MADISON, WI (WSAU) — Nearly 30 of Wisconsin’s 72 County Clerks have come out against a 2proposal to hold separate primary elections in 2020 for the Presidental and Congressional races and a seat on the state Supreme Court.
In a statement released this week, the Clerks said ” Election software is easily able to handle the programming of the partisan/nonpartisan combination. From a voter standpoint, the ballot has dedicated instructions for each section. Importantly, this consolidated ballot also condenses the many costs and complicated procedures of administering an election from the creation of the ballot to the canvassing of the last ward.”
Republicans say they’d like to keep the Supreme Court election separate from the Presidential Primary because they feel it wouldn’t be appropriate to tie it to such a charged partisan election.
The statement went on to add “Elections require weeks of intense work by all levels of government. Municipal clerks are charged with hiring and training poll workers (who would need to be available to work, yet, another election), administering absentee balloting, including the increasingly popular in-person absentee, registering voters, securing polling locations, holding a public test of voting equipment, publishing many election notices and the list goes on. Moreover, voter registration deadlines, absentee ballot deadlines, UOCAVA (military and overseas) absentee ballot deadlines are all election-specific deadlines. Having a March and April election with intersecting deadlines would be highly confusing to voters and needlessly onerous for Wisconsin’s 1,852 municipal clerks.”
Additionally, the Clerks said some counties may not have the resources to hire additional staff that would be required to prepare for and tabulate two spring elections. The statewide cost of a spring election is around $7 million, and adding another one would cost the state even more according to the release.
The statement was signed by the County Clerks of Lincoln, Langlade, Clark, and Ashland counties. Other clerks putting their names on the statement came from Door, Milwaukee, La Crosse, and Eau Claire counties.
