Here & Now

Legislators Weigh Changes to Election Laws

Frederica Freyberg:

At the state Capitol it’s been a busy week. The Republican-held Legislature passed a slate of bills dealing with election laws and dipped into measures around policing. And this afternoon the state Supreme Court weighed in on redistricting. Wisconsin Public Radio Capitol Reporter Laurel White takes us through it now from the state Capitol. Laurel, very nice to see you.

Laurel White:

Great to see you.

Frederica Freyberg:

So today’s much-anticipated order from the high court represents a defeat for Republicans in the drawing of political maps. Why? What happened?

Laurel White:

Basically what Republicans were asking for here — and this is a former Republican assembly speaker and the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, which is a conservative legal advocacy group. They were looking for a rule change essentially trying to get lawsuits that have to do with Wisconsin’s legislative maps to start out automatically, immediately sort of by default with the Wisconsin Supreme Court instead of a lower court or a federal court. And basically that’s just kind of speeding up the process and getting the state Supreme Court to rule on these maps, which are expected to be controversial.

Frederica Freyberg:

And Dems have called this a good thing.

Laurel White:

That’s right. Democrats think it’s more appropriate for the lower courts to be able to weigh in, for federal courts to be a part of this. It’s really important to remember that these maps are expected to end up in court because of the split between the Republican Legislature and the Democratic governor. He’s unlikely to sign what Republicans draw. So we’re kind of gearing up for that legal battle we’re expecting in the next several months.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. So as to legislative session business this week, let’s talk about those election law bills, with the understanding that Governor Evers is most likely to veto them. But one would restrict private funds for administration of elections. So what’s an example in Wisconsin from the 2020 election that prompted that bill?

Laurel White:

Well, Wisconsin actually got quite a few private grants for the 2020 presidential election. The five largest cities in the state got pretty substantial grants from an organization called the Center for Tech and Civic Life. That’s a group that’s funded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. What Republicans are really pushing for here is either a limitation on those private grant funds or really an entire elimination of the grant funds because they say that it gets these private groups involved in a way they shouldn’t be involved, gives them too much say in some kind of election administration processes. So this is a pretty high-profile bill that has to do with elections.

Frederica Freyberg:

So then Republicans also want to restrict collection of absentee ballots. This is mostly around how Madison allowed the collection of ballots?

Laurel White:

That’s right. Madison had a few events in the fall ahead of the election, September and October, where people were allowed to return absentee ballots to park locations around the city. This was basically just an opportunity for people to return ballots without having to put them in the mail or without having to drive them to their clerk’s office. People could also get a witness signature for an absentee ballot if they needed a witness for their ballot. And Republicans thought that this was inappropriate. They didn’t think that it was secure enough to have these kind of park-based events away from clerks’ offices and so they want to just restrict where events can be located and when they can be held.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now, another bill would ban clerks from filling in missing information on absentee ballots. How is this a change from current law?

Laurel White:

Well, this is a really interesting bill. Kind of the biggest thing here is that they are putting it into state law. As of right now, the policies regarding clerks adding information to ballots — and this is something like a missing address for a witness on an absentee ballot, things like that. And they get that information from official documents. And as of right now, their ability to do that is governed by state Elections Commission guidance, not state law. So Republican lawmakers that are backing this bill say, you know, people were kind of concerned about this practice and we feel like it should be written into law and not just be guidance coming from an agency.

Frederica Freyberg:

So the passage of these was along party-line votes. Are Republicans maintaining changes are needed because of election fraud?

Laurel White:

So there’s obviously a very big conversation about fraud. The kind of primary line from Republicans about these proposals is more about election integrity and people’s faith in the electoral process. So they say this isn’t necessarily saying there was fraud or pointing to specific fraud. It’s us saying people have voiced concerns. People have contacted us, and we feel like we need to do things to make the process more concrete, more set in state law that’s going to make people feel more comfortable.

Frederica Freyberg:

As to policing bills, they had to do with the composition of police and fire commissions, grants for community policing, data collection and transparency around use of force. How do these measures dovetail if at all with the work of the speaker’s Task Force on Racial Disparities, which is also dealing with police practices?

Laurel White:

Pretty directly. So these are the first votes that we’ve seen on police reform in Wisconsin. It’s taken a lot longer than some folks wanted to get votes on these bills. And a lot of these proposals are direct recommendations from this task force. They talked about things like use of force incidents being recorded, having police personnel records be more available if an officer is going to be hired by another agency. I think it’s really interesting to note that there were votes on a number of these bills in the Senate this week, but a lot of the high-profile bills, bills on things like a ban of chokeholds or no-knock warrants. Those haven’t seen any votes on the floor yet so there’s still a lot to come.

Frederica Freyberg:

Laurel White, thank you for all of your information from the state Capitol.

Laurel White:

Absolutely. Thank you.