Patrick Marley, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Published 9:00 a.m. CT Sept. 10, 2019 | Updated 9:21 a.m. CT Sept. 10, 2019
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MADISON – They’re up at dawn and toil into the night to run the state’s elections in a fair, unbiased and professional way.
What may come as a surprise is that Wisconsin’s poll workers — like those in most states — are supposed to have partisan allegiances.
A long-standing Wisconsin law requires clerks to use lists submitted by the Democratic and Republican parties when they hire poll workers. But the parties provide far fewer names than what clerks need, so clerks often appoint people who aren’t affiliated with a party, according to election officials.
For instance, none of the current poll workers in Milwaukee were recommended by the Democrats or Republicans.
The parties are now compiling lists to give to clerks for the 2020 elections. They are due in November.
Polling sites are to be staffed with seven workers. The party that won the precinct in the most recent major election gets four workers and the other party gets three.
Wisconsin’s arrangement is not unique. Forty-eight states require a partisan makeup for their crews of poll workers to help ensure elections are fair, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
“You can see why states might think this is a good solution,” said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “For one it provides a kind of balance that you have representatives from both parties at the polling place so they can keep a check on one another.”
But there are downsides as well, he said. Partisans will be energetic and motivated, but that “doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the most competent or most fair-minded,” Burden said. “They may be those things but there’s certainly no guarantee of it.”
Clerks often don’t get anywhere near enough names from the parties to meet their needs.
In Madison, just six poll workers out of nearly 3,200 were selected by the Republican Party. None were chosen by the Democratic Party, according to City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl.
“When we contact political appointees, we often find that they are surprised to learn that they were appointed, and sometimes they refuse to work at the polls,” Witzel-Behl said by email.
In Brookfield, 128 of the 186 poll workers appointed for 2018 and 2019 were unaffiliated with a party, according to City Clerk Kelly Michaels. Forty-four were appointed by the Republican Party and 14 were appointed by the Democratic Party.
“The upside of working with the parties is connecting to people who already have an interest and dedication in working elections,” she said by email. “The downside is that some of our party workers prefer to work only the partisan elections, which can leave us hanging for the nonpartisan elections.”
In November 2017, the Democratic Party didn’t provide Milwaukee with any names for poll workers. The Republican Party provided 40 names, but when the Milwaukee Election Commission contacted them, just one person responded, said the commission’s deputy director, Theresa Gabriel.
“In the cases where we do have political party assignments at voting sites, application of this law often feels cumbersome and antiquated,” commission director Neil Albrecht said by email. “Unlike the period of time when this law was written, most people no longer identify as being ‘party members.'”
Albrecht called finding qualified poll workers “the most significant election preparation challenge” for the commission.
“Longtime election workers who were drawn to this role by a spirit of civic responsibility are retiring and there is not a ‘wave’ of new election workers, sharing in the same spirit, to replace them,” he said. “Civic responsibility is a waning concept.”
The state Democratic Party is recruiting poll workers but its primary focus is on voter outreach, said party spokeswoman Courney Beyer.
Andrew Hitt, the chairman of the state Republican Party, last month sent an email to supporters urging them to sign up as poll workers to “help ensure compliance with our election laws, while also serving as a deterrent to potential fraud and abuse.”
That bothered Monona poll worker Mary Murrell.
“It suggests that our polling places in Wisconsin need political parties represented in them in order to comply with the election laws when in fact … our polling places are diligently nonpartisan,” she said.
Murrell donated about $125 to Tony Evers during his successful run for governor, campaign finance records show. But it wasn’t her support for a Democrat that got her involved in working at the polls.
In 2015, she complained to her municipal clerk about long lines at the polls. The clerk responded by asking her if she’d like to work at the polls and Murrell has been doing so ever since.
“From her point of view, I thought, well, I should help,” Murrell said.
Contact Patrick Marley at patrick.marley@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @patrickdmarley.
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