Since 2020, Wisconsin’s election system has been under a national microscope. Elections with more than 3 million votes cast have been decided by fewer than 30,000 — and more often than not with results defying logic. We’ve elected a Democrat and a Republican statewide with very similar vote margins in each of the last 3 major elections, whether it was for president, senate, or governor.
Despite the consistency in our election outcomes, it has not allayed the fears many have about the security of our elections. I am here to state, unequivocally, Wisconsin elections are safe and we are still working to make things better.
Many of the biggest questions levied against poll workers and election administrators in our state are about vote shifts in the middle of the night. Folks in 2020 went to bed thinking Donald Trump had a comfortable lead, but as more of the densely populated, more intensely blue parts of the state reported their results later in the evening, those margins closed and eventually flipped.
This bill fixes the now nefarious late night ballot dump
The now notorious “late night ballot dump” is not nearly as nefarious as it sounds. In many of our municipalities, in order to streamline the vote tallying process, ballots are transported to one large location with big staffs dedicated to tabulating and tallying those votes. These facilities deal with a much larger magnitude of ballots since they are located in the state’s largest municipalities, and as a result, reporting takes longer.
This is the core of the problem the bill we are introducing this week to the Wisconsin legislature seeks to address. As state law currently stands, all absentee and early ballots must remain sealed until 7 a.m. on Election Day. For context, that represents 1.5 million ballots cast in 2024 of the state’s total 3.2 million ballots. Nearly half of the ballots cast in the 2024 election, including all early and absentee ballots already at their polling places, could not be prepared for tabulation until the morning of election day.
This legislation will change those rules to allow these ballots to be prepared for tallying, or “canvassed,” beginning the Monday before election day. The ability to begin this process 24 hours earlier will give election workers a significant head start preparing ballots to be tallied.
It’s crucial to note canvassing these ballots does not mean counting. The ballots will be prepared, taken out of their envelopes, and readied to be fed into a tabulator beginning the following morning. The only counts available would be ones we already have: ballots received before election day and now how many ballots were prepared to be tallied. Not who those ballots were cast for.
Legislation sets clear rules to protect integrity of ballots
The legislation will set clear rules to protect the integrity of these ballots. They must be locked, sealed away, and affixed with tamper proof seals to ensure they are not touched. If any seals show signs of tampering, a full recount is ordered and all machines sealed away must be replaced and tested before tabulating can begin.
The people of Wisconsin have made it clear. They want clear rules, and they want to know who wins elections by the time they go to bed, not 3 AM or 4 AM or sometimes days away like races in California. Recent polling shows 76% of Wisconsinites support allowing the canvassing of ballots one day early, and 79% support having a universal set of rules for all drop boxes across this state – another feature of this legislation including protections to prevent tampering.
Let’s be clear: Wisconsin elections are safe and secure. We elect leaders by close margins because our residents make independent decisions about who should represent them in Madison and in Washington. Despite the precautions in place, there are always actors working to upend our system, and we need to give access to voting to as many people as possible while being as transparent as possible along the way.
Changes like these build trust in our electoral processes and I’m proud to stand behind this bill and ask the legislature to take this up immediately so we can put to bed any persisting rumors or misinformation about Wisconsin elections.
Scott Krug, R-Wisconsin Rapids, is a member of the Assembly Campaigns and Elections Committee.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: My bill allows for early processing of Wisconsin ballots to dispel false rumors | Opinion
Reporting by Scott Krug / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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