In response to high nationwide turnout for early voting during the last presidential election, the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board has begun research on the viability of applying early voting procedures in Wisconsin.
According to the GAB — which is responsible for the administration and enforcement of campaign finance, elections, ethics and lobbying laws in Wisconsin — officials have been developing a five-year program for making elections run more smoothly.
In 2000, state law was changed to allow voters to submit an absentee ballot to their local municipal clerk in person, without an excuse. Since then, absentee voting rates, mail-in and in-person combined, have skyrocketed from 6.1 percent in the 2000 presidential election to 21.1 percent in 2008.
The options being considered include implementing a streamlined absentee process until the day before Election Day, opening multiple absentee voting sites in a given municipality and hosting early voting polls that feed votes directly into a tabulation machine. ?
These early votes, however, will not be counted before the actual election day, said GAB spokesperson James Malone. The absentee ballots will be kept by either the municipal court or a county clerk until the day of election.
Malone added though electronic methods of voting such as e-mail or telephone are certainly ideas for the future of voting, these methods are not under immediate investigation.
“E-mail voting is mentioned in the state plan, but really it is only something we are keeping an eye on,” Malone said.? “As computer security increases and develops, we will consider it more.”
Wisconsin would not be the first state to implement early voting measures. According to Malone, many other states have already put various different early voting procedures into play, including North Carolina, Washington, Oregon and Texas.
In particular, Malone said the systems in Washington and Oregon are interesting because they conduct voting for elections almost entirely by mail. ?
The costs of these procedures have yet to be determined, but rough estimates from GAB reports indicate opening five early polling places per municipality could cost nearly $500,000.? To move up the date for absentee voting would be less expensive, totaling just under $400,000.
Malone said the GAB staff is hosting listening sessions at various locations around the state to seek comments and solicit feedback from election officials, legislators and the general public. ?
“As of right now, our plans are really sort of general framework ideas from which we are hoping to get more discussion from clerks, the public and from other election specialists,” Malone said.? “We are getting very good and very specific ideas on what we could do.”
According to Malone, a test run for the proposed early voting procedures has been recommended for April 2010 and statewide early voting is projected to start in September 2010. ?
Elections and Campaign Reform Committee Chair Rep. Jeff Smith, D-Eau Claire, said he hopes that the state will employ more early voting methods, particularly mail-in ballots.
“We are looking closely at what the state of Washington has been doing, and I think there is a great possibility that this is going to be the wave of the future,” Smith said. ?
Smith added the elections committee is working closely with the GAB developing ideas and procedures and said that public forums are an important part of their work. ?
