Associated Press: Wisconsin judge blocks absentee ballot spoiling

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin judge is prohibiting voters from canceling their original absentee ballot and casting a new one, siding with a conservative group created by prominent Republicans that said the practice known as ballot spoiling is illegal.

The ruling Wednesday from a Waukesha County judge who was a former Republican attorney general comes as voters in the battleground state are submitting their absentee ballots for the Nov. 8 election. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republican Sen. Ron Johnson are both on the ballot.

Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections filed the lawsuit on behalf of Brookfield voter Nancy Kormanik last month. It challenged the guidance issued on Aug. 1 to more than 1,800 local election clerks by the state elections commission detailing how they can spoil an absentee ballot at the request of the voter after it’s already been returned.

Ballot spoiling got more attention in the August primary after a Republican candidate for governor and three top Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate dropped out of the races, but their names were still on the ballots. The elections commission made clear then that voters who had cast their ballots for one of them absentee could spoil it and vote again for someone still in the race.

The commission did not immediately have numbers Thursday of how many ballots had been spoiled in the primary.

This is not a common policy across the country, and only a few states do something similar due to logistical challenges associated with pre-processing of ballots, according to Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for the nonpartisan voter advocacy group Common Cause.

In most states, local election officials can begin verifying mail ballots and processing them ahead of time, which involves removing them from their envelopes so there is no way to track who voted which ballot.