Wisconsin loophole allows nearly 150,000 to vote without showing photo ID
WATERTOWN, Wis.— A damning report is raising the alarm about a legal loophole allowing thousands to vote in Wisconsin without showing photo identification as required by state law.The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty’s Monday morning release reveals the “indefinitely confined” voter rolls have reached more than 144,000, up 116% since 2016.
This state accommodation designed for the disabled, elderly, ill and infirm came under the spotlight in 2020 when Wisconsin’s two largest cities — Milwaukee and Madison — told citizens to use the little-known law to vote without a photo ID during COVID restrictions.President Biden won the state by almost 21,000 votes in 2020; former President Donald Trump won by about 27,000 in 2016.Polls show Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris neck and neck this year.Dairy Staters are required to show a government-issued photo ID when voting but not when registering to vote.
“Indefinitely confined” voters check a box when registering to sign up for automatic absentee ballots “for every election” until they are no longer indefinitely confined or fail to return a ballot.The Wisconsin Supreme Court put a stop to that, but it didn’t keep the indefinitely confined voter rolls from quadrupling from almost 67,000 in 2016 to more 265,000 in 2020 — about 8% of the total votes cast four years ago.Thanks to state law requiring voter-roll cleanups, the number of voters with indefinitely confined status is down to just over 144,000 but still more than twice what it was in 2016.Five Democratic strongholds have the highest number of voters with indefinitely confined status: Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay, Kenosha and Janesville, all of which went hard for Biden in 2020.
Report author Will Flanders was quick to point out the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty has not found evidence of widespread voter fraud of those using this status in Wisconsin.Still, the conservative legal and policy center thinks there’s cause...