| Cap Times editorial | Capital Times |
Barnes exited the race last week, following Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez and former Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation Secretary Missy Hughes into the political wilderness. Unfortunately, their exits appear to have left tens of thousands of Wisconsinites who had cast absentee and early votes for them disenfranchised. No matter what anyone thinks of the choices made by the former candidates, they are not to blame for this mass disenfranchisement.
The blame lies with the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which has mangled the state’s absentee voting processes, and with the courts that have facilitated the WEC’s folly. At issue is a recent WEC “guidance” — which was adopted by a 4-2 vote. As Wisconsin Public Radio explains, the guidance “(specified) that absentee voters cannot ‘spoil’ their ballots and request new ones because they have changed their minds or their first-choice candidate dropped out of the race.”
Making more votes count
FairVote, the national nonpartisan voting rights and election reform organization, has promoted ranked-choice voting (RCV) and proportional representation to “give voters more choices, fairer representation, and better government.” It stepped up last week with a smart proposal for Wisconsin.
Noting that shakeups in the Democratic gubernatorial race came after nearly 120,000 votes had already been cast, and that “voters who selected Barnes – or Rodriguez or Hughes – have no way to change their vote to count for one of the remaining candidates,” the group argued that “ranked-choice voting lets voters mark a backup choice – solving this problem and making more votes count.”