This story really illustrates the politicization of the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Months after the state resolved a long-running dispute over its voter list, Wisconsin’s Elections Commission is poised to send out a routine mailer that could remove tens of thousands of inactive voters from its rolls.

 

The mailer — which is a postcard sent out every two years — will be delivered to more than 187,000 people who haven’t voted since November of 2016, a four-year span that covers more than a dozen elections.

 

In a state like Wisconsin, where the past two presidential races have been decided by around 20,000 votes out of more than 3 million cast, changes to the voting list can make national news.

 

That’s not the case with this latest mailer, which — at least so far — is flying under the radar.

 

“Generally, people who get this are people who have moved or just aren’t interested in voting anymore,” said Wisconsin Elections Commission spokesperson Reid Magney. “But we occasionally do get several thousand people out of this who will let us know, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m still here … So keep me on the list.'”

 

The list in question is different than the one that sparked a year-and-a-half legal fight that was resolved in April by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

 

[…]

 

The state is scheduled to send the postcards on June 15. People who receive the postcards who want to remain registered should return them to the state.

 

“And if they don’t respond, then they are moved from the active to the inactive list, which means that they would have to reregister if they wanted to vote,” Magney said.

Clerks will have until July 15 to update their voter lists based on who responds. The Elections Commission will then remove those voters from the state’s registration list on July 31.

This is a perfectly normal and acceptable process to maintain the integrity and cleanliness of our voter rolls. After all, if the state has an indication that someone might have moved out state or died, then why wouldn’t we want to remove them from the rolls to avoid fraud or mistakes? And if they are removed in error, Wisconsin allows people to register at the polls. It’s a tiny hassle, but negligible when balanced against the benefit of cleaning up the rolls.

Furthermore, six weeks from mailing to purge is a reasonable amount of time for people to respond and for clerks to update the rolls. All. Perfectly. Acceptable.

Yet… in 2019 and 2020 this was a major issue. Liberals and the Elections Commission claimed that this normal sanitization of our electoral process was unjust and that there wasn’t possible enough time for the clerks to make changes before the election. It went to court. People spewed spittle on the interwebs about the impropriety of the process. In the end, the names were never removed from the rolls prior to election day.

What changed?

Simple. In 2020, the Democrats were expecting heavy turnout on their side and the liberals on the Elections Commission wanted to clear the decks for every possible attempt at fraud. In 2022, the Republicans are expecting a strong turnout and the liberal on the Elections Commission are willing to return to normal processes.

The WEC should complete this routing sanitization of the voter rolls. And it never should have been an issue in 2019/2020. The fact that it was tells us everything we need to know about the people who run that commission.

What do you do when an agency just ignores the law and does what they want? We are finding that our system of government breaks down.

Senator Steve Nass (R-Whitewater), Co-chair of the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules (JCRAR), was outraged by the failure of the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) to comply with state law regarding special voting deputies (SVDs) and the process for them going to nursing homes, residential care facilities and retirement homes to assist with absentee voting by residents of these facilities.

 

Today, the WEC knowingly issued another directive on SVDs for the April 6th Election that violates the law and ignores a lawful mandate given to the WEC by JCRAR (on February 11, 2021) to complete an emergency rule by March 13, 2021, before issuing any further directives. “The Wisconsin Elections Commission and its staff can’t be bothered to follow the law even after being given a lawful mandate from the legislature through the statutory powers of JCRAR. It is shocking that the people responsible for protecting the integrity of our elections would so openly violate the law even after being told what they were doing was improper” Nass said.

 

In early February, Nass released a legal opinion from the Wisconsin Legislative Council making clear that “state law does not empower the Elections Commission to waive” a statutory requirement that local clerks must dispatch SVDs to these facilities.

I guess we now know what Shilling thinks about ethics.

It’s not just that Ross is a lefty attack dog, it’s that he has a history of being one of the most vile and dishonest politicos in Wisconsin. I can’t blame Ross. He is what he is. But for Shilling to appoint him to a board responsible for upholding ethics is a travesty and a deep stain on her character.

