Wisconsin Voter Purge Fight Intensifies: Lawsuit Filed

MILWAUKEE, WI — Wisconsin as a battleground state in the 2020 election is a fact that has been well-established. Now, two sides are fighting over about the status of about 230,000 registered voters in the state.

One side wants to purge them from the state's voter rolls, saying they failed to update their address after moving - as required by state law. The other side has filed a countersuit in federal court, saying an imminent purge violates their constitutional right to due process.

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.

Wisconsin officials answered back, saying the 30-day requirement did not apply because they lack reliable information about which people have actually moved. Some people who have not moved actually received "moving" letters from the state, officials said. Election officials say they want to delay any voter roll purging until after the April 2021 Spring Election.

On Friday, Ozaukee County Circuit Court judge Paul Malloy issued an order that requires the Wisconsin Election Commission to remove the aforementioned voter registrations on the basis of state law.

"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," Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty President and General Counsel Rick Esenberg said, "This lawsuit is about accountability, the rule of law, and clean and fair elections."

Letters Sent In October

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 would "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.

Another Lawsuit Filed

On Tuesday, the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin and two registered Wisconsin voters filed a lawsuit in federal court, claiming the purge of nearly 230,000 registered voters violates the U.S. Constitution. You can view that lawsuit here.

In their lawsuit, the League alleges that letters sent by the Wisconsin Elections Commission did not provide enough notice of what voters needed to do to remain on the rolls.

The federal lawsuit asks a federal judge to stop Malloy's order to immediately remove the registrations of 234,000 Wisconsin voters who may have moved, and require the Wisconsin Elections Commission to send new notices to the affected voters informing them of the commission’s plans to remove them from voter rolls.

Eligible Voters Say They Were Threatened With Purge

This week, Milwaukee City Sixth District Alderwoman Milele A. Coggs raised concerns that at least one of her constituents was at risk of being unduly removed from the voter rolls. One person, she said, who has been voting from the same address for 50 years, received the State commission’s letter incorrectly identifying her as having moved residences.

“I won’t stand by while voters in my district are being wrongfully denied of their most fundamental right to be heard in our democracy,” Coggs said. “We won’t allow this backwards attempt to roll back voting rights to be swept under the rug. Our communities are coming together to resist this order and fight to make our voices heard.”

Local election officials are also warning that the plans to remove names from the voting rolls would unfairly impact many voters who should still be on the rolls, not only in Milwaukee and Madison but across the state.

Stevens Point City Clerk Paul Piotrowski noted that the response to the state’s voter mailing in his city indicated that many voters targeted by the purge remain eligible to vote at their current addresses.

Piotrowski said that 1,600 mailers were sent to voters in Stevens Point to confirm their registration address. More than 1,000 people did not respond to the mailer; many of those voters would likely still be eligible to vote at their current address. Furthermore, of the 500 responses the city received from voters, an additional ten percent of those voters also had not changed their address.

Local Leaders Fighting Purge

In Milwaukee, a group led by local officials and labor leaders have plans to bring a raft of resolutions before the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors and the City Common Council in order to fight the voter roll purge.

The resolutions would direct the County Clerk and both the City and County Election Commissions to preserve a copy of any voter registration list prior to a potential purge in the event that it can be fully restored if the judge’s order is overturned.

Organizers say the resolutions would also direct the Election Commissions to take all legal actions necessary to protect the voting rights of Milwaukee City and County residents who might be purged under the judge’s order.

Battleground State In Waiting

This week, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders took to Twitter to pillory officials not only in Wisconsin, but also in Georgia over the battle for registered voters. On Dec. 18, Sanders wrote: "Republicans in Wisconsin and Georgia have purged a combined half a million Americans from their voting rolls, because they are too cowardly to engage in free, fair and open elections. That is outrageous."

Whoever wins will undoubtedly move the needle among Wisconsin voters in 2020. Already considered a battleground state, Wisconsin has oscillated between who they like most for President.

In a Dec. 12 Marquette Poll pertaining to the 2020 Presidential election, each of three Democratic presidential hopefuls, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren are polling competitively with President Donald Trump.

Here's are the head-to-head polling numbers as reported on Dec. 12 by the Marquette University Law School's poll: