The state legislature’s joint rules committee says elections clerks can no longer assist voters if they make a mistake on an absentee ballot envelope.
Republican Chairman Representative Steve Nass says the Wisconsin Elections Commission is telling clerks to violate the law.
“The statutes are very clear that the clerk’s… if the certificate is flawed, the clerks have two choices. One is to send it back to the voter or set it aside and not count it.”
Democrat representative Gary Hebl of Sun Prairie says that’s just going to cause a lot of trouble for voters and clerks and could lead to more lawsuits.
“We just spent over a million dollars on some accusation of voter fraud. With no result.”
Clerks have been allowed to correct those ballots since the 2016 presidential election when former president Donald Trump first won in Wisconsin. Trump’s legal teams tried to get the state to toss out ballots that were corrected after he lost in 2020, and it’s become a point of contention in efforts to overturn the election.