2 statewide referendum questions on April 2 ballot to amend state constitution
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By LeAnn R.Ralph
COLFAX — Two statewide referendum questions will be on the April 2 ballot that, if approved, would change the Wisconsin Constitution regarding election funding and election workers.
Question 1 is related to election funding.
The question on the ballot reads: “Use of private funds in election administration. Shall section 7 (1) of article III of the constitution be created to provide that private donations and grants may not be applied for, accepted, expended, or used in connection with the conduct of any primary, election or referendum?”
A “yes” vote would change the Wisconsin Constitution to include the provision, while a “no” vote would not change the constitution.
Grant money
In 2020, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, donated $350 million to the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) because they wanted to help municipalities with extra costs related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
CTCL already existed as an established non-profit organization based in Chicago when the $350 million donation was made.
According to the Center for Tech and Civic Life’s mission statement on the organization’s website, “We connect Americans with the information they need to become and remain civically engaged, and ensure that our elections are more professional, inclusive, and secure.”
The CTCL mission sounds similar to the mission of Keep Our Republic which has a bi-partisan advisory board that includes former Wisconsin Republican Governor Tommy Thompson, former state Senator Kathy Bernier (R-Chippewa Falls), former Pennsylvania Republican Governor and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, former House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt (D-MO), former Senator Tim Wirth (D-CO), former Senator Gary Hart (D-CO) as well as others.
According to the Keep Our Republic website, “Founded in 2020, Keep Our Republic is a non-partisan civic education organization with a unique focus on the unconventional threats facing our election system, and on ways to help strengthen trust in our electoral system.”
Bernier served as the Chippewa County clerk before becoming elected as a state senator and was chair of the Wisconsin Senate’s election committee. She did not run for re-election in 2022.
Bernier did not agree with the claims of election irregularities and that the 2020 election was stolen, and according to an article in the Milwaukee Journal published in June of 2023, had been targeted by the Republican Party because she disagreed with the notion that there was widespread voter fraud and other claims about the 2020 election.
COVID-19
More than 200 communities in Wisconsin shared $10.6 million in grant money distributed by CTCL in 2020 to help with elections during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Communities used the grant money for poll worker recruitment, hazard pay and training; for the renting of larger polling places so people could stay six feet apart; for temporary staffing support; for drive-through voting; to provide personal protective equipment for poll workers; and for providing non-partisan voter education, according to various news reports.
The COVID-19 virus was spreading through the population with the original variant in 2020, and there was little immunity to the virus in the population and no vaccine.
To date, more than 1.2 million Americans have died from the COVID-19 virus, according to news reports.
In 2020, when the pandemic first started, many municipalities had difficulty finding people willing to serve as poll workers, and in some instances, clerks quit or threatened to quit because of the stress of trying to run the elections with no poll workers or only a few poll workers.
Objections
Wisconsin Republicans in the Assembly and the Senate took exception to the grant funding from CTCL that some communities used in 2020.
Governor Tony Evers called the state Legislature back into session several times during the first year of the pandemic to deal with pandemic-related issues that affected the state, but the Republican controlled Legislature gaveled in and gaveled out in a matter of seconds, effectively refusing to come into session.
In 2021, the state Legislature proposed and approved the text of Question 1 pertaining to adding a provision to the state Constitution prohibiting communities from applying for or using any grant funding in any type of election.
After complaints that challenged whether the grant money was legal, three courts, including one federal court, and the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, found that the grant money was legal and dismissed the complaints.
According to an article published on the Wisconsin Public Radio Website in March of 2021, CTCL awarded grants to 221 counties, cities, towns and villages in Wisconsin for the 2020 election as part of more than 2,500 election grants that were distributed nationwide.
Municipal grants
Many municipalities apply for grant funding for a variety of projects.
Grant projects can include remodeling, expanding or building new public libraries or other public buildings, or like the Village of Colfax, grant funding provided financial assistance with stabilizing the bank along the Red Cedar River so the river does not wash out the wastewater treatment lagoons, or grant funding provided to Glenwood City for financial assistance with building a new city hall.
Taxpayers tend to enthusiastically approve of grant funding because if grants cover the cost of a project, or part of the cost, then taxpayers do not have to pay for those grant-covered costs with their local property tax levy.
According to an article on the Milwaukee National Public Radio website published earlier this month, state Senator Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) said in a hearing last fall that Republicans in the state Legislature had removed funding for election clerks from the governor’s proposed budget.
Spreitzer serves on the state Senate’s election committee, the article states.
