State Senate Republicans have introduced more than a dozen bills relating to how Wisconsin conducts elections.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) said he wasn’t consulted, but that he sees the need. “The idea that we want to go look and say ‘how do we make sure that every possible person who wants to vote in this state does it lawfully’ should be something that has broad, bipartisan unanimous support,” Vos said on Tuesday. “But that’s the challenge that we have, that some people people seem to think that their side benefits from fraudulent and unlawful voting.”
Senator Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) said the ten measures she introduced Wednesday with Senator Duey Stroebel (R- Saukville) “will restore trust and make sure our elections are handled fairly for everyone.”
Strobel, who introduced another six bills on Tuesday, said the measures “will restore trust and make sure our elections are handled fairly for everyone.”
One bill would limit ballot drop boxes to election clerk offices. Another would prohibit local election officials from completing missing information on certification envelopes returned by voters that contain absentee ballots, while yet another would prohibit those absentee ballot certification envelopes to be counted as a written request for a ballot.
All of the measures are a response to President Donald Trump’s loss in Wisconsin in the 2020 election.
Jay Heck, Executive Director with Common Cause in Wisconsin, said the legislation is premised on the lie that the 2020 presidential election was somehow stolen.
“They’re not based on any evidence that there was any problem, or certainly any malfeasance or fraud,” Heck said. He added that it would be better if Republican lawmakers “just leveled with voters and told them the truth, rather than trying to make it more difficult for more Wisconsinites to be able to vote.”
Vos noted that in addition to the legislation, the Legislative Audit Bureau is conducting an audit of the state’s election practices. “We know that there were unlawfully cast ballots in the last election cycle.” he said. “That is an absolute positive fact.”