April 12, 2020
Wisconsin Elections Commission
212 E Washington Ave Floor 3
Madison, WI 53703
608-267-0500 (fax)
elections@wi.gov
Dear Commissioners:
The Milwaukee Branch of the NAACP is a nonpartisan, interracial, nonprofit membership organization in the City of Milwaukee. The mission of the Milwaukee NAACP is to eliminate racial discrimination through democratic processes and to ensure the equal political, educational, social, and economic rights of all persons, in particular African Americans. The Milwaukee NAACP works to protect voting rights through advocacy, legislation, communication and outreach. A considerable amount of the Milwaukee NAACP’s work and resources are devoted to promoting voter registration, voter education, get-out-the-vote efforts, election protection and census participation. The Milwaukee NAACP, along with its various committees, regularly conducts year-round voter registration drives and other activities to help Milwaukeeans to vote absentee and in person. Many events hosted by the Milwaukee NAACP have a voting rights component.
We have learned that the Elections Commission voted to reject absentee ballots that lack a postmark dated April 7, 2020—even though there is no serious dispute that the ballots were mailed on or before April 7. This was a mistake that we urge you to correct by counting ballots that were witnessed on or before April 7. This commonsense measure will ensure that those who mailed ballots on or before April 7 will have their votes counted. To do otherwise would impinge the right vote for many and would undermine our representative government.
Sincerely
Fred Royal
President
NAACP Milwaukee Branch
