The Wisconsin Elections Commission on Monday weighed how it should manage the response to election administration errors made by the cities of Milwaukee and Green Bay in recent months. 

During the August and April elections this year, Green Bay City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys mistakenly sent duplicate absentee ballots to some voters after the labels were printed twice. 

In Milwaukee, during the August primary, election results were delayed after officials mistakenly downloaded the wrong file, then had to return to the city’s central count location to retrieve the actual results. 

The errors in the two cities, in addition to the city of Madison misplacing nearly 200 absentee ballots during the 2024 election, triggered scrutiny of election administration in Wisconsin’s three largest cities as Republicans in the state and across the country have spent the last six years casting doubt on the security of the state’s election systems. 

While Republicans have not uncovered large-scale fraud or an effort to sway the results of any elections, the errors have given election skeptics a foothold for further criticism. 

At Monday’s meeting, commissioner Bob Spindell, the most right-wing member of the body and a frequent election critic, said that the commission needs to take action against Milwaukee because Republicans are skeptical and accused the Democrats on the committee and city election officials of conducting a “cover up” of what happened while allowing problems to “fester.” He also said he would bet $100 that the city will have a problem counting ballots during the November election. 

“I believe we are taking our responsibility extremely seriously by looking into this and what has turned into a national concern by many, at least Republicans, which make up a large portion of Wisconsin and the U.S. population,” Spindell said. 

After the mistake was made, the commission put a discussion of the error on the agenda for Monday’s meeting and agency staff wrote a draft letter to send to the city requesting an explanation of what occurred. Before the commission met or sent the letter, the city responded. 

On Monday, the commission was specifically debating if it should still send a letter to the city, and if so what it should say — ultimately voting to draft a second letter that thanks the city for its initial response and reasserts a request for the audit logs of the voting equipment. 

Mark Thomsen, a Democrat, said that the reporting of results gets delayed in other communities across the state without any problems, so the commission shouldn’t impugn Milwaukee’s election officials over this issue. 

“If it wasn’t Milwaukee, and if it wasn’t for this ongoing, I think unfair, attack on the city and county of Milwaukee, nobody would have even paid attention to an hour delay,” Thomsen said. 

In Green Bay, the city sending duplicate absentee ballots in two elections has already resulted in the resignation of Jeffreys, the city clerk. WEC Attorney Angela Sharpe said during the meeting that some outstanding questions about the issue are “unknowable” because it’s impossible to track down each duplicate ballot once it has been put in the mail. But, she said the WEC investigation into the matter has satisfactorily determined what happened and why the mistake was made. 

In the meeting, the commission was voting to determine if the staff should continue investigating or begin drafting a final determination of whether any laws were broken. 

“I think we have a good understanding of the factors that led to the April incident and the June incident, but like I said, it does seem clear, and especially since Clerk Jeffreys is no longer in the role of city clerk, that there are going to be some actions that we just can’t know, and that the city of Green Bay can’t know,” Sharpe said. “But I do think, based on my assessment, that Green Bay has provided a lot of information. I think the city has responded at least to everything that the commission wanted to know, and then they also responded to the couple of questions that I had just based on their first response. So I think we know what we can about the situation.”

Commissioner Ann Jacobs said that her main concern was that the error was repeated, but that given that Jeffreys is no longer the clerk and the city has changed its procedures — including changing where ballot mailing labels are printed — there’s nothing to gain from endlessly investigating. 

“I think our investigation part of this has concluded. I agree with Attorney Sharpe that we learned what happened. They’ve put new processes in place, which I think was our concern about it happening the second time,” Jacobs said.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration is appealing a federal judge’s temporary pause on a U.S. Postal Service regulation that places new restrictions on mail-in voting, according to a Friday court filing. 

The administration is headed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to try to halt U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani’s temporary restraining order issued late Thursday that froze for two weeks an administration plan to carry out parts of an earlier executive order to limit vote-by-mail.

Talwani’s order in a Massachusetts federal court reinstated a pause she lifted after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a temporary procedural victory to Trump on his March executive order to curb mail-in voting. 

Democrat-led states and voting rights groups refiled lawsuits earlier this week to try to stop the administration from implementing a final rule that executes Trump’s executive order. 

They argue the rule impedes states’ power to administer elections, comes too close to the November midterms to be implemented and would disenfranchise voters that depend on mail-in voting. 

The administration says the rule will help secure elections, though it has not offered evidence that fraudulent mail-in voting is a major problem. The administration said in a Thursday brief the regulation did not affect election administration and dealt only with the federal mail. 

A federal judge froze for two weeks a Trump administration regulation to restrict mail voting late Thursday, calling the U.S. Postal Service rule a violation of states’ power to administer elections.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani’s temporary restraining order reinstated a pause that she had lifted just a day earlier, following a U.S. Supreme Court procedural ruling Monday that allowed the administration to implement the policy. The federal government will likely appeal Thursday night’s order.

Throughout months of litigation, Talwani, whom President Barack Obama appointed to the Massachusetts federal court bench in 2013, has shown strong skepticism about President Donald Trump’s power to compel states to overhaul their mail voting systems.

She did so again Thursday, saying the government had not produced any evidence of fraudulent mail voting that the rule was intended to fix. The voting rights groups and Democratic states that sued, however, had shown that voters would be disenfranchised in the Nov. 3 midterm elections if the rule remains in place then, she wrote.

“The USPS’s interest in correcting an unsubstantiated problem through likely unconstitutional means is dwarfed by the overwhelming risk of pervasive disenfranchisement of citizens who need access to mail ballots in order to vote,” Talwani said.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled Monday the two dozen Democratic state officials had sued too early when they challenged Trump’s executive order that USPS had not yet codified in a final rule. The ruling did not mention that the Postal Service had actually published a final rule the previous business day, Aug. 21.

The states and voting rights groups promptly refiled lawsuits Wednesday to challenge the final rule, asking Talwani to keep it from taking effect while the case proceeded.

In the interim, the Trump administration forged ahead with the rule’s implementation, publishing an FAQ earlier Thursday on various aspects of the rule and arguing in court that it was not seeking to take over election administration.

The rule creates new requirements for mail ballot envelopes, which states say would present a major challenge to complete before this year’s elections.

It also requires states to send the federal government lists of voting-age citizens, which would be cross-referenced with federal citizenship data, and forbids the Postal Service from delivering or collecting ballots from people who are not confirmed to be eligible voters through that process.

Trump and administration officials have characterized the rule as a tool for election integrity and Trump has long claimed fraud was rampant in mail voting, without ever providing evidence.

All states allow some form of mail voting. Eight states, primarily in the West, and the District of Columbia, mail ballots to every registered voter.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Postal Service took another step Thursday in implementing a Trump administration policy to restrict mail-in voting, even as a high-stakes legal battle plays out and midterm elections approach.

The agency published an FAQ about its new rule that compels states to send their voter rolls to the federal government and only deliver mail ballots to voters who match federal citizenship data. The rule also updates standards for mail ballots that states have said would be difficult to implement before the Nov. 3 elections that will determine the balance of Congress.

The controversial rule, which two dozen Democratic states and voting rights groups are challenging in federal court, increases the federal government’s role in elections and voting. 

The states have argued the rule violates the U.S. Constitution, which grants them the power of administering elections.

In a Thursday brief defending the rule, the U.S. Justice Department said it only contained “modest improvements and modernizations of the Postal Service’s infrastructure” and would have minimal effect on states’ election administration.

“The Rule does not displace a single State election law,” the brief said. “And it need not and should not prevent a single voter from voting by mail.”

Democrat-led states and voting rights groups re-filed lawsuits Wednesday to block the Trump administration from executing the rule after a Supreme Court ruling Monday that temporarily greenlit the policy on procedural grounds.

USPS acknowledged pending litigation in the FAQ, and noted it would make any changes spurred by the suits. 

Republicans, including Trump, have long made the accusation that noncitizens vote in federal elections, which multiple studies have shown occurs rarely.   

On Thursday, Trump said he believed states could implement the new rule, even in North Carolina where ballots are set to be mailed next week.  

“North Carolina is great,” Trump said. “And they do some mail-in ballots. But basically they ruled on the legitimacy and the way we want to make them legitimate. And it was a great ruling for the Republicans.”

Those states suing to block the rule are California, Massachusetts, Nevada, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, as well as the District of Columbia.

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this story.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a procedural victory to President Donald Trump on an executive order to curb mail-in voting, but the administration is still fighting a separate ruling that limits a portion of the order and remains in effect — complicating the administration’s temporary win. 

In light of the ruling in the nation’s highest court, the administration late Monday asked U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Massachusetts to vacate her decision from earlier in August that blocks the U.S. Postal Service from carrying out aspects of Trump’s executive order, while the voting rights groups that brought that challenge argued Tuesday the block should remain in place.

Monday’s decision from the Supreme Court also drew the ire of Democrats, who argued that Trump’s executive order ran afoul of the Constitution and threatens democracy. 

Under the Constitution, states are responsible for administering elections. Many Democrats have said Trump’s order seeks to unlawfully grab that power for the executive branch.

The Supreme Court’s ruling halted a June decision from Talwani in a case brought by more than 20 Democratic-led states and Washington, D.C. 

