League of Women Voters of Wisconsin Files Brief to Protect Registered Voters from Polling List Purge

[MADISON, Wis.] – On Monday, July 13, the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin (LWVWI) filed an amicus curiae brief in the Wisconsin Supreme Court to protect voters from being erroneously removed from polling lists of registered voters.

“Attempts to utilize data that is known to be flawed are attempts to suppress votes, plain and simple,” said Debra Cronmiller, LWVWI executive director. “The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin will continue to protect voters by ensuring those who are validly registered are not inappropriately removed from the polling book.”

The brief is part of the Zignego case from 2019 in which petitioners attempted to force some 230,000 voters from the rolls based on information provided by the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) movers list. Due to flaws in the data provided to ERIC by the State, the LWVWI argues thousands of voters have been erroneously identified as having potentially moved. The LWVWI asserts the information from the ERIC movers list is not reliable within the meaning of the law and cannot be used as a basis for cancelling a voter’s registration.

In the brief, LWVWI asks the court to uphold a lower court’s decision to stay the order for the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) to refrain from purging voters from the polling lists of registered voters based on information provided by the ERIC movers list.

In October 2019, the WEC mailed out letters to 232,579 registered Wisconsin voters on the 2019-2020 ERIC list. As of May 20, 2020, 4,709 voters on that list have confirmed that they have not moved to a new address. The November election may identify countless more voters that have been erroneously identified as having moved.

The filed brief can be found here.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. It has not been verified for its accuracy or completeness.