It would appear that while the state Legislature does not want to provide funding for election clerks, the Legislature also does not want municipalities to apply for any grant funding for elections.
Amendment
If Question 1 passes, the amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution would read, “No state agency or office or employee in state government and no political subdivision of the state or officer or employee of a political subdivision may apply for, accept, expend, or use any moneys or equipment in connection with the conduct of any primary, election or referendum if the moneys or equipment are donated or granted by an individual or nongovernmental entity.”
An article published by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) March 12 maintained that the language of the amendment should be clarified, and questioned whether the amendment would cause public officials to be prohibited from using polling places in non-public buildings and prohibited from using tables, chairs, electrical outlets or other equipment in polling places that are privately owned, such as churches or private school buildings.
Since the amendment could prohibit the use of any non-governmental buildings or the use of any equipment owned by a non-governmental entity in connection with any election, would the Village of Colfax be prohibited, for example, from conducting absentee voting at Colfax Senior Living (formerly the Colfax Health and Rehabilitation Center)?
Absentee voting will be conducted at Colfax Senior Living on March 28 at 1 p.m.
Question 2
Question 2 pertains to changing the Wisconsin Constitution regarding election officials.
The question that will appear on the April 2 ballot is “Election officials. Shall section 7 (2) of article III of the constitution be created to provide that only election officials designated by law may perform tasks in the conduct of primaries, elections, and referendums?”
Current Wisconsin law defines and regulates how clerks can designate individuals to serve as poll workers and carry out the tasks needed to conduct elections.
Poll workers, then, are election officials designated by law.
Under current state law, if the provision was added to the Wisconsin Constitution, poll workers, also known as election inspectors, could continue the work as an “election official designated by law.”
But if the Wisconsin Legislature changed the law, then because the provision is in the Wisconsin Constitution, it could prohibit clerks from designating people to assist with election tasks, according to several different analyses of the referendum question.
It is not clear how municipal clerks would be able to run elections all by themselves, especially in larger municipalities and especially in high voter turn-out elections such as presidential elections.
Several articles about Question 2 say the proposed amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution is so vague that it is not apparent exactly what it is intended to accomplish.
Voter education
According to the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin’s website, “clerks rely on a whole host of outside experts, volunteers, and community members to make sure our elections are run smoothly and the results are accurate. Voter education organizations, like LWV, play a critical role in informing the public about their right to vote. This proposed change to our constitution ties the hands of our election officials from getting the outside support they need for our elections to function.”
In an article published on the Wisconsin Public Radio website on March 19, Emily Lau, who is a staff attorney with the UW-Madison’s State Democracy Research Initiative, also pointed out that the state already has a law stating that only election officials can run elections.
The proposed amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution could be interpreted to broadly mean that it would exclude volunteers like voter education workers or municipal staff who are not sworn election officials but who assist the municipal clerks by conducting ordinary tasks during elections, Lau said.
The League of Women Voters, for example, provides information, provides voter education on how to register to vote, what constitutes an acceptable photo identification for voting, how to find your polling place, and information about absentee and early voting.
Other agencies
The Madison city attorney talked with the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin recently and said the Madison city clerk had provided him with a list of 15 other city agencies involved in elections, such as public works, the police department, finance, and information technology, according to the article published on the Milwaukee National Public Radio website.
The city attorney wondered, because the language of the proposed constitutional amendment is vague, if it would prohibit those agencies from helping municipal clerks during elections, the article states.
The proposed amendment to the state constitution does include the phrase “any task” that would be completed in conducting any election.
If a department of public works puts up barricades to direct traffic in a certain area near a polling place because it is congested on Election Day, or if a DPW worker erects Plexiglass between voting booths to help prevent the spread of respiratory viruses, such as influenza, would that be considered assisting the municipal clerk with an election by someone who is not designated by the state constitution as an election official?
If a police department provides traffic control around a polling place to keep traffic running smoothly, or assigns a law enforcement officer to a polling place because individuals have tried to disrupt the election, would that be considered assisting the municipal clerk with an election by someone who is not designated by the state constitution as an election official?
If a patrolman turns up the heat in a rural town hall the afternoon before an election so the building will be warm when the town clerk and the election workers arrive early in the morning, would that be considered assisting the municipal clerk with an election by someone who is not designated by the state constitution as an election official?
A “yes” vote on Question 2 would add the provision to the Wisconsin Constitution pertaining to only election officials designated by law, and a “no” vote would not add the provision to the state constitution.
If Question 2 is approved, the amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution would read, “(2) No individual other than an election official designated by law may perform any task in the conduct of any primary, election or referendum.”
