by Benjamin Yount
The Democratic National Committee is looking to join the legal fight over incomplete absentee ballots in Wisconsin.
The DNC on Monday filed to join the lawsuit seeking to allow local election clerks to continue filling in missing information from ballots they receive this fall.
The Republican-led legislature and a Waukesha County judge have said the Wisconsin Elections Commission overstepped its bounds with its guidance that allows local clerks to complete absentee ballots without reaching out to voters first. Lawmakers and the judge said state law is clear about the process for incomplete absentee ballots
The DNC calls following that law voter suppression.
“The Democratic Party is committed to ensuring that every eligible voter can cast a valid ballot in Wisconsin,” the DNC said in a statement.
“This [legal fight] is simply another attempt by Republicans and their allies to restrict voting access and undermine the democratic process – and we’re fighting back,” said Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison. “The DNC is taking action to ensure all eligible Wisconsin voters are able to fulfill their sacred right to vote, free from partisan obstruction.”
Wisconsin law requires local clerks to set aside and not count incomplete absentee ballots. Clerks are allowed to contact voters and have them fill in the missing information, but nothing in state law allows for clerks to fill in that information on their own.
The DNC’s motion in the case asks the judge “to prohibit municipal clerks from spoiling previously completed absentee ballots and from returning a previously submitted absentee ballot to a voter..”
The DNC’s argument relies on guidance from the Elections Commission that was first issued back in 2016.
But the Commission withdrew that guidance last month shortly after the judge in Waukesha County ordered them to.
A different Waukesha County judge last month also ruled that Commission staffers cannot send guidance to clerks without a full and official vote by the Elections commissioners themselves.
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Benjamin Yount is a regular contributor to The Center Square.
Photo “Ballot Drop Box” by Chris Phan. CC BY-SA 3.0.
Just crooks being crooks.
No one should be able to touch you ballot. If you can’t fill it out
then I guess you can’t vote. Go where you are supposed to vote
on Tue Nov 8 and vote for yourself. There is hardly any way you can
mess up.
Obviously voting isn’t supposed to be brain surgery. What the so called democrats who’re nothing but a bunch of Fascist posing as democrats want is to complicate everything so THEY can say who voted and who was voted for. If one will look back a bit, one will see that any time there’s a close election the so called democrats usually win. We used to have two ways to vote. At the poles or use an absentee ballot. Now, we have just about every conceivable way to vote with no way of proving who or what we are. Election fraud? YOUR DAMN RIGHT IT IS AND THE SO CALLED DEMOCRATS ARE THE ONES DOING IT!