'The idea is to simplify': Wisconsin election officials vow major changes to absentee ballot system after chaotic spring vote

Election officials vow major changes to the state's absentee voting system after ballots failed to reach thousands of citizens in Wisconsin's spring election, throwing an already chaotic vote into further disarray amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The fixes “will save so much work for the clerk and hopefully save work for the voters,” Wisconsin Elections Commission spokesperson Reid Magney said.

The changes follow an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the PBS series FRONTLINE and Columbia Journalism Investigations that revealed numerous breakdowns in the state's absentee ballot system, including inadequate computer systems and misleading ballot information.

The investigation found that voters may have been misled by the state-run election website MyVote, where they could track the progress of their ballot, including the date their ballot was "sent." That date actually reflects the date the mailing label was generated, the investigation found, not the date a ballot was mailed. 

Milwaukee election officials said it often took another three to seven days to assemble and mail the ballot due to severe backlogs, leaving many voters unaware that their ballots were delayed. At the time, the officials called the inaccuracies an “improvement opportunity.” 

On Thursday, Magney said the commission will implement a new tracking system with the U.S. Postal Service to eliminate that issue and other mailing problems.

The new system will consist of a unique barcode on each envelope that identifies it as election mail. The envelopes will be scanned at each postal facility, allowing voters to track exactly where their ballot is in the mail system.

In addition, barcode tracking will enable officials to monitor whether ballots are sent to the wrong place, such as when three tubs of absentee ballots intended for Appleton and Oshkosh were discovered in a mail processing center the day after the election.

The new system "is definitely going to happen,” said Magney. “That’s something we are definitely putting in place.”

A report released by the commission May 15 concluded that a record-breaking number of ballot requests, mailing issues and technical glitches caused thousands of ballots to go missing, although it called the absentee voting process as a whole an “overwhelming success."

Of the absentee ballots delivered to voters, about 1 in 11 were never returned to clerks, a figure consistent with previous elections, according to the report.

So far, Wisconsin has been the only state to conduct a statewide election while residents were under a stay-at-home order due to the pandemic.  

Roughly 1.2 million voters cast an absentee ballot in the April 7 election, representing about two-thirds of all ballots cast. Previous elections saw only 4% to 9% of ballots cast absentee by mail.   

'Not a success for voters'

Shauntay Nelson, the Wisconsin state director of All Voting is Local, an advocacy group that works to reduce barriers to voting, called the spring election a "debacle." 

"I don't consider the absentee ballot request process a success," Nelson said. "I know that it was not a success for voters, and because it wasn't a success for voters, it was not a success." 

Nelson said she supports the addition of barcode tracking features so voters can make alternative plans if their ballot looks like it will be late. She also called on election officials and lawmakers to make further changes, such as mailing absentee ballot applications to all registered voters.

Lawmakers and election officials are currently debating that proposal, which is also the subject of a sweeping federal lawsuit filed Monday. 

"No one was prepared to hold an election during a pandemic," Nelson said. "The beauty of it is that we can make some changes coming into November."

The elections commission is making a host of other changes to the state’s labor-intensive and largely manual absentee ballot request process.

For one, Magney said ballot applications will be changed to collect contact information for the voter, such as their email address or phone number. 

At the time of the April 7 election, the application only asked for voters’ addresses, meaning that clerks were not able to easily contact voters to inform them about problems with their request. As a result, some people did not know that their absentee ballot applications were pending or rejected.

“The clerk can certainly write back to the person or try to look them up in the phone book, but if they can’t find them, they just have to send them a letter,” Magney said. 

In addition, the state will move away from tracking absentee ballot applications via email.

Currently, each application submitted through MyVote is converted into an email. Municipal clerks are in charge of opening each email, verifying the attached photo ID, manually entering the application information into the voter registration database and printing the mailing labels.

The process hindered clerks who had to individually open thousands of emails and attached photos, some of which were so large that they bogged down the entire system.

Madison City Clerk Maribel Witzel-Behl told reporters in April that the system only began working quickly after 10 p.m. She said staffers worked 110-hour weeks in an attempt to reduce the backlog. 

“You reach a point of working so many hours, your eyes glaze over and you risk making an error,” she said. 

Simplifying the system

Magney said programmers are now building a way for clerks to view ballot applications, verify photo IDs and approve requests within the MyVote system itself. 

“One clerk described more than a dozen steps that they needed to take under the current system,” Magney said. “And the idea is to simplify that to a couple of clicks.”

Election officials are under a tight deadline to get the changes in place for the partisan primary on Aug. 11 and the all-important general election on Nov. 3. Officials anticipate the presidential election will see higher turnout and more demand for absentee ballots, even if the coronavirus pandemic begins to subside.

Changes will be tested with both clerks and voters to gather feedback before launching, Magney said. 

“Our development staff is working very hard on this now, and we certainly want to get as much of this in place in time for the Aug. 11 partisan primary,” Magney said. “We’ll be able to get that deployed and then have time to see how it’s working and potentially make adjustments to it.”

Columbia Journalism Investigations is an investigative unit at Columbia Journalism School in New York.