This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

Shortly after former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman commenced his error-ridden and fruitless investigation into the state’s 2020 election, he raised eyebrows when he derided chief election official Meagan Wolfe’s clothing choices.

“Black dress, white pearls — I’ve seen the act, I’ve seen the show,” he said on a conservative radio program in spring 2022.

Not long after that comment, Wolfe was scheduled to appear at a county clerk conference, and a county clerk bought fake pearl necklaces for everyone in the room, according to Wood County Clerk Trent Miner, a Republican.

“Every one of us, men, women … were wearing those pearl necklaces to show support for her,” he said. “There’s nothing but support from the county clerks for Meagan and the job that she does.”

In contrast with that virtually unanimous support from clerks, he said, most of the criticism she’s received is based on false conspiracy theories or from people who don’t know her or understand her role on the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Since becoming the commission’s nonpartisan administrator six years ago, Wolfe has faced death threats, repeated efforts to oust her, opposition from President-elect Donald Trump, and more lawsuits than you can count on two hands.

It’s the kind of intense pressure that has caused many election officials to leave their roles in recent years. But in the eyes of other election officials, Wolfe has thrived. Many of her peers say she is a nonpartisan and clear-headed model for navigating the world of election administration at a time when election officials are under ever-increasing scrutiny.

For Wolfe, that pressure was just a din of mostly political noise seeping into the already-complicated work of election administration. Even before the 2020 election, she learned how to cope with a level of stress that has now become the norm.

“I cannot imagine what it would be like to be in a position or an environment where we’re not constantly putting out fires,” Wolfe told Votebeat. “I’ve come to really like and appreciate those challenges. Where a challenge comes up, we have to figure out how to overcome it, how to accomplish this thing that’s never been done before.”

Politics inherent to the job for Wolfe

Wolfe, who has degrees in strategic communications and English writing, came into her administrative job with a long election background. That stands out from the many election chiefs across the country who start their roles with little or no election experience.

When Wolfe was hired at the commission’s predecessor, the Government Accountability Board in 2011, her role was to help implement and train clerks and voters about the state’s new voter ID law. The law, which was the target of litigation, was “very divisive,” Wolfe said.

In her training sessions, she said, “I’d start everything by saying, ‘I’m not here to talk about if this is a good law or this is a bad law. I’m just here to tell you what the law is and what we all need to know to be able to navigate it.’”

Those experiences, along with the continuing political and legal battles she faces, she said, have given her an ability “to separate the noise that’s intended to distract us, intended to sway us from what the important things are that actually deserve our resources and our attention.”

“If you don’t have that experience and perspective,” she said, “then it’s really easy to fall into the trap of, here’s this really loud voice or this really loud claim that’s being made, let’s shift all of our resources and our time and everything over to dealing with that, and then it allows other things to fall by the wayside.”

Wolfe moved into IT and leadership roles before becoming administrator in 2018. Some of her work has been groundbreaking across the country.

For example, Wolfe oversaw the in-house development of the statewide registration system and made Wisconsin among the first states to deploy multi-factor authentication for election officials to access that type of system — a crucial cybersecurity tool.

Wisconsin seems like an “unlikely candidate” to develop those complex systems, Wolfe said, but the state has the most decentralized election system in the nation, which means there are few ready-made programs that it could easily implement.

“We’re used to having to just sort of trailblaze,” she said.

Both of those systems became models for other states, including Rhode Island, whose former election director Rob Rock called Wolfe when the state was trying to develop its own custom-built system.

“I really had no idea how to do this, and so to have someone who kind of helped me out through this process was really instrumental,” said Rock, who is now Rhode Island’s deputy secretary of state. “We certainly wouldn’t have the system we have today if it wasn’t for folks like Meagan and her insight into how they did it in Wisconsin.”

Added Rock, “Meagan is one of the best election administrators in this country. I say that without hesitation at all.”

