By: J. Christian Adams
Are you registered to vote for next week’s election? If not, don’t panic. Wisconsin is one of many states offering Election Day Registration. This means voters can show up at the polls on Election Day to register to vote. This system unfortunately trades election integrity for convenience. Election Day Registration is a vote now, verify later system. Later — meaning after the election — when you cannot claw back votes from apparently bogus registration addresses.
For instance, in states without Election Day Registration, people register to vote well before voting. Election officials have time to verify eligibility to ensure the applicant lives where they say they do and meet the other requirements. In Wisconsin, the verification of eligibility happens after all the votes have been counted and the election is certified. This is one of the worst ways to run a clean election. It is a system with ample opportunity for abuse. For example, someone could easily drive into the state and claim to live at phony addresses.
The Wisconsin Legislature put in place safeguards to ideally discourage bad actors from using the Election Day registration system to cast fraudulent ballots. Under Wisconsin law, the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) performs audits of Election Day Registration users by mailing postcards to the addresses they gave at the polls. If the postcard returns as “undeliverable,” officials are expected to inactivate the registrant before referring them to law enforcement.
In preparation for the 2024 election season, WEC decided to confuse the issue with legal guidance to local officials which, if followed, could reduce cancellations of problematic addresses and therefore take prosecutorial alerts near zero. In sum, the guidance took clerks from “shall” act to remove addresses failing post-election audits to a place with more latitude and personal discretion. The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), of which I am President, is suing WEC to obtain records showing how they crafted the guidance.
I am not simply airing theories for concern in Wisconsin. Data showing the guidance at work are public record. Take the City of Milwaukee. Election officers there went from being one of the best jurisdictions adhering to Wisconsin Election Day Registration audit laws to now show zero activity in 2024. A quick turnaround from best to worst. Milwaukee is not alone in this.
Earlier this year, we found that Green Bay Clerk Celestine Jeffreys was not investigating any addresses failing audits for years, therefore she was not inactivating registrants and was not referring these cases to her district attorney. Jeffreys admitted she was not following the law because of “ a lack of awareness” during a formal complaint briefing in my clients’ WEC complaint filings. Essentially, her defense was I wasn’t following the law because I didn’t know the law existed.
Here is the good news: these troubling vulnerabilities in the Election Day Registration process were exposed before this upcoming Presidential Election.
There are effective legal options available to respond to people who abuse the system.
When election officials skirt the law, people lose trust in our voting systems.
Wisconsinites deserve an election that follows the rule of law. We will make sure that safeguards for Election Day Registration are enforced and that people who abuse the system are referred to county prosecutors. When election officials don’t follow or enforce the law, people lose trust in the election system.
After all, no one wants illegal votes to determine the winner of an election.
J. Christian Adams is the President of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a former Justice Department attorney, and current commissioner on the United States Commission for Civil Rights.
