*Update of posting regarding Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board.
The GAB met on August 27th and, by the slimmest possible margin, rejected the proposal to relegate all un-matched voters to casting provisional ballots.
The close vote was likely influenced by data released by the GAB indicating that, since Wisconsin started conducting “HAVA matches,” 22% of voters didn’t match. That means that if the GAB hadn’t voted against the misguided proposal, nearly a quarter of voters submitting new registrations or address changes would have been denied a regular ballot in November based on typos, data entry mistakes, missing middle initials and other trivial clerical errors.
Although local advocates expect the issue to crop up again in 2009, this victory means that Wisconsin voters are at least safe for the November election.