The state Senate passed a bill Friday limiting voting times to submit absentee ballots.
Under current law, one can apply to a municipal clerk in person to vote using an absentee ballot. The ballot can be submitted between the third Monday before the election and the last Friday before the election by 5 p.m.
In-person applications for absentee ballots would only be received Monday through Friday between 7:30 a.m. and 6 p.m. under Senate Bill 324, introduced by Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend.
Both Democrats and Republicans criticized the bill and urged Gov. Scott Walker to veto it.
“We should be pitching, as political parties, our ideas for improving things in the future rather than mucking around in the mechanics and making it more confrontational at our voting site and trying to suppress the vote,” Sen. Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, said on the Devil’s Advocate radio show March 12.
“It is absolutely outrageous that in 2014 we still have politicians who are purposely making it harder for Wisconsinites to vote,” U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, R-Wis., said in a statement. “I urge Governor Walker, in the strongest terms possible, to veto this blatantly partisan effort to disenfranchise fellow Wisconsinites from exercising one of our most fundamental rights.”
Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said in a statement Friday the bill is “designed to make it harder for seniors, students, veterans and minorities to exercise their rights at the ballot box.”
