MADISON, Wis. — Election clerks in Wisconsin can accept absentee ballots that contain minor errors such as missing portions of witness addresses, a court ruled Tuesday in a legal battle that pits conservatives against liberals in the battleground state.
The Dane County Circuit Court ruled in favor of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin in its lawsuit seeking to clarify voting rights protections for voters whose absentee ballots contained minor errors in listing the addresses of their witnesses.
The ruling means absentee ballots with certain technical defects in the witness address will not be rejected in future elections, the league said.
A Waukesha County Circuit Court, siding with Republicans, barred the Wisconsin Elections Commission in 2022 from using longstanding guidelines for resolving minor witness address issues on absentee ballots without contacting the voter . This ruling left absentee voters at risk of having their ballot rejected due to technical omissions or errors, without the guarantee that they would be notified and given the opportunity to correct any errors and have their votes counted.
The league's lawsuit argued that rejecting absentee ballots because of the omission of certain parts of the witness address violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits denial of the right to vote based on an error not material influences the determination of voting rights.
In Tuesday's ruling, the Dane County Circuit Court wrote: “The requirement for a witness address is immaterial to whether a voter is qualified. . . . As such, rejecting ballots due to trivial errors in the witness address requirement is a direct violation of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964.”
“All voters deserve to have their votes counted, whether they vote in person or absentee,” Debra Cronmiller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, said in a news release. “Minor errors or omissions on the absentee certificate envelope should not deter voters from exercising their constitutional rights.”
The Fair Elections Center, a Washington-based, nonpartisan voting rights and election reform advocate, filed a lawsuit on behalf of the league.
“Wisconsinites should not be denied their right to vote because of technical errors, especially if they are not uniformly given the opportunity to resolve such issues,” said Jon Sherman, the center's director of dispute resolution. “Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act to prohibit precisely this type of voting disenfranchisement, and the court's order today enforces that federal law's protections with respect to four categories of absentee ballots.”
A telephone message seeking comment on the ruling was left at the Republican Party of Wisconsin office Tuesday evening.