But that ruling does not apply in a separate case, filed in the same Massachusetts federal court, by the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts and several other voting rights groups challenging Trump’s executive order. 

In its emergency motion in the voting rights groups case, the administration wrote that “the Supreme Court’s order leaves no room for any further dispute: this Court lacked jurisdiction to issue the preliminary-injunction in this case, just as it lacked jurisdiction to enter summary judgment in the (states’) case, because there is no justiciable controversy over a proposed rule until it is actually finalized by an agency.”  

Final rule published

Further complicating the matter, the U.S. Postal Service on Friday issued a final rule that details how the agency would execute Trump’s order. 

The voting rights groups on Saturday asked Talwani to enforce her August order as a result of the Postal Service issuing the regulation. 

Regarding that request, Talwani on Tuesday afternoon said the rule violated her order because she specifically said the administration could not take steps to implement the executive order. However, she declined to take action “other than identifying the violation.”

The groups redoubled their request earlier Tuesday, writing that the Supreme Court’s decision was based on the lack of a USPS final rule.

“That decision addressed a materially different record and did not consider the critical development that occurred last Friday: The USPS Defendants promulgated a Final Rule, transforming the posture of this case and supplying a final agency action that was not before the Supreme Court,” they wrote.

Talwani’s order on the administration’s request was still pending Tuesday afternoon.

Democratic blowback

Meanwhile, Democrats were quick to blast the Supreme Court’s decision, including the top Democrats in the U.S. Senate and House. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said it’s “a disgrace that the highest court in the nation is allowing Trump to put a dagger into the heart of our democracy,” in a Monday statement. 

The New York Democrat noted that “Trump’s effort to turn the Postal Service into a voter suppression machine is blatantly unconstitutional – yet his MAGA Supreme Court is refusing to stop it from going forward,” while adding that “Senate Democrats will fight every attempt to hijack mail-in voting and rig the rules before voters have their say this November.” 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also blasted the decision and vowed to continue fighting, saying “the sycophantic Supreme Court majority’s decision in the vote-by-mail case is sowing chaos in service to Donald Trump’s effort to undermine our free and fair elections.” 

Jeffries, also of New York, added that “the Trump-aligned justices on the Supreme Court did not and cannot give the President the power to decide how states run elections or who gets to vote by mail.” 

The respective heads of the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic Governors Association also pushed back against Trump’s executive order.  

“This is the latest attempt from Trump to rig the midterms because Republicans know their corrupt, cost-hiking policies are deeply unpopular and hurting people every day,” DNC Chair Ken Martin, DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene, DSCC Chair Kirsten Gillibrand, and DGA Chair Andy Beshear said in a statement.

“Democrats will not let them get away with it, and we are confident the American people will reject these Republican schemes in November,” they wrote. “We’re going to fight every day until Trump’s illegal executive order, and all of his other attempts to undermine our free and fair elections, are completely thrown out.” 

A spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the party’s U.S. House campaign arm, did not return a message Tuesday.

Reading Time: 5 minutes

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

What happened?

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday lifted one of two injunctions against President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail voting, but additional legal hurdles and practical considerations could make it difficult to implement it in time for the quickly approaching November elections.

The unsigned ruling, which cut along ideological lines, focused on a relatively narrow legal question: whether the lower court’s injunction was premature. The majority made it clear that it was not deciding on the legality of Trump’s order as a whole, which is certain to be quickly challenged again in court as the administration moves to put its provisions in place.

“The court’s disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the government to implement the order will necessarily be lawful,” the majority wrote. “On that score, time will tell.”

The ruling, made in response to an emergency request, didn’t specify which justices had joined it. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who dissented, warned that the ruling would create a “Kafkaesque nightmare” that “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a separate dissent, joined by Justice Elena Kagan.

What’s the dispute?

Shortly after Trump issued his executive order in March, states, nonprofit organizations and Democratic Party committees filed multiple lawsuits seeking to block it. In June, in the case brought by states, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani found that some key provisions of the order were unconstitutional and blocked them from going into effect for this year’s elections.

Talwani issued an injunction specifically preventing the federal government from enforcing those provisions of the order against the 24 jurisdictions (23 states and the District of Columbia) whose attorneys general and governors brought the lawsuit. The list included most Democratic-led and swing states, including Arizona, California, Michigan, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

The Trump administration appealed, arguing the judge’s order was issued prematurely, before the Postal Service and other relevant agencies had finalized their plans to carry out the order’s provisions. The administration also argued that the injunction prevented it from implementing the order in the unaffected states because of the logistical impossibility of a bifurcated mail-voting system.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Talwani’s order in late July, prompting the administration to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to lift the order and allow the agencies to act in time for the November election. In filings, the states warned that “the consequences of allowing such transformative changes to take effect so close to this fall’s elections would be extreme” and would disenfranchise voters.

On Aug. 11, Talwani issued a separate injunction against the order in the lawsuit brought by nonprofit groups, led by the League of Women Voters. The decision made it clear that her ban on implementing the law extended to all states, not just the 24 jurisdictions that brought the other lawsuit. That ruling again rejected the Trump administration argument that it was too soon to address the underlying issues.

The Trump administration again asked the Supreme Court to issue a ruling and make it clear that it would also apply to the Aug. 11 court order. If not, Solicitor General D. John Sauer warned in a court filing, it would require prolonged legal battles that would “effectively run out the clock” on the government’s ability to implement its plans.

On Friday, while the administration’s request was still pending before the Supreme Court, the Postal Service issued its final rules for implementing the order, which it said it would not put into effect for this November’s election unless and until the Supreme Court cleared the way.

The Supreme Court’s ruling addressed neither the second injunction nor the fact that the Postal Service had issued final rules, leaving observers to wonder about how those developments might affect what happens next.

“I expect that the trial court will now amend (the second) injunction and issue a new injunction that will stop USPS from implementing its now final rule. And that too may end up at the Supreme Court within a week,” wrote Rick Hasen, an election law professor at UCLA, on the Election Law Blog shortly after the ruling.

What happens now?

The Supreme Court’s ruling Monday will not be the final word on Trump’s executive order. The question before the Supreme Court was a relatively narrow one about whether Talwani issued her order prematurely, before the government had taken final action to carry out the executive order. The states and voting rights groups are likely to go back to court quickly to challenge the Postal Service and the final rules it issued last week.

Talwani has also not yet ruled on whether the order can go into effect for future elections, which she found would be premature. A parallel case involving consolidated challenges brought by nonprofit groups and Democratic Party committees is pending in federal court in Washington, D.C.

Should Trump’s executive order go into effect, it would mandate the creation of a series of lists. The Department of Homeland Security would be required to send each state a list of citizens over the age of 18. States using mail ballots would be required to send the federal government a list of all registered voters to whom they are sending mail-in and absentee ballots in key federal elections. The Postal Service’s final rule states that it will decline to deliver mail-in ballots in states that do not provide that list.

The order would also create new design standards and ballot-tracking requirements for mail ballots. Creating such a complicated process before November presents a huge challenge for the cash-strapped Postal Service.

Read more Votebeat coverage of Trump’s executive order on elections:

• Trump issues second executive order on elections, giving U.S. Postal Service unprecedented control over mail voting, March 31, 2026
• Trump administration sued by states over mail voting executive order, April 3, 2026
• One line in Trump’s order would reshape how long states have to store election records, April 6, 2026
• We still have questions about Trump’s new executive order on elections, April 6, 2026
• Two reminders that the rules of the 2026 election are still in flux, May 11, 2026
• Federal judge refuses to block Trump executive order on mail voting — for now, May 28, 2026
• USPS proposal to carry out Trump’s executive order could create new barriers to mail voting, May 29, 2026
• Trump’s moves to erect voting hurdles face race against the clock, June 15, 2026
• Federal judge blocks key pillars of Trump executive order restricting mail voting in 2026 election, June 25, 2026
• Trump administration asks federal judge to quickly lift ban on planned mail voting restrictions, July 2, 2026
• Trump is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow new mail ballot restrictions in the 2026 midterms, Aug. 3, 2026
• Federal judge blocks Trump’s efforts to restrict mail-in voting nationwide, Aug. 11, 2026

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s editor-in-chief and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

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

What to know about the US Supreme Court ruling on Trump’s mail ballot restrictions 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.

WASHINGTON — With just over two months until the November midterms, the U.S. Supreme Court gave way Monday for President Donald Trump to have a hand in regulating mail-in ballots nationwide, a voting method he has falsely claimed is rife with corruption since he lost the 2020 presidential election.

In an unsigned emergency docket opinion, the court’s conservative majority wrote the Trump administration is likely to prevail on its argument that 23 Democratic-led states do not have standing to stop his executive order to change how the U.S. Postal Service processes mail-in ballots. 

The majority justices also wrote that a lower court’s injunction is “causing irreparable harm,” but left open the possibility that the executive order could still be considered unconstitutional.

“The Court’s disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful. On that score, time will tell,” the majority wrote. 

The legality of a Massachusetts federal district court order, which paused the executive order to overhaul vote-by-mail systems before the Nov. 3 midterms, will now be decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

In a lengthy dissent, Jackson wrote the ruling “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections.”

