While proponents of a Wisconsin absentee ballot processing bill hail it as a cure for long delays in election night vote counting, the measure would sacrifice security for speed, a Wisconsin state election integrity hawk asserts.
State Rep. Janel Brandtjen, R-Menomonee Falls, says Senate Bill 685, which would allow local election clerks to begin processing absentee ballots the day before an election, has been painted as a bipartisan panacea to a problem that has particularly plagued election nights in Milwaukee: slow vote returns.
“The idea that’s being presented is not truthful,” Brandtjen said. “This bill trades speed for security. It will lead to many more central counts in the state of Wisconsin, with almost no chain of custody on those ballots.”
The Senate Committee on Shared Revenue, Elections, and Consumer Protection held a hearing on the bill Tuesday. The measure includes other election law provisions, but it’s the ballot processing portion of the bill that most concerns opponents.
Its Assembly version, AB 567, passed last month with Brandtjen and a handful of Republicans voting against it — warning their sanguine colleagues that the proposal could aid and abet election cheats in compromising election integrity.
But the bill’s authors insist the opposite is true, that the so-called “Monday Processing Bill” would go a long way to allay the kind of fair election doubts that surfaced in the hotly contested 2020 presidential election.
Clerks would be able to verify voter eligibility and remove absentee ballots from their envelopes in preparation for the Election Day
