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Owen

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2231, 08 Jun 20

Law | Politics - Wisconsin

WILL Files Petition to Prevent Ballot Harvesting

Good.

The News: The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), on behalf of a group of petitioners, submitted a rules petition to the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) asking the state agency to promulgate a rule that makes clear that the practice of ballot harvesting is illegal in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Elections Commission is required by state law to respond to WILL’s petition within a “reasonable period of time.”

[…]

WILL’s Rules Petition: Under Wisconsin law, only voters are allowed to request absentee ballots and voters are responsible for returning the ballot. This is the law except in very specific circumstances such as hospitalization. WILL, on behalf of the petitioners, is asking the Wisconsin Elections Commission to promulgate a rule that makes clear:

  • Third parties cannot request an absentee ballot on behalf of a voter
  • Third parties cannot collect and submit absentee ballots on behalf of a voter

The Wisconsin Elections Commission is required to consider the rules petition and either begin the rulemaking process or provide a response explaining why they are rejecting the petition.

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2231, 08 June 2020

Law | Politics - Wisconsin

8 Comments

  1. dad29
    dad29 on June 9, 2020 at 8:01 am

    WEC will delay any response until after November’s election.

    Timing matters when stealing another election is at stake.

  2. jjf
    jjf on June 9, 2020 at 8:45 am

    If Wisconsin law doesn’t currently disallow it, why shouldn’t we expect the Legislature to address it?

    From RightWisconsin:

    However, ballot harvesting is not just a Democratic tactic in California, and Republican use of it led to election problems in another state.

    “In North Carolina, where ballot harvesting is formally illegal, there were Republican operatives who did it anyway,” Esenberg said. “And this caused the election to be invalidated and there were allegations that these ballot harvesters had altered the ballots they had. They voted for candidates and in races where voters had not cast a ballot. They had not returned ballots for people if they thought that the ballots had been cast for the wrong candidate.”

    Esenberg said WILL is asking the Election Commission for a clarification of the law regarding ballot harvesting because Wisconsin law on the subject is unclear.

    “It seems to be written in a way that assumes that the voter would be the one who requests the absentee ballot and the voter would be the one who has to return it,” Esenberg said. “But it doesn’t say so explicitly so the Wisconsin Election Commission has the ability to make rules clarifying what the law actually means and we will be asking the Commission to clarify Wisconsin law and say, look, this is not the way it works.”

    Esenberg told Weber that the ballot harvesting issue should not be a partisan issue.

    Hmm, well…  Esenberg always says that.

    Raise your hands if you think a quickly-created and anonymous Republican group would try to do this in Wisconsin.

  3. Jason
    Jason on June 9, 2020 at 9:07 am

    How about instead of just jumping right into partisan stupidity… Johnny, how about this…

    State Law is this…

    >Under Wisconsin law, only voters are allowed to request absentee ballots and voters are responsible for returning the ballot. This is the law except in very specific circumstances such as hospitalization. 

    Seems like WILL is just asking WEC to make that law explicitly clear in any website, information packets, printings, etc.   Do you agree or disagree with WILL asking the WEC to do that?

     

    Now on to your partisan hackery, I can only speak for myself…  I know that all parties are self-interested enough to try to do this… and I would support any party or person to be prosecuted for it.   I can guess that any regular on here as well as Owen himself will say very similar things.

  4. jjf
    jjf on June 9, 2020 at 9:42 am

    Yeah, Jason.  Did you read the filing?  In short, some days WILL likes the rule-making process, other days it doesn’t.  Of course they have the right to ask for a clarification.

    So again, instead of a tug-of-war on rule-making, the Legislature could fix it.

  5. Jason
    Jason on June 9, 2020 at 9:48 am

    So the “Yeah Jason” was an answer to my question?  You do agree with WILL asking the WEC what it did?

    I ask because your second statement seems to indicate a lack of comprehension of the entire scenario.  Troubling to have you say that… since the law is already written.

     

  6. dad29
    dad29 on June 9, 2020 at 11:48 am

    So the “Yeah Jason” was an answer to my question?

    You don’t understand, Jason.  JIFFY gets to ask the questions.  He does NOT have to answer them.  Clear?

  7. jjf
    jjf on June 9, 2020 at 11:56 am

    I think it’s fair for WILL to ask.

    Don’t be so Dramatic, Dad29.  You dodge plenty of questions, no?

  8. Kevin Scheunemann
    Kevin Scheunemann on June 9, 2020 at 4:39 pm

    WILL is a very good organization.

     

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