The principle of courts not altering voting systems too close to the election has been eroded, she said, amounting to a “Kafkaesque nightmare.”

“States administering elections and the voting public that relies on them to do so deserve clarity, not caginess or confusion,” she wrote.

Final rule issued

The March 31 executive order at the heart of the case in part directs USPS to direct the redesign of mail-in ballot envelopes, including adding a unique barcode. It also asks USPS to collect voters’ names and addresses from state elections officials and directs the U.S. Justice Department to investigate and prosecute state officials who violate the order.

The Postal Service issued a final rule Friday detailing how the process would be carried out.

Whether an overhaul of mail-in ballots for each state could be completed in time for the Nov. 3 election remains to be seen, as vote-by-mail documents are sent to voters well in advance of Election Day.

A federal district judge in Massachusetts chastised the Trump administration for sowing confusion and “creating” an emergency by noticing a rule Friday that the U.S. Postal Service will eventually require federally regulated mail-in ballot voting envelopes and state data.

A 95-page notice alerting that the final rule would appear in the Federal Register on Aug. 26 outlined justifications for federal requirements on states to redesign ballot envelopes and provide a list of recipient names and addresses to USPS. The final rule became effective Friday, according to the document.

The final rule runs contrary to U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani’s Aug. 11 preliminary injunction barring the federal government from changing states’ mail-in voting rules prior to the Nov. 3 midterm elections, the judge wrote in a brief order on the docket Sunday. 

“Defendants did not file an appeal and did not seek, let alone obtain, a stay of the preliminary injunction,” Talwani wrote. “Nonetheless, on August 21, 2026, USPS issued its Final Rule, with an anticipated publication date in the Federal Register of August 26, 2026.” 

Talwani was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama in 2013 and unanimously confirmed by the Senate the following year. 

Effective date delayed

The rule includes a provision that it will not be in effect for this year’s midterm elections if Talwani’s injunction is still in place, but the judge said it would still create significant confusion for voters.

The Trump administration asserted the rule would “have no effect on the rules themselves while the injunctions are in place, while ignoring the confusion that the publication will engender,” Talwani wrote.

It’s unclear what effect the final rule will have on the active litigation on the issue.

The federal government had appealed Talwani’s injunction because, it argued, Trump’s order could not be challenged until an agency published a final rule.

Groups want quick order 

The voting rights advocacy groups, led by the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts, who sued President Donald Trump and administration officials over a March executive order overhauling mail-in voting procedures swiftly filed an emergency motion Saturday. 

They urged Talwani to quickly enforce her injunction, and to order expedited responses from the administration, citing “immediate, ongoing, irreparable harm caused by Defendants’ violation of the preliminary injunction, and in light of these fast-approaching dates.”

“There are now only 73 days before the November 2026 election, and far fewer before mail ballots begin to go out,” they wrote.

The Trump administration appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in late July a similar district court ruling against its mail-in voting restrictions order in a case brought by nearly two dozen Democrat-led states.

The states argued that the federal government has no constitutional role in election administration, that the executive order unfairly limited vote-by-mail, which some states use exclusively, and that an overhaul of ballot requirements this close to an election was unworkable. 

High court appeal

In a supplemental brief filed to the Supreme Court justices Monday, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said the USPS’s rule issuance “underscores the need for relief from the district court’s improper, unripe injunction.”

“The Postal Service’s final rule imposes only modest requirements for preparation and envelope design for federal ballot mail — requirements that fall well within its traditional authorities to impose mailing standards for particularly sensitive types of mail,” wrote Sauer, who formerly worked as Trump’s personal defense attorney. 

Democratic officials in 23 states — California, Massachusetts, Nevada, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — and the District of Columbia brought the suit challenging the executive order. 

Twelve states with Republican attorneys general — Alabama, Missouri, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas — joined the appeal to the Supreme Court on the federal government’s side.

Reading Time: 5 minutes

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

Systems used to transmit unofficial election night results broke down in Green and Winnebago counties during Wisconsin’s August primary, causing problems processing and posting results.

The issues had no bearing on the official results that counties across the state are still certifying. But those breakdowns come as national experts have encouraged a move away from transmitting results over modems and toward physically delivering them. Many other states and election jurisdictions have shifted away from transmitting results by modem, but it remains common in Wisconsin.

Much of the concern about sending results over modems has related to cybersecurity. But experts say there are additional reasons to avoid the use of modems, and the recent issues in Wisconsin are one example. There’s no indication that the Election Day issues in Green and Winnebago counties, which both use Liberty Vote election technology, had anything to do with a hack.

Pam Smith, the president and CEO of Verified Voting, an elections technology organization, said election security is not only about preventing incorrect results or cyberattacks. It also means making sure the systems that election officials rely on are available and functioning when they need them.

A breakdown in transmitting unofficial results may not change the outcome of an election, she said, but it can still disrupt election night operations and consume significant staff time.

“It matters because it’s a time suck for the county and everybody trying to deal with it,” she said.

In a statement, a Liberty Vote spokesperson said the company has “every confidence these isolated issues will not occur in future elections.”

Green County changing results reporting process for November

The results transmission failure caused the most significant delay in Green County, where officials did not fully shift to a backup method for collecting results from municipalities until the next morning.

Officials there and their vendor, Liberty Vote, are still trying to understand what went wrong after county staff were unable to process the results that municipalities sent over via fax modems, Green County Clerk Arianna Voegeli told Votebeat.

When municipalities in Green County send their unofficial results to the county clerk’s office, they appear as encrypted files on a so-called listener server set up to receive the transmissions, said Voegeli, a Democrat. Normally, a different software called a results workstation pulls those files and uploads the results to the county’s unofficial results reporting system, but that process broke down on Election Day, she said.

County staff tried to troubleshoot the issue with Liberty Vote after discovering the issue at 9 p.m. on election night but couldn’t find a solution. That meant they had to turn to alternative methods to get the results from municipalities and didn’t have them all until the next morning — far later than most counties.

Voegeli said she consulted with the Wisconsin Elections Commission at the time to discuss what to do. The commission, she said, encouraged her to get municipal results as quickly as possible.

“Their recommendation was, at that point, to do my due diligence and do the best I can with trying to contact people (that) night to get those results in,” she said.

She opted not to use sheriff’s deputies to wake clerks that night, she said. Instead, she called all 24 of them; most didn’t return her call until early the following morning, but the few who responded delivered results over the phone. She got back to work at 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday to finish processing results as municipal officials either came in person to deliver the unofficial results or told Voegeli the results over the phone. All the results were uploaded by 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday.

Had it been November, she said, she would have employed sheriff’s deputies to wake up clerks. She opted not to do it this time around, Voegeli said, in part because the Wisconsin Elections Commission didn’t give hard guidance, and she didn’t feel she’d save meaningful time by waking them.

As of Monday, she said, officials still had not determined what caused the failure. But Green County is changing its approach for the November election.

Voegeli said nearby municipalities will drive to the county office to physically deliver unofficial results, and the faraway ones will verbally transmit results via telephone.

“Even if we determine what the cause of this issue is, I think we’re still going to plan on that for the general election,” she said. “We really want to make sure that we’re getting those results out in a timely manner.”

Winnebago County shifted gears on Election Day

Winnebago County, which also uses Liberty Vote systems, also had trouble transmitting unofficial results by modem, but officials there shifted to a backup plan that same night.

After polls closed, municipal clerks were initially unable to send unofficial election results over a cellular modem. County officials and Liberty Vote are still trying to understand what went wrong, County Clerk Julie Barthels said. After noticing the error, Barthels instructed municipal clerks in the county to drive in the results and hand them over physically. The last one arrived around 10:30 p.m. on Election Day.

The city resolved the results-reporting issue by 9 p.m., said Barthels, a Republican. But by then, municipal officials were already on their way to the county and Barthels said she didn’t want to turn the municipal officials around again to deliver them via modem.

Winnebago County isn’t planning for any shift in results reporting for November. But she said she’ll work with Liberty Vote to understand what went wrong.

“They’ve promised me this will not happen in November,” Barthels said about Liberty Vote. “We’re going to get to the bottom of what happened. I so trust our system. But it’s like any other computer. One day it works, and the next day it doesn’t.”

Some election security experts warn against modeming results

Smith, the Verified Voting CEO, said any method that requires election equipment to communicate with other devices — whether that’s through a secure cellular network or a physical phone line — introduces additional vulnerabilities.

“It’d be great if they would move towards a safer operation of not not having that connectivity,” she said

But Geoff Hale, a visiting fellow for election security at the Center for Democracy & Technology, said transmitting unofficial results via modem does not pose a major technical risk as long as the official results are protected through testing and audits of paper ballots. Every method for transmitting results has trade-offs, he said: Driving a USB stick for an hour may have fewer vulnerabilities than an internet-connected method, but it also takes far longer.

The more important safeguard, Hale said, is for election officials to stay involved throughout the process, validating results and checking for errors — especially when verifying the official count. Hale previously worked for a decade at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

In this case, he said, Winnebago and Green counties responded appropriately by having backup plans in case their initial systems failed.

“This one doesn’t concern me quite as much as some other things I’ve seen,” he said.

