The Wisconsin Elections Commission will mail nearly 100,000 postcards to voters who may have moved.
That mailing is separate from one the commission did last month warning 186,900 voters who hadn’t cast a ballot in four years that their registration would be deactivated if they didn’t respond by July 15.
It’s also separate from voters the commission had identified in 2019 as possibly having moved; that effort used the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonprofit which monitors voter rolls. The effort eventually led to a lawsuit that landed before the state Supreme Court.
The commission said today it won’t purge anyone who fails to respond to this week’s postcards. Municipal clerks would still have discretion to issue their own 30-day notices to remove non-responding registrants suspected of moving.
Meagan Wolfe, the commission’s chief election official, in a statement said the new mailers are meant to help people who may have moved to be ready for next year’s midterm elections.
“It will not keep anyone who is eligible from voting,” she said. “If you move, even to a different apartment in the same building, you must update your voter record by reregistering.”
The commission in 2019 had previously used ERIC information to send postcards to nearly 100,000 voters who may have moved. At the time, the commission voted to wait until after the April 2021 election to deactivate those who failed to respond to the mailer. That decision was challenged by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which argued the deactivations had to occur within 30 days. The state Supreme Court eventually ruled earlier this year the commission is not required under state law to purge voters who did not respond to that mailer.
A commission spokesman said today there’s no overlap between the list of voters identified by the latest ERIC run and those identified in 2019.
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