Wolfe’s accomplishments led to her taking leadership roles in national organizations, such as the Electronic Registration Information Center and National Association of State Election Directors.

Last year, the latter organization gave Wisconsin an award for developing a set of videos outlining how elections work.

Clerks recall Wolfe being there in times of need

A significant portion of Wolfe’s job is to be a conduit between state and local election officials.

She appears at clerk conferences to update local election officials on changing laws and oversees programs to train an ever-evolving cast of full- and part-time county and municipal clerks.

Marathon County Clerk Kim Trueblood, a Republican, said she has come to lean on Wolfe, sometimes for emotional support and other times for advice.

This past election cycle, Trueblood faced a contentious primary from an opponent who, she said, accused her of corruption and targeted her over an outstanding speeding ticket, calling her a fugitive from justice and saying she was unfit to serve.

As the attacks wore on, Trueblood said, Wolfe gave her a call to see how she was doing.

“She was not taking any sides,” Trueblood said. “She wasn’t involving herself politically at all. She was just checking in on a fellow human.”

“That says a lot about a person’s character,” Trueblood added.

Another local election official, Douglas County Clerk Kaci Jo Lundgren, a Democrat, recalled Wolfe being there for her when she was in a pinch.

Ahead of the August election this year, Lundgren mistakenly assigned the wrong Assembly district on every ballot in a small town. After catching the error on election day, Lundgren said, one of her first moves was to call Wolfe for advice.

There wasn’t much the commission could do, Lundgren recalled, but Wolfe offered her templates to communicate the error to the town’s voters. Additionally, Lundgren said Wolfe provided emotional support.

“I felt like one mistake ruined everything for me. And she affirmed that I was here because I’m doing a good job, and I’m upset because I care,” Lundgren said. “She knows what it’s like to deal with difficult situations in elections, and because it was my first time having to deal with something so difficult, it was just nice to have her as a resource.”

One figure in national elections, Carolina Lopez, the executive director of the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions, recalled a particularly volatile time in Wisconsin elections around 2022, when courts were flip-flopping on the legality of drop boxes.

During that time, she said, the elections commission sent rapid updates to make local election officials aware of the recent changes.

“That’s probably the biggest thing you could do for … your counties and the people that you partner with – it’s prompt communication, clear communication.”

For all the credit that clerks give Wolfe, the state’s top election official said she has it easy compared to them.

“If we don’t have them and we don’t have people that are resilient and resourceful and compassionate and tough in each of our communities, then this doesn’t work, right?” Wolfe said. “And so my job is really just to support them.”

Wolfe becomes GOP target after 2020 election

After the 2020 election, a multitude of prominent Republicans, including Trump, blamed Wolfe for Trump’s loss in that year’s election. They baselessly alleged fraud and called for investigations and her ouster, blaming her for a slew of decisions by election commissioners that she had no vote on, like bypassing a state law that ordinarily requires sending election officials to conduct elections in nursing homes.

Calls for a new administrator haven’t entirely ceased. But now, over four years after Wolfe became a target, scores of people in the election community — and even many Republican leaders — are ready to move on.

The Legislature’s top Republican, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, was recently asked on WISN 12 if the Assembly would move to impeach Wolfe. Vos, who had authorized Gableman’s investigation, called it unlikely, adding, “I really want 2020 to be in the rearview mirror.”

Trueblood, the Marathon County clerk, said there’s a sense of camaraderie between local election officials and Wolfe, especially after she became targeted in the wake of the 2020 election.

“For a while, she wasn’t going anywhere by herself for fear of her own safety,” Trueblood said. “I don’t care what your political feelings about somebody are, things like that just aren’t okay. And I think we all developed a really close bond with her.”

If that vitriol gets under Wolfe’s skin, she’s not expressing it.

