The Wisconsin Elections Commission is working on a project to contact voters who have more than one home address on state government databases. If the voter has moved within Wisconsin, the WEC wants them to register at their new address. If they haven’t moved, WEC wants only to confirm their voting address.
In our current political climate of eager fearfulness and lunging-at-each-others’-throats, this is causing controversy, even a lawsuit. But the facts are neither as the partisan Republicans or the partisan Democrats fear or want you to fear.
Last October, the WEC checked the addresses on the voter registration database against other State of Wisconsin databases and found 234,039 mismatches–mostly with the Department of Transportation. They sent postcards to the voter-registration address to make sure the voter was registered to vote at the right address. Everyone involved–the WEC, the voters, the local clerks–has plenty of time to resolve this before the next election. That’s why the cards went out in October, when there was a long lull between elections.
The practice of checking registration rolls for people who have moved is widely recognized as prudent maintenance. It’s routine and useful for preserving election integrity and WEC is going about it as carefully as any other state.
Personally, I don’t think it adds value to election integrity beyond appearances, but I won’t go to the mat to defend that belief. It has no effect on voter fraud because the voters are registered to vote at only one address. If they are attempting fraud, they are being so clumsy we don’t need to worry that they will succeed. Slightly inaccurate voter-turnout statistics is the only drawback I see to leaving movers on the rolls until they register someplace else or fail to vote for four years.
For Republicans: NO ONE IS REGISTERED TO VOTE TWICE. In addition, no one has voted twice. There’s not even any evidence that any of them are trying.
There are plenty of non-fraudulent reasons why people have different addresses for their vehicle registration and their voter registration. Small business owners might register their car from their business address. Same for people who own two homes–don’t we want them to vote? Tax evaders who live in cities that levy wheel taxes might register their cars at their relatives’ homes. (Okay, that might be fraud, but it’s not voter fraud.)
And give a thought to those individuals’ freedoms. Why shouldn’t a man who owns a home in Waukesha and cabin in the Northwoods be able to choose which he’ll use to register his cars and which he’ll use to register to vote? Leave the guy alone. If you force the WEC to remove people like him from the registration list every time they register a new car, you’re causing him trouble and causing the WEC to divert effort from real problems.
And now that we’ve resolved that, Republicans, consider this. A law firm is spending donations from people like you to force the State of Wisconsin to spend your tax dollars to respond to a frivolous lawsuit that won’t have any effect on voter fraud even if it succeeds. Surely there are better things to do with both the donations and the tax dollars.
For the Democrats: NO ONE IS BEING PURGED. In fact, the postcards might be preventing problems for some voters.
Since the postcards went out, 13,267 of the voters registered to vote at their new location. That’s 13,267 voters who won’t have to clear this up the next time they go to vote.
Another 1,666 responded to the postcard saying that they hadn’t moved. Their voter registrations were confirmed. No harm, no foul, good to go.
As of mid-November, 54,234 postcards had been returned as undeliverable, confirming the voters no longer lived at the address where they were registered. In the future, if any of those voters show up at a polling place anywhere in Wisconsin, they will be able to re-activate their registration right then and there and cast a regular (not provisional) ballot. That’s not a smidgen more work than they would have had to do if WEC had not removed them from the voting rolls.
The remaining 164,873 voters have been flagged on the registration database. If in 2020 they show up to vote at their old polling place, they will be told they have two home addresses listed with the State and asked to clarify the right address for the voter-registration database. If they say, “This is my voting address. I’m in the right place,” they will be allowed to sign the poll book and vote. It’ll take them maybe five seconds longer to vote than it would have taken them had the computer not flagged them.
If they show up at some other polling place or if the court decides to force the WEC to remove them from the registration rolls right now, the next time they show up at a polling place, they will be able to re-activate their registration right then and there and cast a regular (not provisional) ballot. It’ll take them maybe five minutes longer to vote than it would have taken them had the court not ruled against them.
And now that we’ve resolved that, Democrats, consider this. Imagine you’re a marginal, disenchanted would-be voter. What will you feel when you see social media spreading the message: “Lawsuit could affect the ability of 234,000 Wisconsin voters to cast ballots”? Suspecting you might be one of them isn’t going to make you any more eager to show up at the polls to find out.
Spreading fear of routine election-administration practices can be nearly as effective at suppressing votes as actual purging would be. When there really is nothing to fear, use your words and energy to spread that message instead. There are other alarms to be raised about the real threats to our democracy.