Members of the Madison community gathered at the City Council Building Tuesday to participate in a mock election intended to educate citizens on the changes brought about by the voter ID law and give city officials an idea of how to best run upcoming elections.
Under the voter ID law, voters will be required to provide a photo ID with their current address. If they are unable to do so, they will have to either acquire an ID before the end of the voting day or fill out a provisional ballot.
City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl organized the mock election to see how different methods of ID verification could be used to expedite the process of moving through a line of prospective voters. The line of participants extended out the door of the “voting room” and down the hall a considerable ways.
Depending on when voters arrived at the voting location, their identification was requested in different ways. Witzel-Behl moved certified election officials around to different positions, changing the number of officials present at different steps in the registration process every half hour.
The process of ballot-casting was timed at each stage of the process, Witzel-Behl said. When voters entered the line, they received a card with the time of arrival, and it was later stamped with the time they completed the process.
Pamela Abel, who participated in the mock election, said afterward that she had been an election judge in the past and that “it can be very confusing” to keep track of everyone who passes through the line.
Response to the mock election seemed generally positive, with the majority of participants, including Abel, reporting a smooth process.
The bulk of hang-ups, when they occurred, involved the use of provisional ballots for those who did not bring an appropriate form of identification, Witzel-Behl said.
Witzel-Behl said there appeared to be some miscommunication between election judges in the initial sign-in stage and those who instructed voters in filling out the provisional ballot. As a result of this, the line was held up periodically for brief periods of time.
She said there was also an issue with the practice of stamping the back of the provisional ballots with a number that corresponded to the voter’s name. One election judge expressed concern over the identification, saying that the votes were no longer confidential.
Ald. Scott Resnick, District 8, expressed his discontent with the voter ID law.
“Out of every vote in Wisconsin, there were under two dozen cases of voter fraud in the 2008 election,” Resnick said. “It’s a tactic to stop … students from voting in elections.”
Republicans supporting the bill are arguing it is not intended to block out voters, but rather to lower the amount of fraudulent voting statewide.
Critics claim that the enhanced regulation of voting in Wisconsin is a Republican maneuver intended to hinder students as well as minority and elderly voters, segments of the population who tend to vote for Democrats in Wisconsin.
“The city of Madison and the County of Dane will do everything possible for students to vote,” Resnick said.
