Democrat Gov. Tony Evers proposed a series of changes to Wisconsin’s election laws on Monday as part of his new budget proposal, and predictably, they do nothing to enhance the integrity of the state’s electoral process — quite the opposite.
Among the several changes included in Evers’ 2023-2025 budget proposal is the creation of an automatic voter registration system, which would use data from the Department of Transportation to auto-add “eligible” Wisconsinites to the state’s voter rolls. To accomplish this, the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which infamously broke numerous state laws in the 2020 election, would be granted $172,000 in taxpayer funds to “facilitate the initial registration of all eligible electors,” while another $349,000 would be doled out to the state’s DOT to “address one-time costs” associated with the new system, according to an Evers press release.
Despite proclamations from Democrats that automatic voter registration is a win for democracy, analyses of the system have shown it to be ripe for human error, such as the entering of incorrect voter information by inexperienced DMV officials and the registration of non-U.S. citizens. In fact, Evers has already advocated for the DOT to issue driver’s licenses to noncitizens, which would make erroneous noncitizen registrations even more likely if that push by the governor is successful in the future.
In 2019, Evers introduced a budget with a provision seeking to make noncitizens eligible for state-issued driver’s licenses, with the Democrat governor baselessly claiming such a policy would make Wisconsin’s “roads and … communities safer.”
