Do
you want your vote to matter?
Integrity,
noun; firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values-Incorruptibility, an
unimpaired condition-Soundness, the quality or state of
being complete or undivided-Completeness.
Election
integrity legislation, particularly those laws proposed in red states, are
under fire. To the left, these proposed laws are decried as “voter suppression”
that harken back to the Jim Crow laws of the south. What do these voter
integrity laws hope to accomplish and are they really discriminatory. For the
sake of brevity, let’s consider the Wisconsin legislation recently vetoed by
Governor Tony Evers, what was proposed in the bills and what issues were
intended to be remedied by those bills.
Registered voters must submit an absentee ballot sealed
in a separate envelope, signed with valid addresses by both the voter and a
witness. Additionally, the application requires the voter to certify eligibility
to vote in said election. Why? The Wisconsin Elections Commission issued unlawful guidelines to
County Clerks, advising them to “cure” absentee ballots that were not submitted
with the required signatures or addresses rather than following the law and
contacting the individual voter to correct the ballot.
Indefinitely confined voters, overseas voters,
and all other voters, other than military voters, will no longer automatically
receive an absentee ballot. Those voters will be sent absentee ballot
applications and will need to reapply for each election. Active-duty service
members are exempted. Why? County Clerks in Dane and Milwaukee Counties advised voters to
register as indefinitely confined, due to the covid pandemic, to circumvent the
requirement to provide identification. An additional 200,000 ballots were
requested by “indefinitely confined” voters, including able bodied elected
State legislators, for the November 3rd, 2020 election. Under
current law, all those voters would automatically receive an absentee ballot
for all future elections.
Municipal or county clerks are prohibited from
sending or transmitting an absentee ballot application or an absentee ballot to
a voter for purposes of voting in an election unless the voter applies for the
application or ballot as provided by law. Why? Mailing absentee ballot applications and
absentee ballots without a voter request, substantially increases the chances
that a ballot is not sent to the appropriate voter, due to address changes.
Once the
canvassing of absentee ballots begins, the municipal clerk must hourly post, at
his or her office and on the Internet, a statement showing the number of
absentee ballots that the clerk has mailed or transmitted to voters, the number
of absentee ballots that have been returned to the clerk, the number of absentee
ballots counted, and the number of absentee ballots remaining to be counted. Why? Any charges of “ballot
dumping” will be eliminated as the number of outstanding absentee ballots will
be known and published.
Election
observers should have equal access to all parts of the election process and
forbids observers from interfering with electors or election officials. Appropriate
areas would be designated for election observers, no more than 3 feet away
where ballots are being examined or processed. Why? Because of the
ongoing Covid pandemic, rules were ignored and poll watchers were denied access
by election officials in some districts.
Local governments would be prohibited from accepting funding
from and/or abdicating their Statutory required election administration
responsibilities by contracting with outside groups to administer their
elections. Why? This would prevent municipalities from accepting funding
from organizations as an incentive to run their elections according to the
grantors, or to surrender the election administration, such as what occurred in
Green Bay. Those funds would still be allowable, but any elections grant must
go through the Wisconsin Elections Commission before being distributed
per-capita to all municipalities statewide.
Employees of long-term care facilities would be
prohibited from coercing a resident right to vote, and would have required them
to admit Special Voting Deputies to assist in the election
process, unless there is a declared federal or state health emergency. The bill
would have required long-term care facilities to have employees trained like
Special Voting Deputies in case the Deputies are not allowed to visit for
public health reasons. Why? Public testimony at State hearings revealed
that this abuse did occur.
Only family members, legal guardians, or designated people would
be allowed to return a person’s absentee ballot. The bill would have prohibited
anyone from being paid to return absentee ballots. Any event where a voter may
return their absentee ballot in-person must comply with existing early voting
requirements. Why? Chain of custody is necessary in order to assure that
only legally cast ballots are counted.
When one reads the bills and understands their intent, the
accusation of voter suppression rings hollow and Evers’ vetoes wholly partisan.
These bills would have corrected a number of issues that plagued the 2020
Presidential election and would increase voter confidence in a fair and impartial
election process.
