Voting amendments to change funding, worker eligibility for election process

During the April 2 elections, citizens of Wisconsin voted ‘yes’ to the addition of the 149th and 150th amendments to the state constitution. The first banned election funding from private sources, and the latter set boundaries for who could work in “conduct of” local elections. Similar approaches were adopted to other state constitutions around the country following public suspicion about how elections were conducted during COVID in 2020. 

The amendment arose from a fair level of paranoia about election influencers, according to social studies teacher Patrick Bertram. 

 “Votes for Question One had 54.4% ‘yes’ and 45.6% ‘no’. Question Two was 58.6% ‘yes’ and 41.4% ‘no’,” he said. “One of the things that fueled this amendment was that you have divisions like Meta, who give him money, and that they were somehow influencing the election.” 

During the 2020 election process, local election funds consisted of $350,000,000 across the country, and a portion of that money came from Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook. A member of the local League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for voting, shared the opinions circulating about the use of the money. 

 “Wisconsin municipalities got $10,000,000 to support the 2020 elections. They had to purchase masks, hire more election workers, and reconfigure polling places to keep voters and workers safe. The Zuckerbucks were to be used for election administration and support, and there were no strings attached in terms of how it was to be spent,” she said.

The first amendment states that versions of private funding, like Zuckerberg’s, would not be accepted to support Wisconsin elections going forward. This bill, along with another amendment, were originally placed before Governor Evers for judgment, but were passed down to the citizens of Wisconsin for the final decision.

“This came before the voters because the Republican legislature, which is in charge of both the Assembly and the State Senate, wanted to pass a law prohibiting outside money, but Governor Evers vetoed it,” a member of the League of Women Voters said. “The Republican legislature then decided to put it on the ballot as a binding constitutional amendment, which Evers could not veto.” 

Evers decided to veto this bill initially because he believed that this would deter voters. Many Democratic counterparts had similar opinions about this constitutional amendment. 

 “Evers is part of the Democratic Party, and he looked at the banning of private funding just as the Democrats have been saying; that it is voter suppression. He saw it as making people wait longer when there isn’t as much money available to uphold polling locations and workers,” said Bertram. “The Democrats have been saying it could deter voting because if you don’t have as many polling places, those lines could get longer, and people would rather do other things than vote.”

However, not everyone believes that these passed amendments will deter voters. Many reason that this will solidify election transparency and make the voting process more trustworthy, due to the belief that the money donated by private companies and individuals, like Zuckerberg, has been used in ways that are inappropriate in a fair election process. 

“The big thing Republicans have been saying is that these amendments support election integrity and honesty,” Betram said. “The idea is that people or municipalities could bring in other people to help with the election.”

Oshkosh City Council Member Karl Buelow sees both positives and negatives of Question One.

“COVID changed a lot of how the infrastructure of voting worked, and there’s a lot of positives, but also some negatives. If you have greater access to easy voting, that scares some people,” he said. “Everybody thinks that we should keep rich people’s money out of elections because nobody should have more say in an election just because they have more money. But the net effect of taking that money means that either the cities have to pay more, which means the taxpayers pay more, or there are going to be less places to vote.” 

This wasn’t the only subject regarding voting that was laid out on April 2 ballots. 

“Question 2 was that nobody other than election officials can perform any task or duty for an election,” Buelow said. 

This amendment was passed to promote election integrity, with the goal of providing voters peace of mind as to how their votes were being handled.

“The thing about this amendment is that there is belief that there are people who were involved in the electoral process that shouldn’t have been,” Bertram said. 

However, there are still some questions regarding what this amendment actually means, which Buelow mentioned.

“It’s vague enough that it makes one wonder ‘Who is an official election person?’ ‘Will people not be able to put up posters and say when the election date is?’ ‘Where does the line fall?’ The thing is, we don’t really know exactly how broad of a scope they want for an election official,” he said. 

Many voters believe that this will be a large step forward for the righteousness and honesty in elections, and that this will prevent the few from taking the voice of the many. In contrast, many fear that this could be a form of voter suppression.

“There is going to be a lot of bickering about it in the next couple of years,” Buelow said.

by Phoebe Fletcher
Published April 29 2024

Oshkosh West Index Volume 120 Issue VII