Lawsuit Could End Up Purging 234,000 From Wisconsin Voter Rolls

MILWAUKEE, WI — Up to 230,000 voters currently on Wisconsin's voter rolls are a bone of contention between state officials who say they should stay until 2021, and a conservative watchdog group who says they should be removed this fall.

Earlier this month, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty filed a lawsuit in Ozaukee County Circuit Court, claiming the Wisconsin Election Commission would violate state election laws if they failed remove residents from state voter rolls if residents fail to update their information within 30 days of moving.

If the Institute wins their lawsuit, the result could mean that about 230,000 Wisconsin residents will be purged from state voter rolls. Anyone who was purged would have to re-register before they could vote again.

“The Wisconsin Election Commission was warned in October that they were acting contrary to state law by allowing voter registrations at old addresses to remain active beyond 30 days. Instead of reversing course, the Wisconsin Election Commission has stubbornly doubled down," Institute President and General Counsel Rick Esenberg said, "This lawsuit is about accountability, the rule of law, and clean and fair elections.”

The Wisconsin Election Commission sent out letters to the roughly 230,000 voters in early October, asking them to update their information to stay on the state voter rolls. “We want voters to be prepared for 2020,” Meagan Wolfe, Wisconsin’s chief elections official said at the time. “This mailing is designed to help people who may have moved within Wisconsin make sure they’re ready to vote next year. It will not keep anyone eligible from voting.”

According to the Wisconsin Election Commission, the 2019 mailing "will be different than previous mailings," Wolfe said.“We learned some important lessons from our first movers mailing in 2017, and our goal is to make this new mailing simple for voters to use.”

Back in 2017, election officials identified about 340,000 people who moved, and sent them a similar mailing. They learned after-the-fact that many of them never actually moved, according to an earlier JSOnline report.

According to a recent JSOnline report, Wisconsin officials said the 30-day requirement does not apply because they lack reliable information about which people have actually moved. State officials said it was their intention to delay any voter roll purging until after the April 2021 Spring Election.