Here & Now

Ann Jacobs on a Nationalized Voter List and Mail-in Ballots

Frederica Freyberg:
Just as Wisconsin is heading to the polls next Tuesday, calls from Washington to nationalize elections. The executive order President Trump signed this week would create a national list of U.S. citizens eligible to vote and restrict mail-in ballots. This order is not in effect for our April 7 election, and Democrats have filed a lawsuit over it. But does it perpetuate mistrust in the voting process? We turn to the chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, Ann Jacobs. Thanks very much for being here.

Ann Jacobs:
Happy to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:
So what is your reaction to President Trump’s executive order?

Ann Jacobs:
I think it was, at best, unfortunate and, at worst, unconstitutional. The administration of elections is delegated by the U.S. Constitution to the states, and Congress can make laws regulating elections. And an executive order is neither of those things.

Frederica Freyberg:
And so it’s your belief that this would not be in effect for the November elections or, in effect, ever?

Ann Jacobs:
My suspicion is never in effect, ever. It’s sort of a back door way to create time limits and new administrative hurdles for voters to go through under the auspices of addressing essentially what are conspiracy theories about absentee balloting.

Frederica Freyberg:
So if it were to go into effect, what would the ramifications be in Wisconsin?

Ann Jacobs:
So in Wisconsin, by way of example, you can request an absentee ballot five days before an election and you are eligible to vote if you’ve been a resident of Wisconsin for 28 days. So a new resident of Wisconsin could come and ask for a ballot and have the right to vote. Under the executive order, however, that name and that address had to have been submitted to the U.S. government prior to 60 days before the election. So you create conflicts between the statutory rights under state law with this mailing deadline, and now the government’s going to control whether they will even mail your ballot. And how do you undo that? What is the remedy if the government says, “Oh, you weren’t on the list, so I’m not going to mail your ballot? Ha, ha.” And the reason they’re not mailing it is maybe because there’s a typo in a list somewhere, or you moved or what have you. So it’s really just sort of creating an unnecessary and unworkable mess.

Frederica Freyberg:
In your mind, is it more possible with mail-in ballots to experience voter fraud?

Ann Jacobs:
No, the short answer is no. There’s a number of checks and balances involved in addressing mail-in ballots. First of all, you got to be registered. Being registered in Wisconsin requires a driver’s license or the last four digits of your Social Security number if you don’t have a license or ID. It has to go to your registered voter address. If you’re sending it somewhere else, we send a postcard to your registered voter address saying, “Hey, did you order this ballot to go somewhere else?” It requires a witness with an address to sign your absentee ballot envelope that affirms that they know you and they saw you complete this ballot. And then when it comes in to the elections — municipal clerks across the state, they check it off, check it in, and that ballot then is tallied. There’s just a lot of checks and balances along the way.

Frederica Freyberg:
This executive order also seems to be trying to get at the issue of only U.S. citizens voting, because that is considered in some corners, you know, rampant with fraud. What is your knowledge of whether that is happening here in Wisconsin, non-citizens voting?

Ann Jacobs:
We actually have some numbers on that. There are four documented cases of non-citizen voting since 2016. During that time, 25 million ballots have been issued in the state of Wisconsin. And if you want to do the math, it’s like 0.000000 something something of all ballots cast. This is quite simply not an issue and not a problem. Non-citizens, generally speaking, don’t want to get in trouble with the U.S. federal government, and that’s why we haven’t seen really hardly any numbers of non-citizen voting. And even those cases where non-citizens have voted, many times it’s because they receive some sort of legal status that they incorrectly believed entitled them to vote.

Frederica Freyberg:
Is this executive order separate, though, from the U.S. DOJ suing Wisconsin to turn over redacted voter registration data?

Ann Jacobs:
Let me clarify. They’re not asking for redacted voter data. They’re looking for unredacted voter data. They’re looking for your complete name, date of birth, driver’s license number and Social Security number. That information under Wisconsin law is protected. We don’t give that out. And that’s a state law that prohibits that. And I think we’ve also seen recent disclosures of — I believe it was a DOGE employee who loaded the entire — some sort of entire Social Security database onto a thumb drive and took it elsewhere. Wisconsinites want their private information protected. They don’t want it going out to be shared by the government with random anti-voting entities so they can “investigate non-citizen voting.”

Frederica Freyberg:
All right. Ann Jacobs, thanks very much.

Ann Jacobs:
Thank you.