“I’ve always felt really strongly that we cannot allow people threatening us, harassing us, bullying us, whatever you want to call it – we cannot allow that to sway how we behave or, in my position, to stop me from going out and talking to the public about how elections work,” Wolfe said. “Because in some ways I view that as almost giving in to partisan pressure … and I’m just not going to do that.”

Smooth 2024 election sign that Wolfe should continue, former chief says

Despite efforts to move forward, the fight to target and oust Wolfe has continued into 2024, past the November election, which for the most part went off without a hitch.

After 2020, the commission received thousands of calls and emails replete with election conspiracy theories and false claims, she said. Since the 2024 election, she said, conspiracy theory-laden calls and emails number in the single digits.

At least one significant hurdle awaits, though.

As Wolfe’s term expired in the summer of 2023, the election commission deadlocked on her reappointment. She remained in her role as a holdover appointee and, along with the commission, filed a lawsuit against GOP legislative leaders who sought to oust her.

That case is pending before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. In November’s oral arguments, a majority of justices appeared skeptical of the argument against her.

Both of Wolfe’s predecessors expressed support for her to stay in her job.

Mike Haas, who was administrator at the accountability board and later became the commission’s first administrator, said the smooth administration of the 2024 election “is evidence that the right person is in the job and should continue in it.”

Added Haas, “It would be nice in Wisconsin if we could get to a position of people supporting election officials, rather than being focused on creating imaginary conspiracy theories.”

Kevin Kennedy, who was Wisconsin’s chief election official for over 30 years, said both he and Haas were replaceable — and Wolfe is too.

But Kennedy wondered why people would want to replace “someone who’s really good.”

“I think it’s best for Wisconsin if she stays,” he said.

For her part, Wolfe said she has “no immediate plans to leave” if she wins that case and continues to receive the election commissioners’ approval. She has many ongoing projects, but also wants to gauge what next year looks like, she said.

Wolfe also questioned whether she may get in the way of her agency’s functions, like budget negotiations. If there’s ever a time “where me being in this role seems like it’s not productive to the needs of our agency or the state,” she said, then she may reevaluate staying at the commission, “because this isn’t about me. It’s much bigger and more important than me.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

How Meagan Wolfe navigates intense scrutiny to make elections and her peers stronger is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Update, Dec. 12, 2024: A federal judge dismissed the Republican Party of Wisconsin lawsuit on Thursday, saying there’s no controversy over the main issue in the case. Both the GOP and the defendants agree they should cast electoral votes for President-elect Donald Trump on Dec. 17, in compliance with a federal law, not the Dec. 16 date dictated under a state law.

Original story: The Republican Party of Wisconsin filed a lawsuit Friday to resolve a discrepancy between state and federal law directing when appointed presidential electors must meet to cast Electoral College votes.

State law requires presidential electors to meet on Dec. 16 this year, but a federal law passed two years ago calls for them to meet on Dec. 17. The state GOP is calling on a U.S. District Court of Western Wisconsin judge to enforce the federal requirement and strike the state one.

“The presidential electors cannot comply with both requirements,” the lawsuit states.

Resolving the current conflict is key to avoiding the state’s electoral votes getting challenged or contested in Congress, the state GOP states.

The lawsuit highlights the Legislature’s failure to pass a bill that would have brought Wisconsin in line with the new federal law. That inaction, the state GOP says, “led to the current conflict between the federal and state statutes.”

The lawsuit is filed against Gov. Tony Evers, Attorney General Josh Kaul and Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe.

The GOP is asking for the federal court to declare the current state law requirement — for the electors to meet on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, as opposed to the federal law’s requirement to meet on the first Tuesday following the second Wednesday — unconstitutional and unenforceable. Given the tight timeline, it’s seeking a hearing “as soon as the Court’s calendar allows.”

Spokespeople for the Wisconsin Elections Commission and Evers declined to comment for this story. 

Generally, federal law supersedes state law if there’s a conflict between the two, said Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative. Under the current, conflicting laws, electors this year definitely have to meet on Dec. 17, but it’s less clear what they should do on Dec. 16, she told Votebeat in May.

