https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/many-200000-wisconsin-residents-may-have-voted-absentee-without-having
Updated: November 8, 2020 - 12:05am
Administrative changes in Wisconsin election put tens of thousands of votes in question
From allowing clerks to fix spoiled ballots to permitting voters to escape ID rules, Wisconsin election officials took actions that were not authorized by legislature.
he Constitution allows only for state legislatures to change the ways elections are conducted, but memos show Wisconsin election supervisors made three substantial changes in 2020 that impact potentially tens of thousands of ballots in a battleground state that Joe Biden won by just 20,000.
Records reviewed by Just the News show that an executive branch agency called the Wisconsin Election Commission:
permitted local county election clerks to cure spoiled ballots by filling in missing addresses for witnesses even though state law invalidates any ballot without a witness address.
exempted as many as 200,000 citizens from voter ID rules by allowing them to claim the COVID-19 pandemic caused them to be "indefinitely confined."
failed to purge 130,000 names from outdated voter rolls as required by law.
The question now is whether those changes — in particular the instructions allowing clerks to cure ballots with missing information — will open the door for the courts to intervene as President Trump looks to contest ballot practices in multiple battleground states. The Trump campaign is seeking a recount in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin Statute 6.87(6d) stipulates that any ballot "may not be counted" if it is missing the address of the voter's witness. The Wisconsin Elections Commission in August issued a directive to voters that reaffirmed that statute: "If [the witness signature and address] is missing, your ballot will not be counted," the directive read.
Then in mid-October, the Wisconsin Elections Commission issued a directive to the state's county clerks appearing to give them the authority, in contravention of state law, to fix incomplete (or "spoiled") ballots that are missing witness signatures.
"Please note that the clerk should attempt to resolve any missing witness address information prior to Election Day if possible," the directive states, "and this can be done through reliable information (personal knowledge, voter registration information, through a phone call with the voter or witness). The witness does not need to appear to add a missing address."
Retired Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, told local radio station 1130 WISN this week that the statute is "very, very clear. If an absentee ballot does not have a witness address on it, it's not valid. That ballot is not valid." The Dan O'Donnell Show, meanwhile, claimed that the Wisconsin GOP "estimates that thousands of witness addresses may have been changed."