Noah Praetz, president of Ready For Tuesday and a longtime election administration and security consultant, said jurisdictions embraced reporting results via modems in the 2000s and 2010s.

That momentum stalled around 2016, he said, amid Russian attempts to interfere with U.S. elections and after Ukraine’s results reporting system in 2014 was successfully hacked. After that, Praetz said, following responses from the FBI and CISA, and the designation of elections as critical infrastructure by the secretary of Homeland Security, election officials began recognizing that results in transit over modems posed a risk, even if the results were unofficial.

But a major benefit of using modems is speed, and Praetz emphasized the downsides of slower alternatives, as delays in reporting results can create openings for bad actors — including foreign governments — to sow distrust.

“People want to get results out of their hands,” he said. “They want to satisfy their voters.”

That was evident in Milwaukee on Aug. 11, when a human error in exporting results caused a 90-minute delay that exasperated election watchers and prompted widespread conspiracy theories about what had gone wrong.

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.

Issues with election systems delayed primary results in two Wisconsin counties 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 voting rights focused law firm and a Milwaukee-based civil rights group filed a brief Wednesday urging the Wisconsin Supreme Court to take a case seeking to overturn a July appeals court decision that said circuit courts in Wisconsin don’t have the authority to extend poll location hours due to unforeseen circumstances. 

The case stems from the Democratic National Committee filing a lawsuit to extend the hours of two polling places at UW-Whitewater during the 2024 presidential election after long lines stretched for hours, partially for voters to update their voter registration through Wisconsin’s same day registration process. A Walworth County judge agreed with the DNC at the time and extended the hours. 

The Republican National Committee appealed the ruling and in July the District 2 Court of Appeals ruled that circuit courts extending voting hours could undermine confidence in elections and that circuit courts don’t even have the authority to do so. The majority opinion came from conservative judges Mark Gundrum and Shelley Grogan. Judge Lisa Neubauer, a liberal, issued a concurring opinion that separately said courts should maintain the authority to extend voting hours. 

“It is critical that we also clarify that, while the legislature is entrusted with setting the time, place, and manner of elections, the applicable polling hours statutes are not immutable: extraordinary or emergency circumstances can support extension of polling hours when these statutes are applied in violation of the electors’ constitutional right to vote,” Neubauer wrote. 

The brief filed Wednesday by Black Leaders Organizing for Communities and Law Forward argued it is “unmistakable” that Wisconsin’s courts have a long history of asserting that a person’s right to vote should win out. 

In the brief, the two organizations point to “150 years of precedent — in at least 12 separate cases” that the Wisconsin Supreme Court has upheld the right to vote when election officials make mistakes. Those precedents include an 1875 case in which the Court found “it would be a fraud on the constitution” to disenfranchise voters by discounting votes due to the errors of election officials. 

“This line of precedent teaches that Wisconsin courts have always intervened, where necessary, to uphold the constitutional right to vote in the face of circumstances beyond the voter’s control,” the brief states. “But the decision below suggests otherwise. It holds that, regardless of what facts might have been adduced, “the circuit court still would not have had equitable authority for its order” extending poll hours. Such a blanket limitation is incompatible with the Wisconsin Constitution’s guarantee of the right to vote. It cannot stand.”

The brief also argues that by ruling that circuit courts can’t extend poll hours due to extenuating circumstances, the appeals court made the state’s court system subordinate to the Legislature and its election statutes — violating the state Constitution’s requirement that the three branches of government be co-equal. 

“The right to vote is fundamental. The Wisconsin Constitution shields it from erosion by legislative enactments and restrictive applications of the law alike,” the brief states. “And Wisconsin courts exist, in part, to effectuate and implement the protections afforded to voters by the Wisconsin Constitution. Yet, the Court of Appeals decision calls this into doubt, and even portends to close the courthouse doors from voters and from organizations who advocate on behalf of voters, on election day in Wisconsin. These substantial legal errors necessitate this Court’s prompt review.”

Three Wisconsin legal organizations are advising the Sheboygan County Sheriff’s office to take steps to avoid intimidating voters after the sheriff posted it was dispatching deputies to polling locations on primary Election Day last week. 

The issue arose against a backdrop of increasing worries over potential election interference in a key swing state during President Donald Trump’s second term including voter intimidation and threats to election workers.

Just seven minutes after polls opened in Wisconsin last week, the Sheboygan County Sheriff’s Office posted on Facebook that it planned to send deputies to polling locations “periodically throughout the day to meet with the public, provide a visible law enforcement presence, and help ensure a safe, secure and orderly election.”

The office presented it as an opportunity for members of the community to connect with officers.

“If you see an Officer at one of the sites and have the time, please feel free to stop and chat with them for a bit!” the post stated. “We appreciate the important work of our election clerks and staff, and we encourage everyone to exercise their right to vote and have a safe Election Day.” 

The post immediately got pushback from members of the public, who questioned why law enforcement needed to be at polls.

The Wisconsin Democracy Defense Coalition, an umbrella organization consisting of pro-democracy groups, wrote in a statement posted online that it was “unclear exactly who or what prompted the Sheboygan County Sheriff’s Department announcement…” but it was “apparent that the decision was made without clear communication with, or consent from officials across the county.”

“We do know that what happened was inconsistent with our values in Wisconsin and dangerous to our civil rights at a time when we must be fiercely protective of them,” the coalition stated. 

All In Wisconsin, a member of the coalition, submitted open records requests seeking additional information. Executive Director Cass Bowers told the Wisconsin Examiner in an interview that the coalition wanted to support the community members who opposed the presence of law enforcement. 

“It’s not a normal thing for a sheriff’s department to do that in Wisconsin. It’s not something that we see,” Cass Bowers, executive director of All In Wisconsin, told the Examiner in an interview. “In Wisconsin at least, we don’t need to have a police presence at the polling locations because we have other safeguards in place. There are people there to ensure that things are going the way they should be on both sides.”

The ACLU of Wisconsin, Campaign Legal Center and Law Forward sent a letter to Sheriff Matthew Spence on Wednesday saying that they wanted to raise awareness about the concerns and “to provide you with information and resources to help ensure that all eligible voters feel safe and secure when participating in our elections.”

The Sheboygan County Democratic Party said in a post Tuesday that the law enforcement presence was a waste of resources and also raises ethical concerns, since the sheriff was on the ballot in the primary. Spence is running for reelection this year. While his name appeared on ballots, he faced no opponent in the primary. He was first appointed to the position by Gov. Tony Evers in 2024 due to the retirement of the previous sheriff.

“Municipal clerks, chief election inspectors and poll workers throughout the county have experience in conducting safe and secure elections. They are fully competent to contact law enforcement, if necessary. The integrity of our elections in Sheboygan County is not in question,” the county party said in a statement. “Law enforcement presence is a waste of resources, and it creates an atmosphere of intimidation, distrust and erodes public trust in our election process.” 

Spence said in a statement last week that the practice of sending deputies to polls is not new for the county. He noted in the statement that he did not personally visit any polling sites, though he has in the past.

“Deputies have been stopping at polling locations for many years, and we have historically received positive feedback from municipal clerks and election workers regarding their presence,” Spence said. “Our deputies understand that they are not permitted to engage in political activity while on duty.” He added in the statement that deputies are expected to follow office policies and applicable laws and regulations. 

Election workers in the U.S. have expressed concerns about safety in recent years, including in Wisconsin.

In an April 2026 poll conducted by the Brennan Center 32% of election officials said they had been threatened, harassed, or abused, nearly 25% said they were concerned about being assaulted at home or at work and over 50% said they worried that threats, harassment and intimidation would make it more difficult to retain or recruit election workers in the future.

Spence said that deputies were stopping by polls if they had time available during their regular patrol duties and visits were brief, lasting between five and ten minutes. He said the stops were “intended simply to provide an opportunity for a deputy to check in with the clerk and election workers, ensure there are no public safety concerns” and were not “assigned specifically for the purpose of influencing or monitoring voters.” 

Jon Dolson, the Sheboygan County clerk, has not responded to requests for comment from the Examiner by the time of publication.

Dolson told the Examiner in an email on Wednesday that he was made aware that something was posted on social media, though to the best of his knowledge no deputy was dispatched. He said the brief visits by officers with the sheriff’s department and a handful of police departments around the county predates his 14-year tenure as county clerk.

“Sometimes it fits into an officer’s schedule, sometimes it doesn’t.  And municipal clerks welcome the short visit. Most of the time, officers do not have time on Election Day to make such stops. This is the first time anyone has posted about this traditional activity on social media,” Dolson said. “I suspect no one will repeat that action anytime soon.”

“The purpose of these brief visits is straightforward: to ensure election workers feel safe, to address any public safety concerns that may arise, and to maintain the positive relationship between our Sheriff’s Office and the communities we serve,” Spence said. “We have no interest in interfering with the electoral process, and our deputies’ role at polling locations is not to influence voters or the outcome of an election.”

However, the legal groups and Bowers said the mere presence of officers could be intimidating to voters.

“We understand that law enforcement agencies like the Sheboygan County Sheriff’s Office play a critical role in keeping both voters and election officials and workers safe by responding to genuine emergencies,” the legal groups stated. “However, the visible presence of armed law enforcement at or near polling places (or other locations like drop boxes or in-person absentee voting locations) is likely to intimidate voters, thereby preventing them from casting their ballots. Voter intimidation is prohibited under both Wisconsin and Federal law.”

