Wisconsin Elections Commission

The Wisconsin Elections Commission is a bipartisan regulatory agency of the State of Wisconsin established to administer and enforce election laws in the state. The Wisconsin Elections Commission was established by a 2015 act of the Wisconsin Legislature which also established the Wisconsin Ethics Commission to administer campaign finance, ethics, and lobbying laws. The two commissions began operation on June 30, 2016, replacing the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB), which was abolished.[2]

Wisconsin Elections Commission
Agency overview
FormedJune 30, 2016 (2016-06-30)
Preceding agencies
Headquarters212 E. Washington Ave.
Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.
43°4′36.732″N 89°22′56.028″W
Employees25.75 (2019)[1]
Annual budget$8,974,800 (2019)[1]
Agency executives
  • Ann S. Jacobs, Chair
  • Mark L. Thomsen, Vice Chair
  • Marge Bostelmann, Secretary
  • Meagan Wolfe, Administrator
Websiteelections.wi.gov

The Government Accountability Board had been established in 2008 to replace the Wisconsin Elections Board and Wisconsin Ethics Board.[3]

Membership

The Commission is made up of six members, two of which are appointed by the Governor, and one each by the President of the Senate, the Senate Minority Leader, the Speaker of the Assembly, and the Assembly Minority Leader.[4] As of 2020, Republicans and Democrats have three members each.

The staff of the Commission are non-partisan, and are led by an administrator appointed by the commission and confirmed by the Wisconsin Senate.[5] Meagan Wolfe was appointed interim administrator March 2, 2018, and was unanimously confirmed by the Wisconsin State Senate on May 15, 2019 for a term ending June 30, 2023.[6]

Current Commissioners
Position Name[7] Hometown Term ends[lower-alpha 1] Party Appointer
Position Name
Chair Ann S. Jacobs Milwaukee 2021 Dem. Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling
Vice Chair Mark L. Thomsen Milwaukee 2024 Dem. Assembly Minority Leader Gordon Hintz
Secretary Marge Bostelmann Green Lake 2024 Rep. Governor Scott Walker
Commissioner Julie M. Glancey Sheboygan Falls 2021 Dem. Governor Scott Walker
Commissioner Dean Knudson Hudson 2024 Rep. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos
Commissioner Robert F. Spindell Jr. Milwaukee 2021 Rep. Senate Majority Leader Scott L. Fitzgerald
  1. Terms end on May 1.

History

Establishment (2015)

The law to create the Wisconsin Elections Commission and the Wisconsin Ethics Commission, 2015 Wisconsin Act 118, was signed into law on December 16, 2015, by Governor Scott Walker. The two commissions formally came into existence on June 30, 2016.

Presidential election recount (2016)

On November 25, 2016, the Commission received a petition from Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein for a hand recount of the votes in the state from the 2016 presidential election. On November 28, the Commission rejected Stein's request for a hand recount.[8]

Attempted voter purge (2019–2020)

In 2019, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) petitioned Paul V. Malloy, the presiding circuit court judge in Ozaukee County, Wisconsin,[9][10] to remove 234,000 voters from the statewide rolls. WILL's lawsuit demanded that the Commission respond to a "Movers Report," which was produced via computer analysis of voter data compiled by the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC). Funded in 2012 by the Pew Charitable Trusts, ERIC is a non-partisan national non-profit organization that shares voter registration information aimed at improving the accuracy and reliability of voter rolls and increasing voter participation.[11][12]

Malloy ruled that Wisconsin law compelled him to order an urgent purging of those possibly invalid registrants from the voter rolls,[13] and refused to grant standing to the League of Women Voters (LWV) and the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign (WDC) to intervene in the case.[14] The WDC filed suit in federal court to halt the contested purging.[14] Acting on behalf of the Commission, which was split 3-3 on the matter Josh Kaul, Wisconsin's Attorney General, joined the appeal to stay Malloy's removals.[15]