The new designated day arose as a result of the new federal law, commonly called the Electoral Count Reform Act. Congress designed the law in 2022 to prevent the post-election chaos that then-President Donald Trump and his allies created after the 2020 election, which culminated in efforts to send fake electoral votes to Congress, block certification of legitimate electoral votes and then storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. 

The new federal law sets specific schedules for certifying election results and casting electoral votes. It cleared up ambiguities contained in the previous version of the law, which was enacted in 1887 but never updated until two years ago. 

As of mid-October, 15 states had updated their laws to comply with the Electoral Count Reform Act, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. A Wisconsin proposal to bring the state in line with the new federal law passed the Senate nearly unanimously in February. But it never received a vote in the Assembly. 

“It would have been beneficial if Wisconsin had also done that,” Godar said.

Scott Thompson, a staff attorney at the liberal-leaning legal group Law Forward, said the Legislature knew about this problem for over a year but chose not to resolve it with a simple fix.

“This eleventh hour lawsuit merely confirms that our state Legislature needs to stop peddling election conspiracy theories and start taking the business of election administration seriously,” he said.

Wisconsin Republicans were among those who sent documents to Congress in December 2020 falsely claiming Trump won the state. Trump won the state in 2024. The Wisconsin fake electors were subject to a civil lawsuit, and there’s an ongoing criminal case against their attorneys.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

UPDATE: Parties agree on date Trump’s electors are supposed to cast their votes is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The seven members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court hear oral arguments. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday morning in a lawsuit over Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) Administrator Meagan Wolfe’s ability to remain in her post. 

Several times during the arguments, justices and attorneys described the situation as “absurd” and “bizarre” as the Court is being asked to deal with the ramifications of a divided state government that has frequently deadlocked over executive appointments to boards and commissions and the Republican-held Senate’s confirmation of those appointees. 

Two years ago, the Court, at the time controlled by a conservative majority, ruled that Frederick Prehn, a Republican appointee to the state’s Natural Resources Board, did not have to leave his post at the end of his term — even though Democratic Gov. Tony Evers had nominated his replacement. 

The Court found that until the Senate — whose GOP leaders were collaborating with Prehn to remain in the seat in an effort to influence policy decisions over wolf hunting and water quality — confirmed his replacement, state law allowed Prehn to remain on the board as a holdover. 

In the summer of 2023, Wolfe’s initial four-year term as WEC administrator expired and Senate Republicans, influenced by the three previous years of constant Republican attacks on the state’s election administration, said they would not confirm her to a second term. 

The three Democrats on the commission, in an effort to shield Wolfe from the Senate, abstained from a vote to reappoint her while the three Republicans on the commission voted to nominate her again. State law requires a majority of the six member body to vote in favor of an administrator’s nomination, however, meaning the nomination wasn’t officially advanced to the Senate for a vote. 

But the Senate acted anyway, voting against Wolfe’s appointment. Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul immediately filed a lawsuit arguing that under the precedent Republicans set in the Prehn decision, Wolfe is able to remain in her position as a holdover. 

At the circuit court level, Republicans admitted that the Senate vote to remove Wolfe was “symbolic.” But after a Dane County judge ruled in Wolfe’s favor, the GOP leaders appealed the decision to the Supreme Court. 

While neither side in the Wolfe case argued for overturning the Prehn precedent, the arguments put Republicans in the position of arguing against principles they had themselves fought for in the earlier case — only this time in front of a Court held by a liberal majority. 

Misha Tseytlin, the attorney for the Senate, argued that the statute that guides the commission’s authority to appoint an administrator creates “an affirmative duty,” and that the commission must nominate a new administrator when the four year term expires. He said that if the law doesn’t require WEC to act, unelected officials can shield the administrator from the elected Senate indefinitely. 

