A judge in Wisconsin on Jan. 2 ruled that state election clerks can accept absentee ballots that contain errors, including missing portions of witness addresses.
The Dane County Circuit Court judge ruled in favor of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin in its lawsuit to clarify voting protections for voters whose absentee ballots have minor errors in listing their witnesses’ addresses.
The ruling means that absentee ballots with certain technical witness address defects won’t be rejected in future elections, the league said in a statement.
The judge wrote that the Constitution of Wisconsin and state statutes indicate that a person can vote if they’re a U.S. citizen aged 18 or older, have resided in the election district for 28 days before an election, and aren’t a convicted felon.
“By contrast, and as should be clear by now, an absentee ballot cannot be rejected for trivial defects, such as a missing ZIP code for the witness’s address,” the judge’s order reads. “After all, a witness’s address says nothing about the voter’s citizenship, age, or residency. Nor does it say anything about whether the voter has been disenfranchised due to a felony conviction or adjudicated incompetent to vote. The address is simply not material to determining the eligibility of a voter.”
“Election clerks are not automatons, and it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to remove all subjectivity from a process requiring thousands of election workers to review hundreds of thousands of ballots. For better or worse, our elections are administered by humans and, as such, there will always be some level of subjectivity in administering election statutes. This does not make such statutes unconstitutional or unworkable,” the judge wrote.
The lawsuit filed by the League of Women Voters, a left-leaning organization based in Washington, argued that rejecting absentee ballots for the omission of certain witness address components violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits denying the right to vote based on an error that has no material bearing on determining voting eligibility.
“All voters deserve to have their votes counted regardless of whether they vote in person or absentee,” Debra Cronmiller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, said in a statement after the ruling was handed down.
“Small errors or omissions on the absentee certificate envelope should not prevent voters from exercising their constitutional rights.”
The Wisconsin Elections Commission and clerks in Green Bay, Racine, and Madison were named as defendants in the lawsuit. The Republican-led Assembly and Senate also joined the case and sought to have the suit dismissed.
After Republicans intervened in the lawsuit, the Republican National Committee and the state GOP in August described the legal challenge as a Democrat attempt to undermine state elections.
“Despite the schemes of overtly far-left groups like Law Forward and the Elias Group, the Republican Party of Wisconsin will continue to ensure Wisconsin voters have full confidence in our elections,” Republican Party of Wisconsin Chairman Brian Schimming said in a statement at the time.
“While Democrats attempt to undo common sense voting measures like requiring witness signatures on absentee ballots, we will continue to fight back against Democrat efforts to undermine safeguards every step of the way.
“Having safeguards in our elections should be a bipartisan issue; Wisconsinites in every corner of the state want fair and transparent elections.”
“This is kind of the minutia of how elections are run, so when we see Democrats put millions of dollars into these very convoluted suits, trying to rewrite the rule book, you kind of have to take a step back—why are they doing that, and how can we stop them?”
Previously, the elections commission stated in late 2022 that an absentee ballot “address” must include the street name, number, and municipality, the Journal Sentinel reported.
A judge in 2022 also ruled that election commission guidance allowing election clerks to fill in missing information on a witness certification for absentee ballots was illegal and must be rescinded.