The ERIC report had tagged 234,039 registrations, around 7% of all registrants in Wisconsin, after its analysis concluded they might have moved to an address which had not yet been updated on their voter registration records, or were otherwise suspected to be invalid.[16] Notifications were sent to all those voters that their registration might need to be brought up to date. Some sixty thousand of those notices were found to be undeliverable. Approximately 2,300 voters confirmed that their registrations were correct. An additional 16,500 had reregistered at more recent addresses. The registrations of those determined to be deceased would be removed. The Commission estimated that the voter verification process would take one to two years to complete prior to initiating any action to remove those former voters, the accuracy of whose registrations still remained unresolved.[16] Despite insufficient evidence for removal of that extraordinary number of qualified voters, the state could be forced to comply with Malloy's order.[17] On January 2, 2020, WILL said it asked the circuit court to hold the Elections Commission in contempt, fining it up to $12,000 daily, until it advanced Malloy's December 17, 2019 order to remove from the rolls registrations of hundreds of thousands of voters who might have moved to a different address. The case was being heard in a state appeals court, but it was presumed that the conservative-dominated Wisconsin Supreme Court could be expected to support Malloy's ruling.[18] The purge was construed to be targeting voters living in the cities of Madison, and Milwaukee, as well as college towns, which all tended to favor Democrats.[14][19] Reporter and author Greg Palast associated the Wisconsin effort at voter purging as conforming to a national Republican party strategy which had attracted international attention.[20] On January 12, 2020, Malloy found the three Democrats on the stalemated six-member Elections Commission to be in contempt of court, ordering them each to pay a fine of $250 daily until they complied with his order. Malloy demanded urgent implementation of his order, saying, "We're deadlocked, time is running and time is clearly of the essence."[21] The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel examined the list of voters subject to being purged because they were presumed to have moved, and found that about 55 percent of those registrants had been domiciled in municipalities that had been won by Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election.[22]

References
  1. Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau (2019). "Units of State Government: Executive". Wisconsin Blue Book 2019-2020 (Report). Madison, Wisconsin: State of Wisconsin. pp. 198–199. ISBN 978-1-7333817-0-3.
  2. "Transition from G.A.B. to Elections and Ethics Commissions". Wisconsin Government Accountability Board. Archived from the original on May 14, 2016. Retrieved July 31, 2016.
  3. "About the Government Accountability Board". Wisconsin Government Accountability Board. Archived from the original on May 14, 2016. Retrieved November 30, 2020.
  4. "About the Wisconsin Elections Commission". Wisconsin Elections Commission. Retrieved October 25, 2018.
  5. "Meagan Wolfe Selected as Elections Commission Administrator". Wisconsin Elections Commission (Press release). March 1, 2018. Retrieved October 25, 2018.
  6. "Elections Appointment: Wolfe, Meagan". Wisconsin State Legislature. Retrieved May 21, 2019.
  7. "Commission Members". Wisconsin Elections Commission. Retrieved November 30, 2020.
  8. Stein, Jason; Marley, Patrick (November 28, 2016). "Stein sues after Wisconsin refuses to order hand recounts". USA Today. Retrieved November 29, 2016.
  9. "Circuit court judges & court websites". Wisconsin Court System. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
  10. "Judge Profile: Hon. Paul V. Malloy". Martindale-Hubbell. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
  11. "Archived Project: Electronic Registration Information Center". Pew Charitable Trust. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
  12. Lohr, Steve (November 5, 2018). "Another Use for A.I.: Finding Millions of Unregistered Voters". The New York Times. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
  13. Dupont, Amy (December 13, 2019). "Wisconsin judge orders removal of 234,000 voters from state registry". FOX6Now. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
  14. Rothschild, Matthew (December 19, 2019). "Matthew Rothschild: Elections Commission is right to hold off on voter purge". The Capital Times. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
  15. Vielmetti, Bruce; Beck, Molly (December 17, 2019). "Effort to stop removal of 234K voter registrations heads to federal court, while attorney general tries to stall purge in state court". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
  16. Maki, Jalen (December 27, 2019). "Purge of 234,000 Wisconsin voter registrations challenged in federal, state court". Tomahawk Leader. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
  17. How a Conservative Group Persuaded a Judge to Purge Wisconsin’s Voter Rolls, Slate Magazine, Mark Joseph Stern, December 16, 2019. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
  18. Vetterkind, Riley (January 2, 2020). "Conservative legal group alleges Elections Commission in contempt of court". Wisconsin State Journal. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
  19. Smith, Mitch (January 13, 2020). "Wisconsin Elections Officials Held in Contempt for Refusing to Purge Voters". The New York Times. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
  20. Palast, Greg; Roberts, Zach D. (January 2, 2020). "Hunting Season on Voters Opens with Georgia and Wisconsin Purges and Registration Cancellation". The Guardian. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
  21. "Wisconsin Elections Officials Held in Contempt for Refusing to Purge Voters". The New York Times. January 13, 2020. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
  22. Marley, Patrick; Vielmetti, Bruce (December 13, 2019). "Judge orders state to purge more than 200,000 Wisconsin voters from the rolls". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
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