Appeals Court Makes It More Difficult to Disqualify Absentee Ballots in Wisconsin

Election ballots are shown as workers count mail-in and in-person absentee ballots at the Wisconsin Center in Milwaukee on Nov. 8, 2022. Scott Olson/Getty Images

An appeals court in Wisconsin has ruled that witnesses for absentee voters do not need to give their full addresses, in a rejection of a challenge from legislators in the state.

Wisconsin law requires a witness for each absentee vote, with witnesses giving their name and address.

A county judge in January said trivial errors in witness addresses such as missing ZIP codes must not cause those absentee ballots to be rejected. The judge also determined that address means “a place where the witness can be communicated with“ and that the witness address requirement is met if the face of the witness certificate ”contains sufficient information to allow a reasonable person in the community to identify a location where the witness may be communicated with.”

Wisconsin legislators appealed, arguing that witness addresses should be required to contain street numbers, street names, and names of municipalities. They pointed to a definition of address from the Oxford English Dictionary.

The legislators who brought the case originally urged the appeals court to uphold the county judge’s ruling, pointing to definitions of address in other dictionaries.

The Fourth District Court of Appeals stated that legislators could have specified address components in the law, as they did in other statutes, but because they did not, the address requirement outlined by the county judge is upheld.

“Because [Section] 6.87(2) and (6d) do not include any modifiers or specifications on the word ‘address,’ we presume that the witness is not required to provide a particular type of address or any particular address components to satisfy the witness’s certification function,” the appeals court stated.

It noted that in 2021, legislators approved a revision that would have required a witness address to include a house or apartment number, street name, and municipality but that the revision was vetoed by Wisconsin’s governor and never enacted.

“This occurrence additionally supports the conclusion, when considered in context, that no particular address components are required to satisfy the absentee ballot witness address requirement,” Judge Chris Taylor wrote for the court.

The court did rule for the Wisconsin Legislature on the other part of its appeal, which took issue with the “reasonable person” language. Legislators said using that language would create problems for election administrators.

If the language were not changed, then municipal clerks “would need to determine whether a witness’s address information is sufficient to enable a ’reasonable person in the community' to identify a place where the witness may be communicated with,” Judge Taylor said.

While most witnesses likely provide addresses in the state, the approach “would be potentially more complicated if the witness were not from Wisconsin,” according to the ruling.

The court changed the language for requirements for an address on a witness certificate from “contains sufficient information to allow a reasonable person in the community to identify a location where the witness may be communicated with” to “contains sufficient information to enable a municipal clerk to reasonably identify a place where the witness may be communicated with.”

The ruling came several weeks after a county judge said some voters in the state can receive electronic ballots and a week after the state’s top court narrowly reinstated the use of drop boxes for the upcoming election.