Wisconsin state law requires that in cities of more than 500,000, the chief of police stations a police officer at any polling place designated by the municipal board of election commissioners. That currently only includes Milwaukee. 

The ACLU’s letter noted that voter intimidation laws apply to law enforcement officers and that patrolling in militarized gear with weapons near a ballot drop box has previously been found intimidating to voters.

The groups noted in the letter that the Wisconsin Elections Commission advises that polling locations near or in police stations or other public buildings could lead to the perception of electioneering or make voters uncomfortable and that should be considered when designating polling places.

“While the presence of law enforcement may be necessary if voting is occurring at or near a public safety building or in the event of an emergency to preserve the voting process, steps can and should be taken to mitigate the intimidating effects of such presence. For instance, officers stationed at voting,” the letter states citing state statutes. 

The groups provide some recommendations for how law enforcement should navigate the issue, citing information from the National Policing Institute, 21st Century Policing Solutions and States United Democracy Center.

“For instance, officers stationed at voting locations at public safety buildings should be dressed in plain clothes, uniformed personnel should remain out of sight of voters whenever possible, and law enforcement should refrain from parking police vehicles in front of polling locations or alternatively, should use unmarked cars. Finally, if a police officer must be stationed within an electioneering perimeter, they should take directions from and follow the lead of the chief inspector, limit their interactions with voters, and respond only to emergency incidents.”

Stationing federal officers at polls is prohibited by law but concerns about federal officials including Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) patrolling polling locations ignited across the country after Trump said in May in response to a question that he would “do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections; we have to have honest elections.” The Sheboygan County sheriff’s office is one of several law enforcement units across Wisconsin that maintain an active 287(g) agreement with ICE.

Trump administration officials have recently said that law federal agents will not be deployed to the polls for the midterm elections.

“Because of this administration and how they stoke fear in folks…[people] see police presence, they’re not going to go,” Bowers said. “You see a police officer at a polling location… It just gives people a fear that they don’t need to have when they’re going to vote.”

Bowers said that while elections officials should be trusted to carry out elections, transparency is part of the issue that needs to be addressed. 

“Having a Facebook post saying that you’re going to do this on Election Day is kind of what was jarring to the public,” Bowers said. “I think having a plan previously would have helped to say, ‘OK, these folks may feel like they need added protection, how do we do that in a way that doesn’t feel like voter intimidation?’… I think that’s like the biggest thing on Election Day is access to voting, and so I feel like if they were to have those concerns addressed prior to the election, that would have helped in this situation.” 

This message was echoed in the letter from the ACLU and other legal groups. 

“We recognize that the security of our elections and election officials is of paramount importance and believe a balance can be struck to accomplish these security objectives without unintentionally impeding voters,” the groups stated. “Thus, we suggest that your office issue guidance to your officers reflecting these recommendations and to coordinate directly with local election officials regarding ways to simultaneously protect the security of our elections and respond to emergency incidents without deterring voters.”

UPDATE: This story has been updated to include comment from Jon Dolson, the Sheboygan County clerk. 

The Trump administration on Wednesday renewed its request to the U.S. Supreme Court to quickly decide a case over an executive order restricting voting, a day after a Massachusetts federal judge expanded an injunction on the order nationwide.

The Tuesday order from U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani that blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order from taking effect anywhere in the country makes the administration’s request to the Supreme Court more urgent, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote. 

“The district court’s new order confirms the urgent need for this Court to grant the stay of the permanent injunction and to explain its rationale for doing so,” Sauer wrote. 

Election Day is Nov. 3, less than three months away.

Decisions in two cases at district and circuit courts have reached different conclusions about whether the rulemaking could continue in the lead-up to this fall’s elections. 

That means the Supreme Court’s decision, now on its emergency docket, will likely determine whether the executive order can move forward. A decision could come any day.

The Trump executive order would limit vote-by-mail, the primary method of voting in several states, especially in the West. 

It would require states to send the federal government lists of voters who intend to vote by mail ahead of the election and restrict the U.S. Postal Service from delivering ballots to or from people not on the list, among other things.

The administration has sought to focus arguments on the narrow legal question of whether an executive order can be challenged before an agency, in this case the U.S. Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security, issues a final rule. The government argues that the executive order only instructs the agencies to issue rules, and those rules are not yet final, and therefore cannot be challenged.

Trial court order

Talwani’s memorandum and order on Tuesday rejected that argument, and she expanded a previous injunction from just the 23 states and the District of Columbia that brought the suit to be effective nationwide. 

Talwani said — in her order published just 12 weeks before Election Day — she was only blocking the order with respect to the “fast-approaching” midterms. Further arguments over the merits of federal voting regulations could still happen, but federal law requires the status quo to be preserved this close to an election, she said. 

Because of the tight timeline and the assumption that a final rule will be similar to a June 2 notice of proposed rulemaking, Talwani said she could rule simply on the constitutionality of the executive order. It was an easy call, she said.

“The executive branch has no authority to regulate elections,” she wrote, citing the Constitution.

The administration has not shown how blocking the executive order would harm the public, as it has not documented any “illegal or fraudulent absentee voting,” while the voting rights organizations challenging the order have shown that voters with disabilities, in rural areas, who need translation help, attend college outside their home states and in other circumstances would be harmed, she said.

In fact, the organizations showed their members in states across the country are already being harmed by the uncertainty around what rules will govern the midterm elections, said Talwani.

“Where the (executive order) is presently causing confusion and threatening both increasing chaos and an erosion of trust in our democracy, the court finds that enfranchisement heavily outweighs the executive’s attempt to unconstitutionally insert itself into the domain of election regulation,” Talwani wrote. The proximity to Election Day “underscores the critical need for an injunction to prevent Defendants from changing election rules on the eve of the election.”

The Federal Voter Registration Act also prohibits states from purging voter rolls within 90 days of an election, Talwani wrote.

DOJ’s double bind

The nature of the argument puts Sauer and the U.S. Department of Justice in a seemingly difficult legal position, arguing both that the executive order cannot be challenged because it is not enforceable and that the administration must be allowed to put an enforceable rule in place before Election Day.

Sauer asked the court Wednesday to rule for the government and “make clear” that it was doing so “based on the uncertainty concerning the government’s future actions.”

But in the next paragraph, he said implementing the executive order was crucial to the public interest.

“In all events, it is critical that the Court act promptly on the pending stay,” Sauer said. “Otherwise, the district court’s erroneous orders will effectively run out the clock on the government’s ability to implement Section 3 of the Executive Order for the federal elections in November, thereby causing irreparable harm to the federal government, the public, and election integrity.”

Wisconsin’s August primary election takes place Tuesday, with voters across the state heading to the polls to choose their preferred candidate for dozens of races on the ballot in November’s midterm elections. 

Polls open Tuesday morning at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. If there is a line at a polling place at 8 p.m., voters should remain in line because they’ll still be allowed to vote. Election officials said Monday that because primary elections typically have lower turnout than general elections, long lines aren’t expected. 

In 2018, the last time Democrats had an open primary for governor, primary turnout was 23% of eligible voters. That year’s general election saw 59.7% turnout. In 2022, when Republicans had an open primary for governor and there was a Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, primary turnout was 26.3% and the general election turnout was 57.2%. 

“For voters that are interested in voting tomorrow during the election in person at the polling place … it seems like [polls are busiest] earlier in the morning when the polls open, and then after work, you know once people are kind of headed home and in the evening hours, and so voters may want to consider times that are off some of those peak times,” Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe said at a Monday news conference. “But again, I really don’t expect that tomorrow will be outside of the norm …  it’s typically 22 to 25 percent, which is a much much smaller turnout than you’d see in a general election. And so we typically don’t see waits and things like that in a partisan primary.”

With the lower turnout in a primary election, the counting of votes is usually faster than in a higher turnout general election. But, Wolfe said, results can still take time to be determined and she urged patience while election officials work to count ballots. 

“Election officials will always prioritize accuracy over speed,” she said.

As voters have increasingly turned to absentee voting since 2020, hundreds of thousands of people have already cast their votes in the election. WEC data from Monday morning shows that 368,000 people have requested absentee ballots and 268,000 have been returned. 

There were about 27,000 more absentee ballots returned ahead of the 2022 primary. 

It is too late  to put absentee ballots in the mail. But voters who requested absentee ballots and have not returned them yet can bring them to their  polling place, their local municipal clerk’s office or, in communities that use them, to an absentee ballot drop box. 

In Wisconsin, voters don’t need to register as a member of a party to vote in that party’s primary election. But, each voter must choose which primary they’re voting in at the polls and can only choose one. 

“If a voter does choose to not follow the directions and vote in more than one party’s primary, then their votes would not be counted for those contests,” Wolfe said.

Eligible voters who are not registered to vote can register at the polls on Election Day. To register, voters need to provide their name and place of residence to the poll worker. A valid Wisconsin ID can be used if it shows a voter’s current address but voters can also use a property tax bill, lease document, utility bill, a college identification card or bank statement. 

