Election Commission will have ambitious meeting before Nov. Election

The Wisconsin Elections Commission will hold a particularly long and extensive meeting tomorrow, Sept. 25. Part of the meeting will be devoted to getting feedback on plans to spend the $7 million federal grant for election security. Approximately $2.4 million of that money has been allocated to hire additional staff for security purposes, particularly before the November election. This money will be used to hire six additional staff for the next four years. These positions are being filled fairly late because although the commission had requested additional security funds, they were turned down until the grant from the federal government was available.

There has been pressure brought to bear to do more extensive auditing of election results at the local level (by policy local election officials are allowed to conduct vote audits, but are not required to do anything beyond doing tests of the accuracy of the voting machines). Certainly some of the feedback will be to request full audits, further security training, and new equipment for voting.

The meeting will be held from 10:00 to 4:00 in the State Capitol, Room 413N, GAR Hall.  The agenda for the meeting is available at the elections commission website.