Thoughts on the Spring Election Ballot Questions

Good morning District 6 neighbors,

Absentee ballots for the spring election should be arriving this week, and while most of our district is not seeing any contested elections other than those who live in wards 17, 18 and 50. You can find your ward on the city web page (Appleton.org)  by going to “Property Info” and typing in your address.

Click on the property ID and you can scroll down to “Voting Information” to get your ward number.

Assuming you’re registered to vote, you can get the ward information from myvote.wi.gov by typing in your name and birthdate or your address:

If you go to the “what’s on my ballot” section, you’ll see the presidential preference vote (both candidates have already secured enough delegates to be on their respective ballots in November) and a lot of uncontested local races (other than the county board supervisor election noted above).

We also have two state constitutional referendums on the ballot that concern election administration.

I try very hard to stay out of partisan politics as a member of the non-partisan Appleton Common Council. However, when state politics has a direct effect on the city of Appleton, I find it necessary to take a stand. For example, I attended listening sessions and wrote to our state representatives in support of increasing the amount of tax revenue going back to municipalities last year.

I believe that amending the state constitution with these two measures would have a negative effect on the city of Appleton. Our city clerk and her staff work extremely hard to make sure that our elections are fair and efficient. During the pandemic elections of 2020, they had to contend with rules that were changing constantly and with a tenfold increase in the number of absentee ballots that they needed to send out and process, along with figuring out ways to make in-person voting as safe as possible. The city accepted a small grant from a non-profit organization to help fund this process. Ballot question 1 would make this illegal, putting the entire burden of running elections on local taxpayers. Ballot question 2 proposes to amend the state constitution to say that “only election officials designated by law” may perform tasks related to administering elections. Wisconsin statutes already state that only election officials appointed under the statutory provisions can perform these tasks. The Common Council already has to approve the lists of election inspectors submitted by the political parties. The statutes also define the requirements for poll workers, including being able to read and write English, not be on the ballot in the election, etc. Statutes define the training that must be provided to election workers. Putting these requirements into the state constitution would seem to have no effect on the current requirements other than making them more difficult to change as the environment changes. I will also note that the state legislature introduced these measures as bills that were vetoed by the Governor. Putting them on the ballot as referendums seems like an end-around to the legislative process.

I would urge Appleton residents to vote No on both ballot questions.