The News: The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) has released a new report detailing the extent which more than one hundred forty thousand Wisconsin voters can vote in the 2024 Presidential Election without an ID. Voters can self-identify as “Indefinitely Confined,” allowing them to continually receive an absentee ballot without ever showing an ID. In our report “Wisconsin’s Voter ID Loophole: The Continuing Problem Of Indefinitely Confined Voters” we hope to raise awareness of this issue and ensure clerks are performing their duty to remove voters who are no longer eligible for the status.

The Quotes: WILL Research Director, Will Flanders, stated, “Confidence in our elections continues to be dangerously low in Wisconsin and across the country. Voter ID is a popular and well-executed way to keep our elections secure and free of fraud. While the Governor refused to fix this loophole in the years since 2020, efforts must be made by local election clerks to resolve it as much as possible.”

WILL Policy Director, Kyle Koenen, stated,” The indefinitely confined status was designed to provide those who are elderly, sick, or physically unable to get to the polls with an opportunity to vote. Although designed with good intentions, as our report shows, the system has a few key flaws that should be resolved.”

Additional Background and Key Findings: Laws requiring voter identification enjoy broad bipartisan support in Wisconsin, with 84% of residents in favor, including 81% of Independents and 70% of Democrats. Wisconsin already has robust voter ID requirements in place; however, there is a significant loophole—our state’s “indefinitely confined” status which allows voters to cast a ballot without ever showing an ID. The status is designed to provide an opportunity to vote for those who are too elderly, sick, or physically unable to get to the polls. However, the use of this exception has surged since 2016.

In 2016, approximately 66,000 voters were registered under this status. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the number of voters registered as indefinitely confined skyrocketed to about 265,979. Clerks in Dane and Milwaukee counties used the presence of the pandemic to encourage voters to adopt this status and avoid voter ID requirements, a move which was eventually unanimously rebuked by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Despite the pandemic coming to an end, this number remains at about 144,347 today—116% higher than 2016.

State law requires voters to be removed from the indefinitely confined list in several instances. If a voter does not return an absentee ballot after receiving one, the municipal clerk must notify them that they will be removed from the absentee mailing list unless they renew their application within 30 days. Voters can also be removed upon their request or if reliable information indicates they are no longer eligible, such as when a voter casts a ballot in person.

To gather this data, WILL went through a multi-month research effort that involved purchasing data from WEC and initiating open records requests to a sampling of 15 municipalities around the state. We generally found compliance with requirements for clerks to remove voters from the list, but did not receive a response from 1 municipality (Madison), while another admitted to not keeping the list up-to-date (Lake Geneva).

Bottom Line: While there is no concrete evidence of fraudulent votes under the indefinitely confined status, it poses a risk to election integrity by allowing many individuals to vote without providing identification. To address this issue, Wisconsin should follow the example of other states and implement commonsense changes to the process for obtaining this status. Previous legislative attempts to close this loophole were subsequently vetoed by Governor Evers. Additionally, Wisconsin should continue to remove individuals from the indefinitely confined list if they fail to renew their status after not voting in an election.

About WILL: WILL is a respected and reputable state-based litigation firm in Wisconsin. We have argued and won multiple cases at the Wisconsin Supreme Court and beyond. We have also received national recognition for our work assessing the 2020 Presidential Election and our comprehensive report is often used to counter claims made about the election being “stolen.”

Read more:

• “Wisconsin’s Voter ID Loophole: The Continuing Problem Of Indefinitely Confined Voters”, September, 2024
• Election Integrity Polling, September, 2021