How To Get Registered To Vote In Wisconsin Ahead Of The Midterms

WISCONSIN — The drive to get people to the polls for the Nov. 8 midterm elections in Wisconsin started in earnest Tuesday with National Voter Registration Day, a nonpartisan civic holiday observed for the past decade to reach tens of thousands of Americans who might not otherwise register.

In Wisconsin, you can typically register at your local clerks office until the weekend before the election. Fortunately, if you aren't registered ahead of election day, you can also register at your local polling place. Whenever you vote be sure to bring photo identification.

Wisconsinites are also allowed to vote absentee in-person ahead of elections at their local clerk's office until the weekend before the election. You can also request that your ballot be mailed to your home through myvote.wi.gov for your to fill out and return.

Ballot boxes are no longer allowed in Wisconsin after a court decision but you can still return your ballot in person to your clerk or polling place by the time polls close on Nov. 8. You can also mail your ballot back to your clerk, but the U.S. Postal Service recommends you give plenty of time — at least 7 days — for your ballot to mail.

Wisconsin is one of numerous states that have made significant changes in election laws since the 2020 presidential election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute.

The run-up to the November election has been fraught with changes to Wisconsin voting law amid apparent attempts to shake confidence in the state's voting system. The state Supreme Court's conservative majority outlawed ballot drop boxes in July, a move that left numerous disabled voters concerned about returning their ballots.

By late August a Wisconsin Federal District judge clarified the ruling from the state supreme court, ensuring that disabled people can receive the help they need to return their ballots.

President Joe Biden said in a statement Monday the United States “has not always lived up to its promise of equal access to the right to vote,” decrying state legislatures he said “are passing new forms of voting restrictions to limit participating and choose whose vote can count at all.”

“As the late Representative John Lewis, an icon of the voting rights struggle, would say, ‘democracy is not a state; it is an act.’ Our Founding Fathers understood this, as did the suffragists at the National Women’s Rights Convention of 1848, the other giants of the Civil Rights Movement, and today’s activists working for a freer, fairer, and more accessible voting system. Just as securing and protecting voting rights was the test of their times, it continues to be the challenge of ours.”

Biden renewed his commitment to the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which together would “address election subversion, remove dark money from politics, end partisan gerrymandering, and fix the gaping holes in voter access left by the Supreme Court of the United States.”

He also said he is doubling both the number of voter advocates appointed to the Department of Justice and the agency’s voting rights enforcement staff, and also giving the agency purview over discriminatory laws before they go into effect.

More than 4.7 million Americans have been registered to vote in the Voter Registration Day project to date. More than 300,000 people registered to vote for the first time on the inaugural National Voter Registration Day in 2019. Some 1.5 million people registered through the project for the 2020 General Election, according to the website.

Last year, 233,571 people registered or updated their registration. Though considerably smaller than the number of people who registered for the 2020 presidential election, the number was still nearly twice the number registered in the previous post-presidential cycle, the report noted.

Ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, the project helped 865,015 people register to vote.

A step-by-step process on the National Voter Registration Day website guides potential voters through registration. For all potential voters: Check your registration status, especially if you’ve moved since you last voted, recently turned 18 or changed your name.