Wisconsin Republicans Reviving a Plan Tightening Rules on Absentee Ballots in Nursing Homes

Thursday, November 2nd, 2023 -- 10:00 AM

(Anya van Wagtendonk, Wisconsin Public Radio) Republican lawmakers are reviving a plan that would tighten rules around how election officials collect absentee ballots from nursing homes and care facilities, a response to a practice that came under scrutiny during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and Wisconsin's 2020 elections.

The proposal, one of a slate of Republican-authored election bills that received public hearings on Tuesday, would continue to allow election officials to send voting deputies into care facilities to help people who cannot vote in person.

But the measure would require those meetings to be arranged at certain times and for residents' relatives to be notified. The bill would also require the Elections Commission to change a person's voting status to inactive within two business days if they have been deemed incompetent to vote.

The plan would define "incompetent" as a person who cannot understand what it means to cast a ballot or who is under guardianship. The WEC would also mark them as ineligible to vote, and notify both the individual and the clerk in their locality.

"Every session we work on bills to protect people from being exploited financially, but those protections should be extended to protect their rights during elections," said Rep. Joel Kitchens, R-Sturgeon Bay, the bill's co-author, at a hearing of the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections.

Nursing home voting became a lynchpin of accusations of impropriety in Wisconsin's 2020 elections, when the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, or WEC, voted that special voting deputies would not be able to enter those facilities because of COVID-19 concerns.

Former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who was hired by Assembly Republicans to investigate the 2020 election, claimed in his report that the WEC rule change led to the emergence of coerced votes from nursing home residents.

Former President Donald Trump later alleged, without evidence, that those practices led to "thousands and thousands and thousands of crooked votes." Those claims did not stand up to multiple investigations and court challenges.

Last year, Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a shorter version of this proposal that only regulated the visits of the voting deputies, but did not include the measures about incompetency. Janet Zander, the advocacy and public policy coordinator for the Greater Wisconsin Agency on Aging Resources, testified that the requirement to notify residents' relatives about their absentee voting practices violated their privacy rights.

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