Wisconsin agrees to extend deadline for military, overseas voters to return ballots

Wis. agrees to extend deadline for some voters

MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin residents in the military or living overseas will have until Nov. 19 to return ballots they cast in the Nov. 2 election under an agreement the state reached Friday with the federal government.

The deal filed in federal court resolves Wisconsin’s not being in compliance with a new law requiring states to make general election ballots available to military and overseas voters at least 45 days before the election.

Wisconsin argued that because its primary is Tuesday, it couldn’t make the Sept. 18 deadline for mailing ballots to those voters. The Defense Department denied the waiver to Wisconsin last month. Hawaii, Alaska, Colorado, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands also were rejected.

Colorado and Alaska, which had primaries on Aug. 10 and Aug. 24, subsequently said they could meet the deadline by hurrying the certification process.

Besides Wisconsin, primaries also will be held Tuesday in Washington, D.C., and the Virgin Islands. Hawaii’s primary on Sept. 18 is the nation’s last this election season.

The Defense Department granted waivers to Delaware, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Washington state.

Advocates who pushed for the Military and Overseas Voter Act passed by Congress in October said more time is needed to send ballots overseas and get them returned and counted on time.

The agreement Wisconsin reached with the U.S. Justice Department extends the deadline for ballots to be counted after the election from 10 days to 17. Wisconsin also agreed to make absentee ballots available to military and overseas voters no later than Oct. 1, instead of Oct. 2 as current state law requires.

Making those two changes gives military and overseas voters 50 days to receive, cast and return their ballots. That is five days more than what the federal law required.

“This provides additional assurance that Wisconsin’s citizens in the military and overseas will be able to fully participate in the election,” said Kevin J. Kennedy, director of the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board in a statement.

Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas Perez said in a statement that he was “extremely pleased” Wisconsin officials worked cooperatively with the department to resolve the issue.

The agreement also commits the state to take steps to ensure compliance with the law in the future.

A judge in U.S. District Court in Wisconsin has to sign off on the consent decree filed Friday before it becomes final.

The agreement also calls on Wisconsin to make the necessary changes, either through law changes or administratively, to ensure future compliance.

The three major candidates for governor in Wisconsin, Democrat Tom Barrett and Republicans Scott Walker and Mark Neumann, all support moving the state’s primary to earlier in the year. That would take action by the state Legislature, which showed no interest in doing that after the federal law took effect in October.

After the law passed, Minnesota and Vermont moved their Sept. 14 primaries to August to comply.

In Wisconsin’s 2008 general election, about 10,000 ballots were sent to members of the military and overseas voters claiming Wisconsin as their home state. Of those sent, about 6,500 were returned and counted. That amounts to less than one-quarter of a percent of the total 3 million votes cast in the presidential race that year.