Recently, the Waunakee Tribune put out an op-ed claiming elections in Wisconsin are so secure that only a few felons and other ineligible voters slip through the cracks. Is this the new standard? Is this what it takes for a voter to trust that their ballot was cast in a safe and secure election? The short answer is no—Wisconsin can do better. Wisconsin elections are decided by razor thin margins, and letting the world know that some slip the cracks does not ensure voter confidence. The maintenance—or lack thereof—of the “voter rolls” in Wisconsin are a prime example of issues in the administration of Wisconsin’s elections.
The voter rolls are a list of active and inactive voters. The voter rolls are supposed to be actively maintained by each municipal clerk. Wisconsinites deserve to know that this practice is often not a top priority for election administrators in some of our most populous cities, like Green Bay.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation filed a complaint against the City of Green Bay Clerk, City Clerk Celestine Jeffries, for not maintaining her voter rolls. Clerk Jeffries did not remove addresses for voters deemed undeliverable by the annual Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) voter registration postcard. Clearly, some election administrators in Wisconsin’s most liberal municipalities blatantly disregard statutorily rooted responsibilities. This needs to change.
Election integrity efforts, like voter roll maintenance, need to be taken seriously by the Administrator of WEC and Election Administrators across Wisconsin. Wisconsin is the most decentralized system of election administration in the country, and it needs uniform training of Election Inspectors. Every clerk is responsible for their own election, which means every clerk can handle the election in their own way, ranging from training of inspectors to early voting hours and days of operation. This must change—it is time to remove any doubt of one inspector being trained differently than the other as well as set a uniform standard for how elections must be conducted.
Wisconsin’s voter rolls must be centralized and the duty of maintaining who can and who cannot vote must be held by someone accountable to the people, like a County Clerk. These simple solutions would lead to voters in Wisconsin being able to trust the results of any election in the Badger State.