Strong elections commissions
Wisconsin needs a strong, robust election system. We can’t have that, however, with a battered and bruised Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC).
A recent incident in the village of Edgar helps make our point.
A voter, we are told, brought an absentee ballot for the upcoming Aug. 9 primary to the Edgar Village Hall and, confused about where to drop it off, put the ballot in the book return slot of the county public library branch. It was an innocent mistake.
The misplaced ballot stirred up a number of questions. Should the ballot be spoiled (that is, discarded) because the voter attempted to use the library book slot as an absentee drop box, recently deemed illegal by the Wisconsin Supreme Court? Or should the ballot be counted because the voter did not use an absentee drop box (which by definition exists outside a municipal building) but dropped off the ballot within the parameter of the village hall where the clerk’s office is located?
Prior to the fuss over the 2020 election, any municipal clerk could dial up the WEC and get advice over how to handle difficult situations like this.
That can no longer happen. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled that WEC decisions are “administrative rules” and must, first, be approved by the state legislature.
What clerks are left with is calling up municipal attorneys and, hundreds or thousands of dollars later, getting a legal opinion on how to handle this or that election issue. The legal opinion is not necessarily definitive.
This is a poor state of affairs. There are 1,850 municipal governments in Wisconsin represented by hundreds of lawyers. These governments and lawyers are bound to decide election questions differently. Elections in Wisconsin will become less and less uniform over time. That’s not good. A strong election system is a uniform election system.
The state legislature created WEC and, given recent Wisconsin Supreme Court rulings, must better empower WEC to take control of elections.
Currently, WEC provides training for municipal clerks and their deputies on how to run elections. The agency creates all of the forms used by candidates and election offices. It is ridiculous that WEC, which is run by a bipartisan board, cannot approve rules about ballots, ballot counting machines and, during a pandemic, absentee ballot boxes.
We get it. The state legislature wants control over elections. But is it really practical for a municipal clerk to call up Rep. John Spiros (RMarshfi eld) and get a directive on how to handle a quirky election issue? Or Rep. Donna Rozar (RMarshfi eld)? Or Rep. “Jimmy Boy” Edming (RGlen Flora)? Would any state legislator even give such advice upon pain of an election lawsuit? Would the entire state legislature reconvene to decide whether an absentee ballot in such and such county should be counted or not? No, it wouldn’t. Nor is it practical for the clerk to go to a county judge to get a similar ruling on this or that ballot. You’d be waiting for months, maybe years.
The Edgar ballot situation ended fine. Village administrator Jennifer Lopez discarded the ballot dropped off in the library book return slot. She called the voter and had him fill out a new ballot. The new ballot was properly returned to the village office. Democracy in this case was rescued.
The issue, however, is that while this was the way Edgar handled the situation, another municipality might have handled things differently. Currently, that’s our system.
We need a strong WEC to ensure that all Wisconsin voters follow the same rules in every election in all municipalities across the state.
Editorial by Peter Weinschenk, The Record-Review
