State Rep. Lee Snodgrass (D-Appleton) listens as Rep. Lindee Rae Brill (R-Sheboygan Falls) testifies about her bill to ban the use of absentee ballot drop boxes. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

At a public hearing of the Wisconsin Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections Tuesday, legislators engaged in an occasionally tense debate over proposed changes to the state election system. 

In attendance at the hearing were some of Wisconsin’s most prominent election deniers, including former state Rep. Janel Brandtjen and Peter Bernegger, a self-styled elections investigator who has been convicted of mail fraud Bernegger stood in the back of the hearing room with a group of companions, muttering and complaining about assertions by the election clerks and legislators who testified. 

The committee heard testimony on bills that would prohibit the use of absentee ballot drop boxes, change the system for how “indefinitely confined voters” cast ballots, add a provision to state law that makes it a felony if election workers don’t allow election observers to exercise their rights and change the system for how state agencies manage voter registration data. 

The most heated part of the hearing came during the discussion of AB 560, authored by Rep. Lindee Rae Brill (R-Sheboygan Falls) and Sen. Andre Jacque (R-New Franken), which outlaws drop boxes. The use of drop boxes has been a politically charged issue since 2020, when right-wing groups started to allege they’re susceptible to fraud and “ballot harvesting” by outfits known as “ballot mills” that allegedly collect illegal ballots and stuff them into drop boxes in order to sway election results. There is no evidence such harvesting happens, though in Wisconsin it is now illegal for anyone other than a voter to return that voter’s absentee ballot. 

Since 2020, the drop box issue has been litigated in the court system more than once. In 2022, the then-conservative-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court banned drop boxes. In 2024 the new liberal majority on the Court reversed that decision and drop boxes were allowed in last year’s presidential election. Municipal clerks are able to decide whether or not to use the boxes and the Wisconsin Elections Commission has issued guidance for best practices in securing them, but there are no laws on the books guiding how drop boxes should be managed. 

Brill cited incidents in Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Canada in which absentee ballot drop boxes were set on fire, saying those events show the need for the boxes to have security that the state of Wisconsin and its municipalities can’t afford to provide.

Democrats on the committee asked why isolated anecdotes on the west coast have anything to do with the administration of drop boxes in Wisconsin and argued that the reason many Wisconsinites still have doubts about the security of the state’s elections is because Republicans keep pushing the belief that something is amiss. 

“I would argue that the No. 1 reason that people may have a lack of confidence in the security of our elections is the discourse that conservative members of the Republican Party continue to put out there about fact versus fiction when it comes to actual election security and fraud,” Rep. Lee Snodgrass (D-Appleton) said. 

“I think it’s no secret that the people who are talking about elections being stolen or somehow insecure are people who are grabbing on to conspiracy theories that are not based in fact about actual incidences of election fraud in this country,” Snodgrass continued, citing a 2022 Associated Press survey of election officials about the security of drop boxes. 

“I don’t know that I consider that a valid source, Associated Press,” Brill replied. “I don’t always see everything from the Associated Press being absolutely valid, but that might be where you and I find truth in different spots. This might be where we’re finding facts in different locations.”

The criticism of Brill’s bill didn’t just come from the committee’s Democrats. Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa), who has often worked to broker compromise on election issues, questioned Brill’s choice to put forward the bill despite the near certainty that it will be vetoed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. 

Krug said if Republicans move forward with the bill and it passes both chambers only to be vetoed in early 2026 and then the state is left in the same position — drop boxes are allowed at the discretion of local election clerks without any rules or regulations guiding their use, security or procedures. 

“[This bill is] not going to change the Supreme Court’s opinion on drop boxes. It’s not going to change the governor’s opinion on drop boxes,” Krug said. “We still have a problem in our communities, and that’s what I’m trying to get to is, politically, where we are dealing with realities. We know that if this bill leaves this committee, goes to the floor, gets voted on, goes to the Senate, gets through committee, gets voted on in the Senate, goes to the governor’s desk, he vetoes it — then where are we with drop boxes?”

Brill said more than once that she doesn’t think Republicans in the Legislature should be trying to write election-related bills that can be signed into law by Evers. 

