(CN) — When Wisconsin voters head to the polls April 2 for their presidential primary, they will also decide on two constitutional amendments pushed by Republicans that would make binding changes to how the state's elections are run.
The first proposed change stems from theories that money Mark Zuckerberg provided helped Democrats win the state's 2020 presidential contest; that amendment would prohibit using private donations for election operations. The second change would limit who can carry out election duties.
The proposed amendments, passed by the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature in November via party-line votes and enrolled as Joint Resolution 78, will be on the April 2 ballot as two referendum questions.
Under state constitutional provisions, amendments have to pass both chambers of the Legislature in two consecutive sessions to be put to voters for ratification.
Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat consistently opposed to Republicans’ efforts to change election law and restrict voting, previously vetoed bills containing the resolutions. But if voters approve the amendments, the governor cannot block them.
The question about private funding for election administration originates with the 2020 contest, when Donald Trump lost the battleground state to Joe Biden by around 20,000 votes.
The first ballot question reads, in full: "Use of private funds in election administration. Shall section 7 (1) of article III of the constitution be created to provide that private donations and grants may not be applied for, accepted, expended, or used in connection with the conduct of any primary, election, or referendum?"
In 2020, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which the right views as a left-friendly advocacy group, spent roughly $10 million across more than 200 Wisconsin municipalities — part of a reported $350 million plus in funding nationwide — to help conduct the election amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The funds went to everything from providing protective equipment, training and hazard pay for election workers to processing an unprecedented glut of absentee ballots.
Republicans have two main sticking points over the 2020 funding: One is that the $350 million came from grants distributed by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan; the other is that around $8.8 million of Wisconsin’s grants went to Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Racine and Kenosha — the state’s five largest urban areas, all of them safe Democratic strongholds.
Someone, somewhere dubbed the funds “Zuckerbucks,” and many Republicans ran with the phrase, fueling theories that the money was a partisan ploy to manipulate the election. Among the theories’ proponents was a conspiracy-minded former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who the state’s most powerful Republican — spurred by Trump — hired to conduct a controversial review of the 2020 election that ended in mounting legal losses, a nearly $2.5 million bill for taxpayers and no evidence of widespread fraud.
Anthony Chergosky, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, said that former Justice Michael Gableman’s investigation “was widely perceived as a flop” but that “out of that effort, the ‘Zuckerbucks’ concept is what stuck.”
Chergosky said that the first ballot question is a way for the GOP to show the part of their base fixated on “election integrity” that they’re doing something about “Zuckerbucks.”
The professor also said arguments over election administration and Republican suspicion of Democratic urban areas are nothing new in Wisconsin, but the Covid-impacted 2020 election gave these issues new intensity.
Multiple state Republicans have maintained that private funding for elections is wrong no matter which party benefits, and that the amendment is necessary to keep election administration nonpartisan and fair. Democrats argue municipalities’ election administration efforts are underfunded, partially because conservatives refuse to approve enough public money for them.
At least 27 states, most controlled by Republicans, have outlawed private funding for elections, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Conservative-backed complaints challenging the Zuckerberg-funded group’s grants found no traction with the Wisconsin Elections Commission and multiple courts, one of which ruled in 2022 that nothing in state law prohibited the private funding.
However, a recent decision in a Racine County Circuit Court case said a mobile van the city of Racine used for absentee voting in 2020 was not permitted by state law.
While the impetus for the first ballot question is relatively clear, experts like Chergosky consider the second opaque.
The ballot question reads: "Election officials. Shall section 7 (2) of article III of the constitution be created to provide that only election officials designated by law may perform tasks in the conduct of primaries, elections, and referendums?"
The measure would change the state constitution to say that only election officials in their position according to state law can work on elections — without, for instance, defining what “may perform tasks” means.
“I think voters are going to be making decisions on this second question without a clear understanding of what concretely would change as a result of this,” Chergosky said.
State Senator Eric Wimberger of Green Bay and state Representative Tyler August of Lake Geneva, both lead co-sponsors of the resolution approving the ballot questions, did not respond to inquiries about the motivation for the second ballot question and how it would alter the status quo.
A lack of robust public discussion and well-funded organizing campaigns around the measures, in addition to the confusing, lawyerly phrasing of the ballot questions, could add up to “voters largely flying blind,” Chergosky said.
Constitutional amendments, when they pass, are significantly harder to change than a standard bill or executive order, the professor added.
“If these two go into effect, they will be a lot harder to undo,” he said.
Badger State voters will decide on two additional constitutional amendments before the year is out. Ballot questions asking whether the state’s founding document should be amended to say the governor needs legislative approval to spend federal money and another declaring that only U.S. citizens over 18 years old can vote in state or national elections will be on the August primary and November general election ballots, respectively.
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