By Steven Walters of the Journal Sentinel

Posted: July 28, 2009

Madison – Wisconsin must first consider legalizing voting by mail, and
then explore voting by phone and over the Internet, says the director
of the state agency that administers elections.

With as few as 6% of voters statewide casting ballots in the spring
nonpartisan primary, and the growing cost of having thousands of poll
workers and officials in place for every election, “Let’s look at some
other alternatives,” said Kevin J. Kennedy, director of the Government
Accountability Board.

But state law must be changed to allow changes in the voting process,
and that could take years, Kennedy said.

Kennedy made the comments Tuesday as a group of local election clerks,
state officials and leaders of citizens groups reviewed Wisconsin’s
tentative five-year plan to update election laws and voting systems.

The five-year plan also calls for studying whether the September
partisan primary should be moved up to allow more time between it and
the November general election.

The Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee will soon be asked to
approve the tentative plan, which would qualify the accountability
board for up to $6million more in federal funds, Kennedy said.

Kennedy said the first change that legislators may be asked to
approve, although not until the 2011-’12 legislative session, would be
to allow voting by mail – a system used in Oregon and Washington
outside the Seattle area.

Voting by mail is feasible in Wisconsin because it has a statewide
list of 3.46million voters and their addresses. But one potential
problem is that one in seven people move every year.

Still, voting by mail is the first change that Wisconsin could make
because it works elsewhere, Kennedy said.

Voting by phone has been tried in Maine and Oregon, with mixed
results, he said.

A potential problem is a current Wisconsin law requiring that there be
a so-called “paper trail” for every Wisconsin vote. That law would
have to be revised if voting by phone is legalized, or another way is
found to preserve the paper trail, Kennedy said.

As for the Internet, Hawaii has experimented with it for voting, he
said.

Some local Wisconsin election clerks e-mail absentee ballots to
soldiers on active duty outside the United States and other voters in
foreign countries. But the system can break down because voters must
return the ballots by regular mail, which can be a slow process when
remote areas are involved.

A record 21.6% of all Wisconsin votes in the November presidential
election were absentee ballots, said Reid Magney, spokesman for