Ballot Box. MWC file photo.
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Wisconsin has a voter ID law. On Election Day, you’ll be asked to prove your identity. It’s most often done by showing your drivers license, a passport, or a government identification card with your picture on it.
But there is a loophole in Wisconsin’s voter ID law that’s big enough to drive a truck through. If you are permanently incapacitated, you can have a ballot mailed to you – no ID required. I imagine that permanently incapacitation was intended for an old lady in a nursing home. She no longer drives and has trouble getting out-and-about. If she wishes to vote, our voter ID law allows her to do so.
But then came a court ruling about the definition of permanently capacitated. And the court ruled that it’s up to individual voters to decide for themselves if they are or aren’t incapacitated. No doctors note, no verification required. A person could literally rollerblade to their clerk’s office, go inside and claim to be permanently incapacitated, and then ride their motorcycle back home.
How big of a loophole is it? Well, until the courts ruled on that being incapacitated is whatever you made it out to be, about 10,000 people around the state claimed incapacitated status. After the court ruling, more than 160,000 thousand Wisconsinites claimed to be incapacitated. That’s a lot of people who get ballots without showing ID. That’s ID-less voting on the scale of eight times Joe Biden’s margin of in Wisconsin in 2020.
Some county clerks have been mailing out postcards asking about voters permanently incapacitated status. Have some of these voters died? Or moved away? Permanently incapacitated status is not being verified in Wisconsin’s largest liberal cities, Madison and Milwaukee. Voters there, or their family members or whoever picks up their mail, will have ballots sent to them, without ID, in perpetuity.
In what’s going to be a very close election, voter integrity matters. It is maddening that there’s such a glaring work-around for our state’s voter ID law.
Chris Conley
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