Wisconsin Clerks Believe Changes to Absentee Ballot Envelopes Will Help Voters

Friday, August 11th, 2023 -- 10:01 AM

(By Margaret Faust, Wisconsin Public Radio) Some Wisconsin clerks say changes to absentee ballot envelopes will help voters better understand the process for making sure their votes are counted.

According to Margaret Faust with Wisconsin Public Radio, the Wisconsin Elections Commission, or WEC, voted unanimously last week to redesign envelopes containing completed absentee ballots. The changes were due to feedback from 250 people, including clerks and voters, in 11 different communities around the state.

Beginning with the 2024 spring primary, there will be step-by-step instructions detailing how to fill out the envelopes. There will be an alert icon, an exclamation point inside a triangle, to remind people what witness information needs to be included on the envelope.

WEC spokesperson John Smalle said this is the most significant change. Claire Woodall-Vogg, the municipal clerk for the city of Milwaukee, agrees. She said the most frequent mistake she sees in her office is envelopes missing the address of witnesses.

This is a trend statewide. She believes the alert icon will make a difference. "The envelope is made to be more user-friendly, less legalese," Woodall-Vogg said. "Your eye is drawn to where there needs to be action."

The new design also specifies that envelopes will be color coded depending on the type of voter. For example, domestic and international absentee voters will have different-colored strips on the back of their envelopes. Smalle said this will help clerks and postal workers keep track of ballots. Wisconsin is joining 18 states that already use this color-coding system.

The changes come after some absentee voters did not submit legal ballots in recent elections. During the 2020 presidential election, the Legislative Audit Bureau sampled 14,710 envelopes containing filled-out ballots, and 1,022 of them, or 7 percent, couldn’t be counted because the witness section of the envelope was filled out incorrectly. The new envelopes are meant to decrease the number of mistakes.

Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.