“Whatever level of absurdity one wants to put on the Prehn situation, whether it’s zero or 100, this one’s orders of magnitude more,” Tseytlin said. “There you had a traditional constitutional standoff between the governor and the Senate. They didn’t agree with the appointment, that’s resolved in the holdover. Here we have three, essentially bureaucrats, who have no constitutional status, holding the chief election officer appointment hostage away from the people.” 

But Justice Jill Karofsky questioned if this outcome simply forced the Republicans in the Senate to deal with the consequences of a legal interpretation they previously asked for. 

“You are trying to thread a needle here that has no eye,” Karofsky said. “Six of the seven of us sat in this courtroom two years ago when your client insisted that Fred Prehn should be able to retain his position on the DNR board, even though his term had expired and your client won. This is a case of careful what you wish for, isn’t it? Now the Legislature is here two years later, demanding that Meagan Wolfe must vacate her position.” 

“It seems to me, this has little to do with what the law actually says, and far more to do with who is in these positions,” she continued. “If the Legislature favors someone, they stay. If they don’t, they must go. Does that sound like the rule of law to you?” 

Assistant Attorney General Charlotte Gibson, the Department of Justice lawyer arguing on behalf of Wolfe, said that the statute that gives the commission the authority to appoint administrators does not require it to act when the administrator’s term expires. The administrator, she said, becomes a holdover appointee and serves at the will of the commission, who can fire her at any time. 

“[Wolfe’s] role is not a part-time policymaking position like the [Natural Resources] board people,” Gibson said. “This is an intense, full-time job requiring expertise and experience, and it just doesn’t work if there are frequent changes in personnel and sudden vacancies … but if an administrator is underperforming, the Commission’s right there on the ground with her. They’re going to see that, and regardless of whether they’re Republicans or Democrats, they’re going to coalesce and bring in an administrator who can do the job.”

A lawsuit that could determine whether Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe can keep her job is coming before the state Supreme Court on Monday. The case focuses on the legality of appointees staying on after their terms expire, rather than any matter of her performance as the state’s top election official.

Republicans targeted Wolfe, a nonpartisan appointee, after Donald Trump lost Wisconsin in the 2020 election. Since then, she has endured criticism from Trump supporters for several decisions that the election commission made, as well as for some memos she sent to clerks who run local elections. 

As Wolfe’s term expired in the summer of 2023, the election commission deadlocked on her reappointment. Shortly after, the Republican-controlled state Senate voted to fire her in a move that it later said was only symbolic, but that triggered a protracted fight. 

She and the Wisconsin Elections Commission sued Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, a Republican, who pushed to oust Wolfe following the expiration of her term. The lawsuit also names Senate President Chris Kapenga and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, both Republicans, as defendants.

Wolfe has now spent the last 16 months as a holdover appointment. During much of that time, it wasn’t clear who would be running the commission during the 2024 presidential election. Wolfe stayed in her role despite the pressure from the right, simultaneously becoming one of the most respected — and scrutinized — election officials nationwide.

One day after the presidential election, Wolfe said that she was “completely committed to seeing through this election,” which has yet to be certified. But she didn’t clarify whether she was seeking to stay in her role beyond the fall.

Lawsuit comes after years of scrutiny, legal battles

The Wisconsin Elections Commission is composed of three Democratic and three Republican commissioners. Wolfe, as the administrator, can issue recommendations to the commissioners on guidance they issue to local election officials, but she has no vote. The commissioners are the ones who decide whether to approve them.

Still, Wolfe has been a scapegoat for election conspiracy theorists seeking to blame somebody for Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.

After the 2020 presidential election, Wolfe was blamed for a slew of decisions by the commissioners, like letting local officials cure mistakes on absentee ballot envelopes and bypassing a state law that ordinarily requires sending election officials to conduct elections in nursing homes. She was also criticized for issuing a memo about using drop boxes in 2020, two years before the high court banned them. (The court reversed that decision this year under a new liberal majority.) 

