A bill to limit in-person absentee voting to the same weekday hours across Wisconsin will ensure fairness for all the state’s residents, the bill’s sponsor said on Thursday.
The bill, authored by state Rep. Duey Stroebel, R-Saukeville, would limit in-person absentee voting to the same hours for the entire state: from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday. Stroebel said he introduced the bill in response to the decision by municipalities, including the cities of Madison and Milwaukee, to expand their hours to late evenings and weekends in the last election.
"If you live in Rhinelander or Baraboo or Eau Claire or wherever, the residents of those communities don’t have that ability," Stroebel said.
He compared Madison and Milwaukee’s early-voting extensions, hypothetically, to other communities deciding to hold Election Day on both Monday and Tuesday.
"That’s not fair," he said. "That’s what standards in elections are all about."
Stroebel said standards will ensure statewide equality for smaller communities that couldn’t staff the extended and weekend hours that cities like Madison and Milwaukee offered during recent elections.
"What you create in that regard is two classes of voters," he said. "Those that do have that ability, and those that don’t have that ability."
However, smaller communities, which often lack full-time clerks, wouldn't be required to remain open for the entirety of the listed hours, Stroebel said. Those hours were a maximum, not a minimum.
"There’s over 1,800 voting municipalities in the state of Wisconsin that conduct elections. And of that, a person can count on one hand the municipalities that would not comply with the provisions of this bill," he said.
When asked why weekend hours couldn’t be included for workers who might not be able to get to their clerk’s office on weekdays, Stroebel said that would be too much.
"Unless you’re going to have voting 24-7 … it’s not possible," he said. "We need a standard that has a window that’s workable statewide."
Clerks around the state have expressed concerns about long lines in Milwaukee and other large municipalities. In addition, they’ve said, the provision that voters can make appointments to vote with their city, town, or village clerk would overburden clerks that already work 40-hour weeks.
But Stroebel said the question of long lines wasn’t an argument against uniform hours.
"It’s always up to local municipalities to have sufficient facilities and resources that are available to meet the needs of the voting public," he said. "If there’s long lines and so on, they need to adequately staff those facilities so those things don’t occur."