“I don’t believe that doing election integrity that the governor is going to sign is what Republicans should be doing,” she said. “I think election integrity is something that is a very divided issue, and I think we’re on the right side of this issue. So if the governor was going to say he was going to sign, I mean, I am a believer in God and follower of Jesus Christ, so do I believe that there’s a chance that he would change his mind and sign this into law? Sure, but I’m taking this head-on, because our Republican president believes this is the direction we should be heading.”

A number of election clerks also testified on the bill, questioning the assertion that drop boxes are less secure than U.S. Postal Service mailboxes and insisting that allegations of ballot harvesting are false. 

Indefinitely confined voters 

Since the 1970s, Wisconsin law has allowed voters to identify themselves as indefinitely confined, meaning they’re unable to leave the house to vote so their local election clerk automatically sends them an absentee ballot for each election. 

When the state instituted its voter ID law in 2011, indefinitely confined voters were exempted from its requirements. In 2020, the use of indefinitely confined status increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic, raising concerns among Republicans that the program is susceptible to fraud. 

AB 599 would end the indefinitely confined program by Jan. 1, 2029 and replace it with a program that allows voters with disabilities or illnesses to request that absentee ballots be automatically sent to them and provide proof of identification. That request would be valid until the ID’s expiration, at which time the voter will need to start the process again with their new ID. 

The bill’s Republican authors, Krug and Rep. Cindy Duchow (R-Town of Delafield), said the proposal was “not a rollback” but a “recalibration” of the system. But Democrats and advocates for people with disabilities argued the state has barriers that can make it difficult for people with disabilities to obtain a state-issued ID, mostly due to challenges with DMV hours and transportation access.

Election clerks testified that the bill pushes a major burden of added work onto the local clerks. 

Election observers

AB 426, authored by Rep. Paul Tittl, would penalize any election official who infringes on an election observer’s rights to be within three and eight feet of all aspects of the voting process with up to 90 days imprisonment in county jail and a fine of up to $1,000. 

Snodgrass pointed to a recently enacted administrative rule that guides the conduct of election observers and gives  election officials authority to manage observer conduct. She said the state should wait to see how the rules work before further tweaking the law. 

Voter data 

The committee also heard testimony on AB 595, authored by Krug, which would change how the state elections commission works with other agencies to share data such as a voter’s name and state ID number. Republicans have spent years complaining that the state voter registration list is full of errors. Democrats and election administration experts have said aggressive attempts to delete data from the statewide system would result in the disenfranchisement of Wisconsin voters. 

The bill would require the Department of Transportation and WEC to enter into a data-sharing agreement to match information in the possession of both agencies. 

Under current law, whenever a voter is no longer eligible to vote, for any reason, their file is changed to ineligible on the voter registration list but not removed. This prevents people from being removed in error and allows people to retain their voter registration file if they’re convicted of a felony and then can vote again after serving their sentence. 

Krug’s bill would remove people from the list once they’re declared ineligible. If someone is then eligible to vote again, they’d have to re-register. 

The bill would also require the Legislative Audit Bureau to conduct an audit every other year of the official voter list to search for registered voters who aren’t U.S. citizens. While Republicans have of fraud by non-citizen who illegally cast ballots, there is little proof it happens at a significant rate.

Krug said that a lot of election skeptics’ complaints have simmered for years without the ability to provide definitive answers about their validity because the data can’t be compiled, so his bill is trying to solve that. 

“Is it a widespread problem? No. Does it happen? Yes,” Krug said. “So that’s what I’m trying to figure out, is, what is that in between? What does it look like? … This is not a gotcha. I just want to be able to say, ‘OK, agency gave me data, I can show you that this isn’t a major problem,’ and then I can come up with solutions.”

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Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee) speaks before a vote on a housing-related bill in the state Assembly Tuesday. (Screenshot/WisEye)

A group of housing bills that Republican lawmakers have fast-tracked since they were first announced two weeks ago made it through the Wisconsin Assembly Tuesday — most with unanimous support, but not without criticism from Democrats.

In a floor speech before the Assembly began voting Tuesday, Rep. Kalan Haywood (D-Milwaukee), assistant minority leader, said the GOP housing package fell short of what might have been possible with bipartisan discussion.

“While there is support for many of these bills on our side, we are by no means satisfied,” Haywood said.

Haywood complimented the Republican chair of the Assembly’s Housing and Real Estate committee, Rep. Robert Brooks (R-Saukville), for his “willingness to listen and work together.”