Some went further, saying baselessly that Wolfe led a wide-ranging conspiracy to commit fraud to rig the 2020 election in Joe Biden’s favor. Late last year, some legislative Republicans tried but failed to impeach Wolfe.

In April, Trump charged that Wolfe “will try to steal another election” if she’s not removed from office. Trump won Wisconsin in the 2024 presidential election.

Commission inaction can ‘undermine trust’

Wolfe’s term expired in July 2023, and the Senate appeared poised to reject her confirmation had she been reappointed. All three Republicans on the commission voted to reappoint Wolfe at the time, which would set her up for a Senate confirmation vote.

But Democratic election commissioners abstained from the vote. They cited a 2022 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling stating that appointees can stay in their roles past the expiration of their terms, a decision that Democrats had previously opposed.  

That meant Wolfe wasn’t formally reappointed and therefore not subject to another Senate confirmation proceeding. Senate leaders acknowledged that later, but still took a vote to fire her, leading to the current lawsuit. 

A Dane County judge in January sided with the elections commission argument that Wolfe is a lawful holdover. GOP leaders appealed that decision to an appeals court, and the election commission appealed it to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

“This case is fascinating because the shoes are all on the wrong feet,” said Jeff Mandell, founder of the liberal legal group Law Forward. “And maybe what that shows is that there’s less — maybe on all sides — there’s less of a matter of principle and Constitution than of political convenience.”

Mandell has long pushed back against the false accusations against Wolfe and other election officials in Wisconsin that arose from the 2020 election. Still, he said, “it’s not ideal” for democracy for Wolfe to be in her role past her term.

The debate further demonstrates how both Democrats and Republicans have been relying more on hardball tactics to accomplish their policy goals recently, said Barry Burden, a political science professor at UW-Madison. 

Those tactics escalated as Senate Republicans slow-walked or outright rejected appointments, many of them made by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, to critical roles in state government. 

The various twists in the fight are examples of dysfunction in the appointment processes that can “undermine trust in those processes and in those institutions,” said Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative.

“Whether or not you think that (Wolfe) should continue in her role, I think it is important 

for appointment processes and confirmation processes to happen in the way that they’re supposed to happen,” Godar said.

Under state law, the election commission administrator serves a four-year term. Election commissioners are supposed to appoint a new administrator if the current position is vacant. 

Until the Senate confirms an appointment, the law says, the commission would be overseen by an interim supervisor selected by a majority of commissioners. If the commission doesn’t appoint somebody within 45 days of the vacancy, a legislative committee can appoint an interim administrator.

Republican legislators are pointing to that law now in their attempt to force commissioners to appoint an administrator, saying the current state of play “would allow a partisan minority of WEC to keep in place a holdover administrator indefinitely,” without a process for Senate confirmation.

But some of the Democrats supporting Wolfe say they’re just following the 2022 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling.

“When the law has things you can do, you use the law the way it allows you to use it,” said Ann Jacobs, a Democrat on the election commission. 

The high court’s 2022 ruling about holdovers makes clear that Wolfe can be a holdover, Jacobs said, adding, “if the Legislature wants to change the law, they have every ability to do that.”

“The Legislature has hijacked the appointment process for all appointees, not just WEC, where they don’t act on them, so they try to maintain control over appointees by refusing to either confirm or reject them, and I don’t think that’s good government either,” Jacobs said.

Wisconsin Watch reporter Jack Kelly contributed to this report.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Wisconsin Supreme Court case could decide fate of state’s top election official is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A Wisconsin resident casts their ballot in the state's primary election at a polling location on April 2, 2024, in Green Bay, Wisconsin. (Scott Olson | Getty Images)

Voting rights advocates across the state are warning of efforts to intimidate voters while right-wing groups have been  filing lawsuits attempting to force people off the voter rolls. 

