudgeted expenses for fall elections like postage and envelopes, based on the high demand for absentee ballots in the spring election, when nearly 1.16 million ballots were cast by mail.
The federal stimulus dollars also require state matching funds of 20%, which in Wisconsin's case is more than $1.4 million. But the state plans to also use local government election expenditures from the spring to help count toward the match.
To document municipalities have spent funds beyond their current election budgets to respond to the COVID-19 public health emergency, municipalities will be required to report all allowable expenses that were incurred between Jan. 20 and Nov. 30.
In a letter to state election officers, Mona Harrington, the acting director of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, said she was aware state officials were concerned about meeting the match requirement under the grants. The criteria were confusing, Harrington acknowledged.
"Under the Consolidated Appropriations Act, states must make a 20% match available within two years of receiving the funds," Harrington wrote. "While the CARES Act did not address the two years allowed to make the match available, the activities for which the funds are authorized are limited to the 2020 federal elections."
In this case, Harrington continued, the project is the activities for which a state incurs costs 'to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus, domestically or internationally, for the 2020 federal election cycle."
Finally, the WEC is advising voters who receive absentee ballot applications that photo IDs are still required. Registered voters requesting an absentee ballot online can upload a picture or scan of their photo ID at MyVote.wi.gov, while those making the request by mail must provide a physical copy of their photo ID, either a paper photocopy or even a photograph, the WEC states.
However, the WEC adds, Wisconsin's photo ID law contains an exception for absentee voters who are indefinitely confined to their homes due to age, disability, illness, or infirmity. This exception was designed for voters with disabilities, seniors, and others who do not have access to an acceptable photo ID or whose photo IDs may have expired, but it can also apply in other cases.
Another minor controversy that has emerged is whether absentee ballots will have tracking barcodes on them, but WEC says that is a misunderstanding.
"The WEC will soon start using USPS Intelligent Mail Barcodes (IMB) for absentee ballot envelopes, not the ballots," the WEC states. "IMBs will let voters and clerks track where a ballot is in the postal system as it travels from the clerk's office to the voter's home and back to the clerk's office, just like they track packages from online retailers."
Richard Moore is the author of the forthcoming "Storyfinding: From the Journey to the Story" and can be reached at richardmoorebooks.com.
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