The WEC continues to chip away at the integrity of our elections.

“Instead of having a trickle of people coming into these polling places you had a massive group,” Spindell explained. “What I’m disturbed about is we had to have people wait two hours in line, four hours in Green Bay and nobody else anywhere in the whole state had to do that and this was completely unnecessary.”

But when it came time to vote on that investigation, which some members of Green Bay’s city council demanded, a tie killed the request shortly after it was put on the table.

It’s possible that the WEC is the most dysfunctional government agency in the state. The Democrats’ behavior here is despicable.

Goodness… could the WEC be any more dysfunctional? This is a basic service.

The problem with MyVote Wisconsin stemmed from a server that crashed and had to be taken offline, Wisconsin Elections Commission spokesman Reid Magney said. The site was crashing for some visitors, while others experienced long delays as it retrieved information.

As of late Tuesday afternoon, the Elections Commission was in the process of configuring a replacement server.

The Elections Commission does have a backup polling location service, gettothepolls.com, for voters and clerks to access while they fix the problem.

Their incompetence is only matched by their arrogance.

With a 6-0 vote, both Democratic and Republican commissioners scrapped a plan for local elections officials to send two separate ballots to all absentee Wisconsin voters — at least 81,000 people — ahead of the statewide April 7 election, even while acknowledging their action is likely violating state law. The April 7 election features a presidential primary, state Supreme Court general election and other local races.

“The law here is very clear, but the law isn’t going to be easy for our clerks to follow,” WEC chairman Dean Knudson, a Republican, said. “In following the law, there’s at least going to be inconvenience and confusion, and, at the worst, there could be chaos.”

Lawless. Our Republic falls apart when arrogant bureaucrats refuse to implement the laws that the people pass. If they don’t have to follow the laws they don’t like, why should I?

Monday’s inaction by the commission is the second time this month commissioners deadlocked on a path forward on the state’s voter roll issue, which has garnered national attention.

The commission’s meeting comes after Ozaukee County Judge Paul Malloy earlier this month ordered the state to purge voters flagged as having moved. Earlier in December, commissioners deadlocked 3-3 along party lines, failing to advance a motion that would have removed voters from the rolls within seven business days of Malloy’s order.

Julie M Glancey – Sheboygan Falls

Ann S. Jacobs – Milwaukee

Mark L. Thomsen – Milwaukee

Wow. Isn’t that a slanted opening paragraph?

PORT WASHINGTON — A Wisconsin judge on Friday ordered that the registration of up to 234,000 voters be tossed out because they may have moved, a victory for conservatives that could make it more difficult for people to vote next year in the key swing state.

No, it won’t make it harder for any legitimate voter to vote. That’s a BS argument.

The judge sided with three voters represented by a conservative law firm who argued the state elections commission should have immediately deactivated any of the roughly 234,000 voters who didn’t respond to an October mailing within 30 days. The voters were flagged as having potentially moved.

Ozaukee County Judge Paul Malloy denied a request by elections commission attorneys to put his decision on hold. He ordered the state Elections Commission to follow the law requiring voters who didn’t respond to be deactivated.

“I can’t tell them how to do that, they’re going to have to figure that out,” Malloy said of the commission deactivating the voters.

The law is clear as day and easy to follow. The folks in the Elections Commission just don’t want to do it and are throwing up lame excuses for why they won’t do their jobs.

Ehhh….

The commission of three Republicans and three Democrats voted unanimously to appoint Assistant Director Meagan Wolfe as interim director and put her on a path to be permanent director. The commission is to discuss the issue further in closed session, when issues like her salary will be determined.

[…]

Republican Commissioner Dean Knudson wanted to make Wolfe the temporary director while the commission conducted a national search for a permanent director, but the commission on a 1-5 vote rejected that idea. Knudson then joined the other commissioners in voting to pursue making Wolfe the permanent director.

It just seems like a missed opportunity to not actually put the job out there and see who else might be interested. The commissioners are just taking the easy “next person up” approach, which is lazy management.