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Alleged voter intimidation, lawsuits over voter rolls in Wisconsin as election nears
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.
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