In a Monday post to his social media platform Truth Social, President Donald Trump called for the removal of mail-in ballots and vote tabulation machines, claiming they lead to “massive” voter fraud and saying elections can “never be honest” with mail-in voting.
In Wisconsin, mail-in voting was first established in 1862. More than 400,000 people in the state voted by mail in the 2022 midterm election.
Rep. Dave Maxey, R – New Berlin, chairs the state Legislature’s Committee on Campaigns and Elections. When speaking with WPR’s “Wisconsin Today,” he didn’t say whether or not he would support an end to the practice, but expressed concerns and a preference for in-person voting.
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“To me, mail-in voting is a lot like a self-checkout,” Maxey said. “Dishonest people are going to do dishonest things and it just gives them a greater ability to do that.”
Fellow committee member Rep. Lee Snodgrass, D – Appleton, said mail-in voting is something that should be allowed for all voters.
“Not all voters have the ability to go on Election Day,” Snodgrass said. “Work, family obligations, illness, etc. I often vote early in person because on Election Day, I’m busy talking to voters. So making sure that we still have the ability to vote early by mail or dropping it off at your clerk’s office or a designated ballot drop box location is quite simply democratic.”
In the same Truth Social post, President Trump decried the use of voting machines, calling them “highly inaccurate.” An audit of the November election from the Wisconsin Elections Commission in March found no election machine errors in counting Wisconsin votes in the 2024 presidential election.
Earlier this month, an investigation from the commission found 193 votes in Madison were uncounted in the November election. In an email obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the commission called the issues in Madison partially “structural” in nature. The commission has ordered the city to make changes in light of the uncounted absentee ballots.
“When we have irregularities, with 193 votes not being counted in Madison, where, in another case where absentee mail forms were sent out with duplicate ballots or multiple ballots … I certainly understand why people question the integrity of an election when things like that occur,” Rep. Maxey said.
The city’s 193 untallied ballots would not have changed the outcome of any race or referendum.
The lawmakers both see a need for a change in how absentee ballots are counted. Snodgrass said she supported previous legislation which would allow earlier processing of those ballots. She said early processing would ideally allow unofficial election results on election night instead of early morning hours.
Maxey agreed, saying early processing could allow clerks to correct ballots further in advance of Election Day and prevent the phenomenon of “ballot dumps,” where a large number of votes are reported at once — often in the early hours of the morning.
“At the end of the day,” Maxey said, “we need those results to come in much earlier than they have been.”
