Clerks give thumbs down to Republican plan to move 2020 presidential primary

Patrick Marley | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

MADISON - A Republican proposal to move Wisconsin's presidential primary in 2020 would create headaches for election workers, create confusion for voters and may be all but impossible to implement, city and county clerks say.

GOP lawmakers are considering the election change to improve conservative Justice Daniel Kelly's chances of winning his bid to remain on the state Supreme Court. The plan would cost taxpayers millions of dollars and would require voters to go to the polls three times in the spring of 2020 — likely in February, March and April.

"The logistics of it is not easy to do at all," said Kelly Michaels, who is Brookfield's city clerk and president of the Wisconsin Municipal Clerks Association.

"Our feedback (to lawmakers) is, no, it's not a good idea."

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Clerks would need to process absentee ballots for different elections at the same time, which would run the risk that some ballots would get in the wrong batch and not get counted, clerks said in interviews.

First-time voters cast their ballots First-time voters in the Milwaukee area talk about casting their ballots.

Poll workers would have to be persuaded to work an extra election, which could be difficult when recruiting poll workers is already hard. Some clerks would need to buy more memory cards for their voting machines because they would need to preserve results for one election while programming their machines for a different election.

And voters could wind up at the polls to vote in one election only to discover a different one was being held, clerks said.

"From my perspective, it would be virtually impossible for any county clerk to do all we need to get ready for an election in that scenario," outgoing Waukesha County Clerk Kathleen Novack said of adding a March election in 2020.

"There isn't anyone among the 72 county clerks who thinks it even has a shred of a possibility to be done logistically."

Republicans who control the Legislature are considering changing the date of the presidential primary because they are concerned there will be a surge of Democratic turnout for it that will hurt Kelly's chances in the Supreme Court race. Walker appointed Kelly to the high court in 2016 and he will have to stand for election in 2020.

Lawmakers are discussing changes to the election schedule as part of a lame-duck session they want to hold between now and Jan. 7, when Democrat Tony Evers will replace outgoing Republican Gov. Scott Walker. That session could also include measures to limit Evers' power and add more Republican appointees to state boards so Evers would have less control of them.

Walker, who would need to sign off on any bills passed during the lame-duck session, last week said he was open to changing the election schedule and other proposals GOP lawmakers are considering.

As it stands now, two elections are planned for the spring of 2020 — in February (when the primary for state Supreme Court and local offices would be held) and April (when the general election for those offices and the presidential primary would be held). Republican lawmakers want to move up the presidential primary from April to March, creating the third election.

Aides to Walker, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) did not say whether the concerns of the clerks would influence their proposal to change when the 2020 presidential primary is held.

The 2016 presidential primary cost about $6.8 million, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Adding an extra election in 2020 could cost a similar amount.

Fond du Lac County Clerk Lisa Freiberg said she struggles to find election workers and believes it would be hard to get them to work three elections in the spring of 2020. Voters, too, would face challenges, she said.

"It would definitely cause voter confusion," said Freiberg, the president of the Wisconsin County Clerks Association.

Absentee ballots for the March and April elections would be available to voters at the same time. Clerks could use different colored envelopes for the two elections, but some voters might put the wrong ballots in the envelopes, she said.

"I wouldn't even know how to begin to try to explain this to everyone," she said.

U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, a Madison Democrat, on Monday told reporters he was urging Vos not to change the election schedule.

"You don't change elections because you may not like the outcome, right?" Pocan said. "How much more ... third-world country can you get?"

Republicans have downplayed the significance of their plans for a lame-duck session, saying they don't believe they are going as far as Democrats did in 2010, when they tried to approve labor contracts for state employees just before Walker was sworn in as governor. That attempt failed when two Democratic senators declined to go along with the plan.

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