MacIver News Service | January 14, 2014
[Madison, Wisc…] The Wisconsin Assembly passed an elections reform bill on Tuesday that would create uniform standards for labeling duplicate ballots.Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin) introduced the bill in the Senate back in August. The Senate passed it on a 22-11 partisan vote on October 8th.
“This simple bill along with the other election administration bills the Senate approved and sent the Assembly go a long way to greatly improve uniformity, efficiency, and fairness during Wisconsin elections,” Lazich told the MacIver News Service following the Assembly vote.
There are two reasons under current law why a ballot would be duplicated: 1) a ballot has been damaged and cannot be read by the machine or 2) the voter voted for too many candidates in one of the races, but the voted correctly in the other races on the ballot. When this happens, the original ballot is kept and labeled. The only thing SB 262 changes about this is it requires the labeling to only occur in the upper right hand corner.
Lazich has introduced 12 different election reform bills in the Senate this session. The duplicate ballot bill is the first one to be passed by both chambers.