What’s on the ballot

State and national attention is focused  on the Democratic primary for governor in which four candidates are vying to be the party’s nominee — former Department of Administration Secretary Joel Brennan, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, state Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison) and state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison). 

While those four are the candidates still actively running, the names of three Democrats who have dropped out of the race will also appear on the ballot: former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, former WEDC CEO Missy Hughes and Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez. 

“All of the candidates that filed their paperwork and were granted ballot access appear on the ballot,” Wolfe said. “Every single voter in Wisconsin, whether you voted right when absentee ballots went out in June or you’re voting at the polls on Election Day, will see the same ballot. And so, when a candidate chooses to drop out of a race, that actually has no impact on the official ballot, and any votes for that candidate would still be counted.” 

Further down the ballot, voters will decide the nominees in statewide races for lieutenant governor, state treasurer and secretary of state. All but one of Wisconsin’s eight congressional seats have contested primaries. There are also legislative races in every corner of the state and primaries for local partisan offices such as county sheriff.

A Dane County judge found that Wisconsin’s absentee voting system discriminates against voters with print disabilities by forcing them to have someone else assist them with filling out their ballots — undermining the secrecy of their vote. 

In a ruling issued Tuesday, Judge Everett Mitchell sided with Disability Rights Wisconsin and the League of Women Voters who had brought the lawsuit against the state Elections Commission to ensure that voters who have trouble seeing, reading or filling out their ballot can request, receive, vote and return an absentee ballot on their own. 

The groups, and four voters with disabilities, brought the lawsuit in April 2024 and were represented by the voting rights focused firm Law Forward, arguing that the state’s existing system violates the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act. 

In his decision, Mitchell wrote that WEC must follow the ADA’s requirement to accommodate voters with disabilities and that the current system allowing people with print disabilities to have someone else fill out their ballots denies the voters “the equal opportunity to vote absentee privately and independently.” 

While he agreed that the current system is discriminatory, Mitchell did not grant the request that disabled voters be allowed to cast their absentee ballots electronically, writing that “there remains a genuine dispute of material fact with respect to whether their proposed accommodation is reasonable.” 

Further hearings will be held in the case to determine the best solution.

A Dane County judge on Wednesday rejected a request from Democratic voters to allow people to “spoil” and re-cast their absentee ballots for any reason. 

Under state law, voters can spoil ballots that are damaged or if they believe they made a mistake in filling out the ballot. Earlier this month, the Wisconsin Elections Commission voted 4-2 to publish guidance stating that the process wasn’t available to people who simply wished to change their vote. 

The Democratic voters argued the guidance should be thrown out to accommodate people who may have already cast a vote in this year’s August primaries before their preferred candidate dropped out. The ballot for the Democratic primary for governor includes two candidates, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez and former Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation CEO Missy Hughes, whose names appear even though both have suspended their campaigns. 

In a ruling Thursday, Judge David Conway rejected the injunction request from the voters, finding that “the unambiguous language of the statute does not allow a voter to spoil an absentee ballot after it is returned.”

WASHINGTON — Suddenly there’s evidence that noncitizens were on voting rolls in New Jersey, and there are new questions about the credibility of Alaska’s voter data. Republicans say that’s a big deal and an important boost for their so-far stuck election integrity drive.

But look more closely. Congressional lawmakers and independent experts said this week none of those disclosures are enough to give a meaningful boost to the Trump administration’s relentless quest to purge noncitizens from voter rolls.

New Jersey found 6,600 noncitizens on its voter rolls in 2023 and 2024, with less than 400 actually voting. Alaska officials are raising questions about a few thousand voters, though it hasn’t proven they were not entitled to vote. President Donald Trump won Alaska in 2024 by 44,000 votes.

“The answer is no,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, when asked if the news would boost support for the SAVE America Act.

“They simply don’t have the votes in the Senate,” Becker said. “Even if it did pass,  we’re less than three months from the election.”

The House passed the SAVE America Act in April, and last week it approved legislation that would give states $10 billion to tighten election laws. 

But any effort to advance those measures is stuck in the Senate, where most measures will need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. The Senate has 53 Republicans, but not all support the Trump plan.

Majority Leader John Thune saw a difficult path forward.

The South Dakota Republican said Monday it was up to Trump to persuade wavering senators to go along. “If he can change the facts and start moving some of those senators from nos to yeses, then we’ll have a different conversation. It’s just the reality,” Thune told reporters.

The SAVE America Act, arguably Trump’s top legislative priority this year, would require voters to show proof of citizenship when they register and a photo ID when they vote. Noncitizens are already barred from voting in state, federal and almost all local elections.

New Jersey, Alaska problems

What triggered the latest Republican drive was New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s disclosure last week that about 6,600 noncitizens had been registered to vote in the state because of a software problem with the state Motor Vehicle Commission automatic voter registration system.

About 400 actually voted. Sherrill said the mistake began in 2023 and took a year to fix. She said there was no evidence it affected election results. Sherrill took office in January 2026.

“It’s unacceptable that the vendor released software with such a glaring error. It’s unacceptable that the MVC took a year to get this issue fixed, and it’s unacceptable that no one, in the previous administration, brought this to light, demanded accountability,” she said, the New Jersey Monitor reported.

Alaska last week also reported problems with its Division of Motor Vehicles registration. Officials said the state has removed 3,048 people from its voter rolls, saying they may not be citizens.

Carol Beecher, Division of Elections director, told state lawmakers that someone identified as a noncitizen should contact her agency and say whether or not they are a citizen, the Alaska Beacon reported.

“It is not an onerous request from the division to simply contact us and confirm, and that is what we have asked them to do. We don’t require paperwork. We’re not requiring documentation. Nothing like that,” she said.

Motor voter law

The federal motor voter law of 1993 had largely been regarded as a bipartisan success, a way of making it easier for people to register to vote. 

It requires that states offer registration at their motor vehicle agencies, including by mail. Applications for registration must be included in renewals and new applications for a drivers’ license.

The 1993 law applies to 44 states and Washington, D.C. Idaho, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming are exempt because when the law took effect, they had no registration requirements or had same-day election registration at polling places. 

A 2002 law requires voters to show identification, usually a driver’s’ license, before they can register. 

Noncitizens cannot vote in federal or state elections, but they can apply for driver’s licenses. 

It’s unclear exactly why noncitizens showed up on New Jersey and possibly Alaska vote lists. Was it a software glitch? Were officials lax? Is there a problem other states should be aware of?

“We don’t know a lot about this yet,” said Becker.

Proof of fraud?

The Trump administration claimed earlier this month that as many as 250,000 noncitizens were registered to vote in New Jersey, California, Pennsylvania and Nevada.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said as many as 35,152 “potential noncitizens” may be registered to vote in New Jersey.

No concrete evidence supporting that number has surfaced, and voting rights analysts have raised questions about how that number was calculated.

To SAVE Act supporters, the New Jersey and Alaska disclosures last week were — finally — solid proof things were going wrong. Since the disclosures, there have been these developments:

• The Justice Department wants the names and other information for those improperly registered. Sherrill said she won’t release the data.
• U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey Republican who heads a House Judiciary subcommittee, and 18 other House Republicans sent a letter to Sherrill demanding details about what happened.  They want to know by Aug. 21 why the state failed to identify the error, and why it took so long. “New Jersey should end automatic voter registration at the Motor Vehicle Commission, clean up its voter rolls, and require proof of citizenship to register to vote. These are basic safeguards that should already be in place,” Van Drew said in a statement. 
• Trump and some Republicans called for the Senate to stay in session. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, wants to keep senators in Washington past the start of their summer recess late next week so they can work on election reform. “The Senate doesn’t need a summer vacation as much as the country needs the SAVE America Act. Let’s cancel recess,” he tweeted Sunday. Joining him was Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Jim Banks, R-Ind.
• Republicans blamed Democrats. On the Senate floor, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., tied the mess to Democratic views on undocumented immigrants. “Democrats can’t throw open the borders, hand illegal immigrants driver’s licenses, and then pretend to be shocked–shocked (as)  Democrats claim to be when these illegal immigrants end up voting.  Illegal immigrants must not be allowed to vote in American elections,” he said.

Democrats scoffed at such rhetoric.

“Give it up, Donald. The SAVE Act ain’t going to happen,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in a floor speech this week aimed at Trump.

To Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a senior Senate Judiciary Committee member, the situation is tinged with sadness.

“It all creates more suspicion there are problems with the voting rolls. I’m sure there are on an anecdotal basis,” he said of the New Jersey news. “The more you cast the validity of the voting system in doubt it discourages more people from participating.”

Asked if the revelations changed any Senate votes on the SAVE America Act, he said flatly, “No.”

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the federal government can continue implementing President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting vote-by-mail, reaching the opposite conclusion that another appeals panel decided over the weekend.

The conflict appeared to make it even more clear the issue will have to be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court, which already has been asked for its opinion on Trump’s sweeping order that would have a huge impact on states just a little more than three months before the midterm elections.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said Tuesday the executive order, which directs the U.S. Postal Service to collect from states lists of eligible voters who intend to vote by mail at least two months before an election and the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of voting-age citizens in each state, can proceed because the agencies have not yet written rules implementing the order.

A D.C. trial judge in May denied several voting rights groups’ request to block the order, saying the groups had not yet been harmed.

