Rep. Amaad Rivera-Wagner (D-Green Bay) introduced a set of bills Wednesday to protect election workers, empower young voters and expand local voting options through ranked-choice elections, according to WisPolitics.
Aimed at increasing youth participation through voting education and preregistration for 16 and 17-year-olds, the package is a response toward harassment and misinformation that plagued Green Bay after the 2020 election, Rivera-Wagner said.
“My common goal is participation,” Rivera-Wagner said. “And we’ve seen more so than any recent time in history how sometimes democracy feels scary — we want to make sure that that changes.”
The package will address participation among young voters, ensuring voter education is available for middle and high school students to learn about the voting process and democracy, Rivera-Wagner said.
Educating teens about the voting process can take the fear out of participating in democracy surrounding today’s tense political climate, Rivera-Wagner said.
Beyond preparing young voters, the legislation targets election-worker safety and expands how local elections can be run, according to Rivera-Wagner.
“If we want to encourage diverse populations to participate, they have to trust the elections. And what I mean by trust is that their vote is going to matter,” Rivera-Wagner said. “That means ensuring the people who conduct them are protected.”
The first bill in the package would criminalize harassment of election workers, while the second would permit counties to adopt ranked-choice voting in nonpartisan elections, Rivera-Wagner said.
The proposal to protect election workers follows a series of harassment incidents in Green Bay after the 2020 presidential election, when poll workers and city staff reported being stalked and threatened, according to Rivera-Wagner.
“We had local incidents where election workers and people were stalked and harassed to the point of pressing charges,” Rivera-Wagner said.
In addition to safety for election officials and poll workers, the package aims to expand local voting options through ranked choice.
According to Rivera-Wagner, reforms like ranked choice voting are methods to decrease political polarization on the ballot and increase voting participation.
“Reforms like ranked choice voting are ways to turn down the temperature of our electoral politics and turn up participation,” River-Wagner said.
Ranked choice voting is heavily debated throughout the state and is a method where the voter ranks candidates based on their most to least favorite, according to PBS Wisconsin.
This type of voting could help reduce the partisan gridlock that has defined state politics in recent years, offering voters more consensus-driven outcomes and a path toward a less polarized political climate, Rivera-Wagner said.
“The vision is very simple. We should be able to elect the leaders that align with our values and views, and the person that gets the most votes should be able to win that election,” Rivera-Wagner said.
With Wisconsin ranking near the bottom nationally for voting accessibility, ranked-choice voting would give residents a way to cast ballots that better reflect their values and reduce extreme polarization, Rivera-Wagner said.
With a deeply polarized nation, the need to set aside divisions and prioritize progress in local communities is essential, according to Rivera-Wagner.
“My ideal Wisconsin is one where every legal vote gets counted and every person that wants to participate can vote smoothly,” Rivera-Wagner said. “I think that should be the hope for elections this year, next year, the next five years and the next 100 years.”
