The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin Education Fund thanks Wisconsin’s election officials, from the Government Accountability Board (GAB) to our clerks to the citizens who worked at our polls, for a smooth election.
The success of Tuesday’s election was due in large part to months – even years – of meticulous planning and preparation on the state, county and local levels, including such services for voters as early voting and the GAB’s new Voter Public Access website (www.lwvwi.org). This preparation made the election a positive experience for most long-time and first-time voters alike.
Credit is due also to our policy makers who in the past couple of years have updated our state election law and procedural rules in a manner that safeguards voting rights and ensures a clean election. In particular, the state’s new rules for election observers affirmed their important role in ensuring a transparent election while maintaining an orderly process that respects the rights of voters and poll workers.
Of course, such a massive public project as an election is bound to have at least a few glitches.
Some citizens had to wait a long time to vote. At a couple of sites, voters received the wrong ballot, and some polling places had to order more ballots. Several ballot scanning machines jammed early in the day.
Many people who believed – or knew – their names should have been on the poll list found they had to re-register at the poll.
Thank goodness we can do that in Wisconsin!
However, our election officials were well-prepared to respond to these issues. Even in the case of a bomb threat, officials were able to move the polling place to another site with minimal inconvenience for voters.
Our experience this fall with the new voter registration database as well as with increased early and absentee voting, offers an opportunity to study how best to accommodate new requirements and trends for voting.
T
he League looks forward to working with policy makers and election officials to continue to improve our election in Wisconsin.
For now, we can only be grateful to the many election officials, poll workers, election observers and voters who helped make democracy work in Wisconsin.
Andrea Kaminski is the executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin Education Fund.