Judges Patricia Millett and Robert Wilkins, who were appointed by President Barack Obama, and Gregory Katsas, whom Trump appointed, affirmed the decision.

They wrote that the executive order, which Trump signed March 31, is not self-executing and specifically tells the USPS and DHS to write the prescribed rules in a way that is consistent with the federal laws the groups say the order violates.

“We affirm because, while Plaintiffs have identified a number of serious questions concerning the lawfulness of proposed actions if implemented on the threshold of the upcoming federal election, this case likely is unripe for review in its present posture,” they wrote.

Their order directly contradicts a ruling the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals published Saturday in a case brought by Democratic officials from 23 states and the District of Columbia. 

That opinion held that states would be harmed if the order was allowed to proceed because state elections officials would immediately have to shift significant resources to prepare to meet the order’s requirements, even without final rules from USPS or DHS.

The Trump administration appealed that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the justice assigned to the 1st Circuit, requested briefs on whether the court should hear the case by Aug. 3. 

In a social media post, the news outlet Democracy Docket, which covers voting and elections and is not affiliated with the case, called Tuesday’s ruling “a loss for voters” and said the administration under it could build a citizenship roster and withhold mail-in ballots from states that do not share citizenship data.

WASHINGTON — Political party poll watchers are showing up more and more, usually outside polling places.

They have a different mission than the nonpartisan election observers long regarded as bulwarks of credibility, and there’s concern that voters will be confused who’s there to influence them and who’s there to protect them.

The growing presence of partisans creates the possibility of even more conflict in the November midterm elections, voting rights advocates worry. They fear confusion between the two groups will contribute to an ongoing breakdown of voter trust in the process.

“This is a polarized country. There is the risk that people will see other poll monitor programs designed for intimidation and lump us all together,” said Dan Vicuna, senior policy director for voting and fair representation at Common Cause. 

His organization is part of a coalition of voting rights advocates that trains and sends nonpartisan workers to the polls. They ensure voters won’t be intimidated and that counting and recounting will proceed properly.

The political parties, which have their own poll watching programs, each maintain the other side is to blame for any confusion.

“The Trump administration has sought to break longstanding norms surrounding observers and monitors,” said Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., the House elections subcommittee’s top Democrat.

Republicans argue that election integrity has been under assault for years and despite virtually no evidence, they maintain results in key state and presidential races were subject to fraud.

President Donald Trump in his address to the nation on July 16 claimed “evidence shows that the election system we have dangerously exposes and really exposes, like levels never thought possible, to hacking, exploitation, and foreign interference.”

The result so far is a Trump-inspired redrawing of congressional lines in some states to favor Republicans, a so-far unsuccessful push to have Congress pass a law requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship and show ID at the polls, and the Supreme Court’s weakening of Voting Rights Act protections against poll intimidation.

Many eyes on the process

Poll watching takes many forms, depending on state laws and policies. Poll watchers and workers are often outside the polls, promoting their interests. 

Monitors, on the other hand, are trained observers.

Common Cause explains that poll monitors are “people who are assigned to observe the polls on behalf of a campaign or political party and certified by the election officials – often inside the polling place.” In certain states they can challenge voter eligibility

Some poll watchers are stationed outside polling places. “They may be explicitly partisan and for a particular candidate or party. These individuals do not have the right to enter the polling place,” Common Cause explains.

Common Cause is part of an Election Protection program that concentrates on helping voters and election officials in areas where turnout could be low or there’s concern about voter intimidation.

“The focus of our program is to be nonpartisan problem solvers,” said Vicuna. Depending on a state’s laws, it can redirect people to the correct polling place. 

Monitors, who go through a training program, can make sure a partisan poll worker does not try to overstep their authority or that a voter is not showing up because they fear immigration officials could be present.

Another highly regarded system is the “observer” program Congress approved two years ago by a 413-1 vote in the House and by voice vote in the Senate.

“The purpose of the program is to have House of Representatives staffers, designated and credentialed by the (House Administration) Committee, on-site at the election office or facility in close or difficult elections to observe the election procedures to ensure the certified winner was chosen in a free and fair election,” says a House Administration Committee fact sheet.

It stresses “election observers are not campaign staff and may not advocate or represent any candidate or position.”  

The program has enjoyed broad bipartisan support and won plaudits recently from Rep.Laurel Lee, R-Florida, chair of the House elections subcommittee. 

“It promotes transparency, gives election officials another set of eyes on the process, and helps candidates and voters better understand how elections are conducted,” she said of the program. “Together, these benefits strengthen public confidence in our elections.”

A system that works?

The subcommittee held a hearing on July 15 on poll activities. Despite the fierce battles over voting rights, the hearing was a calm, policy-driven session.

It featured two local election officials, Wesley Wilcox of Marion County, Florida, and Lance Reed of Summit County, Ohio, describing how they strive to avoid any show of partisanship or efforts to influence voters.

Summit County, which includes Akron, is heavily Democratic. Marion County is heavily Republican.

“We have a perfect opportunity to counter many of the false narratives that circulate online. We can educate people about how elections actually work,” Wilcox said.

Reed described how officials in his county had a “positive experience” with the congressional program and were unaware of the observers’ political opinions.

Sewell expressed a broader concern, that the combination of Republican efforts to dispatch poll watchers, combined with court decisions that have arguably weakened the Voting Rights Act, could lead to more intimidation of minority voters by the GOP.

She asked Reed where he saw the line “between a legitimate election observation and conduct that risks intimidating voters and interfering with or disrupting the work of election officials?” And, she asked, what safeguards could be most effective in preventing observers from promoting partisan views?

“Luckily, we haven’t run into any issues along those lines,” he said, adding many of the local observers are people election officials know well who have done the job for years.

Suspicious political parties 

Beyond the calm congressional talk and nonpartisan Election Protection efforts, the two parties are increasingly suspicious of one another’s activity at the polls.

Republicans in 2024 sent poll watchers to many states, part of a massive effort that officials said would assure election integrity.

“Every ballot. Every precinct. Every processing center. Every county. Every battleground state. We will be there,” said Lara Trump, who at the time was a Republican National Committee co-chair. The party sent thousands of volunteers to keep an eye on polls in 18 potential swing states.

Republicans sent congressional observers to Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Madison, Wisconsin, that year, said Rep. Joe Morelle, D-New York, the House Committee on Administration’s top Democrat. He said no congressional Democratic observers were sent. 

“Their departure from the long-established norms suggested an unprecedented attempt to use the program for partisan gain,” Morelle said. The Republican National Committee has not responded to a request for comment.

Trump praised the GOP’s election watch effort and vowed to keep it going this year.

He recalled in a May Truth Social post how “the Republicans had an Election Integrity Army in every single State to preserve the sanctity of each legal vote.”

He said, “We will be doing the same again in 2026, but it will be much bigger and stronger. All Americans should have their voices be heard by casting a vote. Be assured this Election will be fair!”

So far, “The RNC‘s already on the ground, deploying staff in 17 states, registering voters, and aggressively fighting to win in November – and we will not stop until we do,” said Chairman Joe Gruters in a May post on X. The states have not been identified.

Democrats are fighting back with their own poll watching programs.

The Democratic National Committee says it is working to “develop comprehensive counter-programming to potential GOP voter intimidation and election subversion.”

It plans to do this using “poll observer deployment, constitutional observers, escalation protocols, and coordinated legal and operational support.”

The DNC would not provide details.  

In addition, Senate Democratic leaders last month announced a new program they said would “train Senate staff to serve as official election observers and protect against any meddling in the 2026 midterm elections.”

They said in a statement “Their role will be to observe, document, and report objective information to assist the Senate in addressing any potentially contested Senate elections and to inform future legislation and oversight work related to federal election administration.”

Voters seem to agree on one thing. “I guess at the end of the day, public trust is paramount, and public trust right now is on the edge,” said Rep. Julie Johnson, D-Texas, an election subcommittee member. “It’s the most fragile it has been in our electoral system in quite some time.” 

The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin filed a lawsuit Thursday against Wisconsin Elections Commission guidance that bars people who request an absentee ballot from casting an in-person ballot if the mail ballot will not arrive by the time polls close on Election Day. 

The lawsuit was filed as officials in Wisconsin, and the commission itself, have warned voters about potential delays in the mail system ahead of this year’s August and November elections. 

But commission guidance states that once voters mail their absentee ballots back to the clerk, they cannot be issued new ballots at the polls on Election Day. This means that if voters realize their ballots will not arrive in time after early in-person voting closes the Sunday before an election, they will not be able to vote. 

“Once a voter has placed their ballot in the mail, it is considered mailed,” the WEC guidance states. “They cannot be issued a new ballot at the polling place on Election Day, even if their absentee ballot will not be returned to the clerk’s office in time to be counted.”

The lawsuit seeks to allow voters who believe their ballots will not arrive to the clerk in time to go in person to cast a provisional ballot that would be set aside and only be counted if the initial ballot does not arrive by the deadline. 

Hundreds of voters did not have their votes counted during the state’s April elections because their ballots did not arrive in time. A WEC survey of clerks following the April election reported that hundreds of the state’s election officials believed delays in the mail had caused problems in the spring election. 

