Ballot war games from Wisconsin - watch what the R’s are contesting.
The state’s two most powerful Republican lawmakers sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Madison City Clerk’s Office on Friday ahead of a ballot collection event to be held in city parks Saturday, calling the effort “illegal” and warning the ballots would be challenged in court and potentially invalidated.
“The threat that this procedure poses to ballot integrity is manifestly obvious,” Misha Tseytlin, former state solicitor general, wrote on behalf of Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester.
City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl defended the program Friday, disputing conservative criticism that the event constitutes either illegal ballot harvesting or illegal early voting, which otherwise can’t start until about two weeks before the Nov. 3 election. The cease-and-desist letter does not affect the event and it will continue as planned, she said.
She noted the program involves city poll workers, who are deputized to receive ballots. Ballot harvesting involves the illegal collection of ballots by non-poll workers to be delivered to election officials or ballot boxes. The event also does not amount to early voting because ballots will not be provided to voters who come out. The poll workers will be receiving ballots from those who requested and received absentee ballots.
Conservative lawyer Rick Esenberg, whose law firm has taken up several GOP-supported causes, said in an interview Friday he didn’t plan on challenging the event in court unless it involved non-poll workers or involved distributing ballots.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission received a number of calls and emails conveying concern, but as of Friday evening the WEC had not received a formal complaint about the event, spokesman Reid Magney said.
Nonetheless, Vos and Fitzgerald questioned its legality and security.
“Poll workers will attempt to collect absentee ballots at over 200 unsecured, outdoor locations, and only deliver these ballots to the City Clerk’s Office at the end of the six-hour campaign,” Tseytlin, of the law firm Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders, wrote in the letter to Witzel-Behl. “There could be no justification for this ad hoc, unsecure, and unlawful approach that your campaign appears to be creating.”
The statutes cited in the cease-and-desist letter state the ballots are to be returned to the clerk’s office, said Michael Haas, Madison city attorney and former staff council for the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
“In this case they’re to be dropped off to sworn election officials,” he said.
Republican Party officials and election observers were invited to participate in the event to make sure proper procedures are followed, as long as they follow predetermined guidelines such as maintaining 6 feet of distance from voters as they interact with poll workers.
“It’s hard to see this as anything but an attempt to discourage people from participating in the election,” Haas said.