He described bills enacted in the 2023-24 session as “a bipartisan housing package that we could build on this session,” and said that in the spring, bipartisan work had begun on a new round of bills, accompanied by “honest communication with both sides and with stakeholders.”

Those discussions stopped abruptly in June, Haywood said, and when the bills came out two weeks ago the results were “half baked.”

“There are some good things in these bills that may help create some additional housing, but we could have done much more,” Haywood said.

A series of procedural votes on the floor Tuesday surrounding one bill — AB 455, creating a grant program for condominium conversions from multi-family homes — was emblematic of the gap between how Democrats and Republicans viewed not just the legislation but the larger issue of housing.

In the Housing and Real Estate Committee meeting Friday, Oct. 3, Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee) managed to persuade three Republicans to join the panel’s Democrats to pass an amendment that expanded the bill to include housing cooperatives, not just condominiums.  

After the amendment was adopted, Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) sent an email written in red to all state lawmakers of both parties, mocking Clancy’s amendment as applying to “communes” and criticizing its Republican supporters.

When the bill reached the floor Tuesday, the original author, Rep. Dave Murphy (R-Greenville), submitted a rewrite, known as a substitute amendment.

The rewrite included another amendment, from Democrat, Rep. Lori Palmeri (D-Oshkosh), giving tenants of a building being converted to condos the right of first refusal to purchase their residence. But it omitted the Clancy amendment.

“We had a brief and awesome moment of bipartisanship this last week, and then we had an all red email from Senator Nass,” Clancy said on the Assembly floor. “I did not realize that my Republican colleagues were beholden to him and not even their own leadership there.”

The substitute amendment, Clancy said, would “strike out this bipartisan amendment and just turn it into another handout to developers.”

Brooks, the housing committee chair, had announced at the Republican press conference before the floor session that cooperatives would be stripped out, calling the approach “very difficult to manage because of the financing mechanisms and other things.”

Clancy said he would vote for the legislation despite the removal of his amendment. “But it is so disappointing to have to do that because we had something better in front of us,” he added.

The bill, like most of the bills up for a vote Tuesday, passed on a voice vote.

Others that passed with broad support included AB 424, updating requirements for the rental of mobile and manufactured homes; AB 451, allowing cities and villages to designate residential tax incremental districts to help fund infrastructure improvements; AB 452, allowing land subdividers to certify their designs and public improvements comply with state requirements; and AB 456, making a variety of changes to real estate transaction practices.

A handful of measures labeled as housing bills passed with little or no support from Democrats.

AB 453 would require local communities to grant rezoning requests for housing developers if they meet certain conditions, including that the area is projected as residential in the community’s comprehensive plan. The party-line vote was 55-39.

Rep. Mike Bare (D-Verona) said the measure fell short of what could have been done and that it lacked funding for local governments that would have to bear the cost it would impose. The bill’s author. Rep. David Armstrong (R-Rice Lake) vowed to seek funding in the next state budget.

AB 450 would put off the effective date of Wisconsin’s updated commercial building code until April 1, 2026. Originally blocked in 2023, the new code was reinstated by the the Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS) after a state Supreme Court ruling this July held that state laws allowing the Legislature to block executive branch administrative rules indefinitely were unconstitutional.

The current effective date is Nov. 1.

Rep. William Penterman (R-Hustisford) said delaying the code further was needed “for clarity” because builders had been planning projects under the previous code.

After the GOP majority rejected an attempt by Democrats to replace the bill with language that increased funding for DSPS on a 54-41 party-line vote, the legislation passed on a voice vote — but with substantial, audible cries of “No” from Democrats.

AB 366 would allow landlords to demand a written statement from a licensed health professional attesting to a tenant’s need for an emotional support animal.

“There are numerous people that have contacted us about the fraudulent means of how you can get a service dog,” state Rep. Paul Tittl (R-Manitowoc), said at a Republican press conference before the floor session.

On the floor, Clancy criticized the bill for potentially harming people for whom emotional support animals are a necessity but who are unable to see  a health professional.

“To the extent that there is a problem, where we want to actually certify that some animals are supportive and some are not, we can fix that problem,” Clancy said. “But that requires actually talking to the stakeholders before taking pen to paper.”

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