“Every voter in Wisconsin that puts an accurately requested absentee ballot in the mail on time expects their vote will be counted. Delays in mail delivery prevent that. It is time to have a remedy for these eligible voters,” Debra Cronmiller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, said. 

The League is represented in the lawsuit by Law Forward and the Fair Elections Center. The lawsuit argues that the commission understands the problem but is not taking advantage of an obvious solution to the potential mail delays. 

“The right to vote protects Wisconsinites from baseless disenfranchisement on Election Day. But WEC wants to turn these voters away. That’s just wrong,” Law Forward attorney Scott Thompson said. “We shouldn’t punish Wisconsin voters just because the mail is late. They must have the opportunity to vote on Election Day.”

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Gov. Tony Evers sent a letter Thursday raising concerns about “severe delays” in the U.S. mail system threatening the delivery of absentee ballots during Wisconsin’s August and November elections. 

The letter to Postmaster General David Steiner and members of the USPS Board of Governors noted that many absentee ballots cast during the state’s April elections arrived to local clerks after Election Day and therefore went uncounted. The letter also pushes the board to reverse course on implementing President Donald Trump’s executive order to create a federal mail-in voting list that includes the personal information of absentee voters. 

Trump and Republicans have become increasingly hostile to mail-in voting in recent years — mostly due to unfounded complaints that they were the source of fraud that swung the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden. 

Earlier this month, Evers also joined the governors of Illinois, California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Washington in writing a letter to the USPS leadership to oppose the Trump absentee voting order. 

The pair of Democrats noted that in 2024, 500,000 Wisconsin voters, 15% of all voters in the state, used mail-in ballots. Because Wisconsin is a swing state with especially close elections, they wrote, any delays “could very well tip the scales of the election.” 

“The Postal Service has a critical responsibility to ensure that election mail is handled with the urgency and reliability that voters, election officials, and the public rightly expect,” they wrote. “To meet this responsibility, USPS must address delays we saw in Wisconsin’s Spring Election and not move forward with the rule restricting vote by mail. Ensuring the timely delivery of election mail is essential to protecting every eligible Wisconsinite’s right to vote and maintaining public confidence in our elections. When ballots fail to arrive in time to be counted, voters are denied the opportunity to participate in our democracy through no fault of their own. These failures not only disenfranchise individual voters, but also erode trust in the reliability and fairness of our elections.”

They also noted that delays disproportionately affect rural voters in communities with fewer poll locations and absentee ballot drop boxes. 

Earlier this month, the Wisconsin Elections Commission released a list of best practices for absentee voting which included the recommendation that if voters are going to return their ballot by mail, it should be sent at least 10 days before the election. Ballots can also be returned directly to a voter’s municipal clerk’s office, to the voter’s polling place on Election Day or to an absentee ballot dropbox — in communities that use them. 

The Evers, Baldwin letter also notes that WEC sent a similar letter to the Postal Service leadership in May about the mail delays during the spring election. In that letter, the commission relayed the results of a survey of the state’s local election officials, which found that two-thirds of them reported problems with the mail. 

Wisconsin’s early in-person voting process also allows voters to request, fill out and return their ballots all at once at designated locations. For the August primary elections, early in-person voting begins July 28. For the November general election, early voting begins Oct. 30. 

Voters can request  absentee ballots sent to them by mail online at MyVote.WI.gov or by sending a letter or email to their local clerk that includes their full name, voting address, mailing address, the election in which they are voting and a copy of their photo ID.

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Wisconsin election officials have reignited a legal battle over absentee voting with July guidance stating that voters cannot void a returned absentee ballot and cast a new one, even if Election Day is weeks away or the candidate they supported has dropped out. 

Three Democratic residents in Dane County on Thursday sued the Wisconsin Elections Commission over the guidance, which was adopted by the commission on July 9, calling it an unconstitutional violation of the state’s absentee voting laws. All three plaintiffs voted for a gubernatorial candidate who has since dropped out of the primary, and under the commission guidance they cannot change their votes, even though those votes have not yet been counted. The legality of spoiling ballots just to change a vote has long been disputed.

The lawsuit says WEC’s guidance means the plaintiffs “will all be disenfranchised from meaningfully participating in this August election unless this Court steps in.”

Thursday’s lawsuit is the latest development in a legal dispute that began in 2022 and was reopened by an appeals court decision earlier this year. It was filed two days after the Democratic Party of Wisconsin sent the commission a letter urging it to rescind the guidance. The letter raised many of the same concerns later cited in the suit, including that the policy could disenfranchise voters and was adopted after early voting in the primary had already begun.

The July 9 guideline for clerks reverses the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s previous position and Attorney General Josh Kaul’s legal arguments on the agency’s behalf that voters should be allowed to replace absentee ballots they have already returned as long as they comply with statutory deadlines.

The WEC spent years arguing in court in favor of that broader definition of ballot spoiling, but its latest guidance effectively restores the rule imposed by a 2022 court ruling that banned the practice.

The commission adopted the guidance after clerks had already mailed ballots for the Aug. 11 primary and, notably, after multiple candidates in the crowded Democratic gubernatorial race dropped their bids. 

“It seems to me exceedingly likely that this is something that people are going to keep fighting about,” Jeff Mandell, founder of the liberal law firm Law Forward, said ahead of the lawsuit.

He added that the timing of the guidance was unusual: Typically courts are skeptical of efforts to change rules close to an election. Some absentee voters in this election cycle probably cast their ballots under the assumption that they could spoil their ballot and cast a new one if their preferred candidate dropped out or they just wanted to change their vote, Mandell said.

Even if the commission’s guidance is in line with Wisconsin law, it creates a clear discrepancy between in-person Election Day and absentee voters, said Sam Liebert, the Wisconsin state director of All Voting is Local and a former municipal clerk. 

Election Day voters can receive up to three ballots at the polls if they make a mistake, he pointed out. On the other hand, he said, absentee voters now get no second chance once they return their ballots, even if Election Day hasn’t arrived yet.

“The inconsistency is hard to ignore,” he said, and it presents a policy question for the Legislature — or maybe the courts.

Spoiling controversy blew up amid similar political dynamics in the 2022 primary

The WEC’s more permissive August 2022 guidance on ballot spoiling was prompted by similar dynamics as that of the present: highly contested primaries with candidates dropping out throughout the race and at the last minute. 

In September 2022, GOP voter Nancy Kormanik sued over that guidance allowing absentee ballot spoiling, arguing that clerks can only reissue an absentee ballot if a voter returns an absentee ballot in a “spoiled or damaged” condition. Voiding a ballot that’s already been submitted and getting a new one over a voter’s own mistake or a candidate dropping out didn’t fall under that category, she argued.

Kaul, the state’s Democratic attorney general, saw the issue differently. A few different laws allow ballot spoiling, he said in a court filing, and “none requires the elector to explain how or why the ballot is ‘spoiled.’”

Siding with Kormanik, a lower court banned the practice of spoiling absentee ballots in October.

The ban stood until February of this year, when an appeals court vacated the lower court ruling. But the new ruling wasn’t on the merits of the case. Rather, it came because the court said Kormanik didn’t properly serve documents to a legislative committee at the start of the suit.

After the February ruling, clerks sought the commission’s updated guidance about how to deal with spoiling. They didn’t receive it in time for the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in April, and some municipalities offered instructions on how to spoil ballots. But with midterm primaries coming up — and particularly as rumors of gubernatorial candidates dropping out swirled — clerks were especially eager to know if the commission planned to stand by its earlier interpretation of the law and allow absentee ballot spoiling again.

On July 9, the commission provided an answer: It voted 4-2 that absentee ballot spoiling is prohibited after a voter returns an absentee ballot. Democratic commissioner Carrie Riepl, a former clerk, voted with the three Republicans in favor of the guidance. Democratic commissioners Mark Thomsen and Ann Jacobs voted against it.

The guidance came just one day after Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, dropped out of the race and endorsed Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez for governor. Just over a week later, Rodriguez dropped out of the race and Crowley reentered. 

Over 36,000 Wisconsin voters had already returned ballots by the day the commission issued its guidance, commission data shows. Voters had returned nearly 68,000 ballots by the time Rodriguez dropped out.

At the July meeting, commission chair Don Millis, a Republican, argued that voters should only be able to void — or spoil — ballots before they return them to the clerk.

“Once you’ve turned your ballot in, that’s it,” he said.

Meanwhile, Thomsen noted that in-person voters on Election Day can mark a ballot and receive a replacement ballot if they make an error, as long as the first ballot isn’t tabulated yet. But under the new guidance, an absentee voter couldn’t spoil a returned ballot even if it’s weeks from being tabulated.

“Why are we treating people that use mail differently than me if I show up?” he said.

On one hand, voters can argue that the inability to spoil ballots effectively disenfranchises them if they vote for a candidate that has since dropped out, said Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative. 

On the other hand, she said, others can cite the Wisconsin law calling absentee voting a privilege, not a right, and argue that voters who exercise that right accept some risk in casting an absentee vote that can’t be taken back.

“The issue of whether ballot spoiling is or is not allowed under Wisconsin statutes hasn’t been definitively resolved,” she said.

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.

Can Wisconsin voters void a returned absentee ballot? New lawsuit sends issue back to court 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.