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People vote Nov. 5, 2024, in Oak Creek, Wis. (AP) People vote Nov. 5, 2024, in Oak Creek, Wis. (AP)

People vote Nov. 5, 2024, in Oak Creek, Wis. (AP)

Madeline Heim
By Madeline Heim January 28, 2025

Yes, Wisconsin makes it harder to vote than most other U.S. states

If Your Time is short

  • Looking only at voter ID laws, Wisconsin’s is one of the strictest in the country, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, but there are other factors besides the voter ID law that affect how easy or hard it is to vote.

  • According to the Cost of Voting Index, which ranks the ease or difficulty of voting in each state based on 50-plus election laws and policies, Wisconsin was the fifth-hardest state in the nation to vote.

  • Other factors besides the voter ID law that hurt Wisconsin’s ranking include a lack of true early voting, stringent rules for voter registration drives and no automatic registration or pre-registration for young people, a researcher for the index said.

Upon returning to the state Capitol in 2025, Wisconsin Republican lawmakers made quick work of approving another statewide referendum question to appear on the ballot for the state’s April election. 

This one will ask residents whether to amend the state constitution to include an existing law requiring a photo ID to vote. Enshrining it in the constitution would make it harder for the state Supreme Court to declare it unconstitutional, which Republicans fear because of the court’s current liberal majority. It would also be harder for Democrats to repeal it if they gain control of the Legislature in future years. 

The GOP maintains that the photo ID law has increased security at the ballot box. But experts and advocates say it’s making it more difficult for certain groups of people to vote, such as Black voters in Milwaukee. 

In a news release blasting the attempt to get the voter ID law in the constitution, the public advocacy group Common Cause Wisconsin expounded on that. 

"Wisconsin makes it more difficult for its citizens to vote than almost any state in the nation," the group wrote in the release. 

Is that accurate? 

Let’s take a look at the evidence. 

Wisconsin voter ID law is stricter than most

When asked to back up the claim, Common Cause Wisconsin Executive Director Jay Heck said he was pulling from the expertise of UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden, who wrote previously for The Observatory that Wisconsin’s voter ID law is one of the strictest in the country. 

Burden repeated it in an email to PolitiFact Wisconsin, writing that "Wisconsin demands more than nearly all of the other states" when it comes to getting a ballot. 

The National Conference of State Legislatures lists Wisconsin as one of just nine states with "strict" photo ID laws used to identify voters. State Rep. Scott Krug, R-Nekoosa, even lauded that status in a Jan. 8 news conference, saying, "We have one of the hardest ID systems that you can have." 

In short, pretty much everyone agrees that Wisconsin’s voter ID law is severe. 

But there are other elements of the election process that can make it harder for people to vote — and Common Cause Wisconsin didn’t specify in the statement that the group was referring to voter ID alone. 

So, how does Wisconsin measure up when it comes to other ways to judge voting accessibility? 

Featured Fact-check

Wisconsin ranks as one of the hardest places for voters  

Burden pointed to the Cost of Voting Index, run by Michael Pomante, a research fellow at Claremont Graduate University. The index accounts for 56 laws and policies that dictate the rules people must follow to get registered and cast a ballot, and weights them with a statistical analysis to determine whether they make it easier or harder to do so in a given state. 

Wisconsin has some election laws and policies that are more accessible compared with other states, Pomante said.

For example, voters can register at the polls the day they go to vote, they can register to vote online, they can cast an in-person absentee vote and they can drop their completed absentee ballots off in dropboxes, which were made legal again last July

But other restrictions drive our "cost of voting" up.

Besides the strict voter ID law, Wisconsin has stringent rules for voter registration drives, does not have automatic voter registration, does not have preregistration for young voters, does not allow all voters to join a permanent absentee ballot list, does not consider Election Day a public holiday and does require a witness’ signature on absentee ballots, Pomante said. 

The state’s ranking also drops because it doesn’t offer early voting, he said. On the index, that’s different from in-person absentee voting, which Wisconsin does have. True early voting functions similarly to voting on Election Day, with multiple sites and evening and weekend hours to cast a ballot, while in-person absentee voting can be more restricted, Pomante said. 

In Wisconsin, the in-person absentee voting experience varies from one municipality to the next, Burden said. Larger cities like Madison offer multiple sites and extended hours, while in smaller communities — much more plentiful around the state, he noted — "in-person voting before Election Day is not really an option because municipal clerks do not provide it." 

Not everyone differentiates between the two. The Movement Advancement Project’s Democracy Maps, for example, give Wisconsin credit for an "adequate early voting period" of more than seven days. Burden said a more nuanced consideration of the issue would need to investigate the exact hours, days and locations that early and absentee voting are offered in different states. 

Where does all this land Wisconsin on the index? In 2024, Wisconsin had the fifth-highest cost of voting of all 50 states. In other words, it’s the fifth-hardest state to vote in the country, behind New Hampshire, Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi, which was the hardest.  

In 1996 — the year the index goes back to — Wisconsin was ranked the fourth-most-accessible state in the nation for voters. That’s because at that time, the state was among very few that offered same-day voter registration, Pomante said. When other states started adopting it, Wisconsin’s ranking started to drop. 

The state’s most dramatic drop occurred between 2011 and 2015, when former Republican Gov. Scott Walker signed the voter ID requirement into law and it took effect despite a swarm of lawsuits seeking to knock it down. It has continued to fall ever since, figures from the index show

Our ruling 

Common Cause Wisconsin said the state makes it more difficult for people to vote than almost any other state in the nation. 

Our voter ID law alone is one of the most stringent in the country — and research shows the state’s other restrictive voting policies make it more challenging to vote compared to most other states.

We rate this claim True.

Our Sources

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "Assembly sends voter ID constitutional amendment question to Wisconsin voters," Jan. 14, 2025

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "Republicans moving quickly on legislation to enshrine voter ID law into constitution," Jan. 8, 2025

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "Wisconsin voter ID law still causing confusion, stifles turnout in Milwaukee, voting advocates say," Sept. 4, 2024

The Observatory, "Wisconsin’s voter ID controversy: what you need to know," April 16, 2024

Email exchange with Barry Burden, political science professor, UW-Madison

National Conference of State Legislatures, Voter ID laws, accessed Jan. 18, 2025

The Cost of Voting Index, accessed Jan. 15, 2025

Phone conversation with Michael Pomante, Cost of Voting Index

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "Wisconsin Supreme Court reinstates absentee ballot drop boxes," July 5, 2024

Movement Advancement Project, Restrictions on 3rd Party Voter Registration Drives, accessed Jan. 21, 2025

National Conference of State Legislatures, Automatic voter registration, accessed Jan. 18, 2025

National Conference of State Legislatures, Preregistration for young voters, accessed Jan. 18, 2025

National Conference of State Legislatures, States with permanent absentee voting lists, accessed Jan. 18, 2025

Movement Advocacy Project, Election Day holidays and paid time off to vote, accessed Jan. 18, 2025

National Conference of State Legislatures, How states verify voted absentee/mail ballots, accessed Jan. 18, 2025

CBS News, "Walker signs photo ID requirement into law," May 25, 2011

Wisconsin Public Radio, "As Voting Begins, A Look Back At The Fight Over Wisconsin’s Voter ID Law," Sept. 26, 2016

Change in ranking visuals — Cost of Voting Index, accessed Jan. 18, 2025

 

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Yes, Wisconsin makes it harder to vote than most other U.S. states

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