With just 20 days until Election Day, more than 573,000 people have already requested absentee ballots and 267,524 of those ballots have been returned. In-person absentee voting will open next Tuesday, with locations and hours set by local election officials. 

Wednesday was the deadline for people to register to vote online or by mail — with mail-in registration forms required to be postmarked by Oct. 16. Voters can still register in-person at their municipal clerk’s office or at the polls on Election Day. 

On Tuesday, voting rights advocates asked the state and federal Departments of Justice to investigate reports that thousands of voters received text messages that could be seen as voter intimidation. The messages, which seem to have targeted young voters, warn recipients that anyone who votes in Wisconsin when not eligible to do so can be punished with fines up to $10,000 and 3.5 years imprisonment. 

In a state with elections as close as Wisconsin, college-aged voters can often play a major role in deciding who wins. College students, even if they’re from another state, are eligible to vote in Wisconsin elections. 

“Many students and other young voters are fearful that they will face criminal prosecution if they register and exercise their right to vote — because of a malicious, inaccurate text sent by an anonymous party,” the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin wrote in a letter about the messages. 

At a press conference Wednesday, Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) Administrator Meagan Wolfe said that the commission is aware of third party communications that could be seen as intimidating. She said that voters should go to official sources of information to decide if they’re eligible to vote. 

“Election officials do continue to receive reports from voters who have received these third party communications, like text messages that they’ve described as intimidating or that contain false information,” she said. “Unfortunately, many voters that receive these kinds of communications during election season, and sometimes they can be misleading, and to avoid being misled by any sort of communication that might come from a third party to a voter, voters should make sure to get their election information from the official source.” (For more information go to Wisconsin’s MyVote website.)

At the press conference, Wolfe also gave an update on the use of absentee ballot drop boxes across the state, which were declared legal by the state Supreme Court earlier this year after a previous court majority had barred their use. Wolfe said local clerks have reported to WEC that this year in Wisconsin at least 78 drop boxes are in use, a steep decline from the more than 500 that were used in the 2020 election and earlier before Republicans turned against them over baseless allegations of fraud. 

Drop boxes have remained a major issue in this year’s election, with the Wausau mayor drawing criticism after he removed the city’s drop box without permission from the local election clerk. 

The 78 boxes means that less than 50 communities across the state are using the boxes because Madison and Milwaukee have a total of 14 drop boxes available across the two cities. 

“The decision to have drop boxes or not, as our state Supreme Court said, is a decision that rests with the municipal clerk, and just like any decisions they make for their community, they have to weigh the considerations or the needs of their local community, and so I won’t undercut any of those decisions that have been made by our municipal clerks, because they’re making a decision for their community and the best needs of their community,” Wolfe said. 

As Republicans have continued to attack the voting system in Wisconsin and across the country, two lawsuits have been filed seeking to make last-minute changes to the voter registration system. 

One of the lawsuits, filed by Daniel Eastman, an attorney involved in former President Donald Trump’s legal fight to overturn the results of the 2020 election, alleges that more than 140,000 voters on the voter registration list are ineligible because cross-checks with U.S. Postal Service data shows they don’t live at the address where they’re registered to vote. The lawsuit states that more than 50,000 of those registrations are in Milwaukee. 

Election officials use the USPS data to keep voter rolls updated but the data has a high error rate and is generally confirmed through other sources. 

The lawsuit asks the Milwaukee Elections Commission to mail postcards to all the voters found in the data to confirm if they’ve moved and asks WEC to instruct all the other clerks in the state to do the same. 

The second lawsuit alleges that there’s a “legitimate concern” the state and local election officials are activating inactive voter registrations and asks a Marinette County judge to order WEC not to activate any voter registrations 

Courts are generally unlikely to make rulings affecting voting so close to an election. Clerks use a variety of sources of information, including data from a national coalition of states tracking when people move to or die in other states, to keep voter rolls up to date.