MADSON, Wis. (AP) — Two years ago, the city of Racine became the first and only municipality in Wisconsin to purchase mobile voting trucks.
City clerk Tara McMenamin said she pushed for the truck because it was too difficult to set up equipment at remote sites for early voting. The city used trucks for municipal elections for the first time this past spring. Nobody paid attention.
But with a slate of heated races on the battlefield as the primary vote on August 9, which includes GOP primaries for governor, attorney general and secretary of state, online conservatives have raised questions about the truck in recent days. , asking how such an operation could be legal and accusing Democrats of using the truck to deceive.
Here’s a closer look at some of their claims:
Claim: Racine is using multiple mobile voting vans since June 2021.
Fact: There is only one truck, and it was not used until this year. The Commons Council approved funding in June 2020 for a truck to serve as a movable early polling place. The city used it for the first time in the state’s spring primary last February, McMenamin said.
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Claim: The city purchased the truck from the non-profit Center for Tech and Civic Life using “Zuckerbucks.”
Fact: According to Racine Mayor Corey Mason’s chief of staff, Shannon Powell, it is true that the truck was purchased with money from the Center for Tech and Civic Life. The nonprofit wants to help election officials update technology and increase citizen participation and received a $350 million 2020 donation from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife.
The five largest cities in Wisconsin received CTCL grants in 2020. Racine was one of them, accepting approximately $950,000.
Some conservatives have ridiculed the CTCL grants as “Zuckerbucks” and called them election bribes, saying they tilted the 2020 presidential election toward Democrat Joe Biden. But judges have dismissed legal challenges to the grant.
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Claim: The truck is acting as an absentee ballot drop box, defying a decision of the state Supreme Court in July.
Fact: No, it is not. McMenamin said the truck is only used according to state law to facilitate in-person voting during the two weeks before the election. She wanted the truck because it was becoming too cumbersome for her employees to set up their equipment in remote polling places.
McMenamin said the city posts notices online and in the Racine Journal Times newspaper of the truck’s planned stop at City Hall, which fulfills a requirement in state law that municipalities be told about the time and location of early polling places. Public notice should be given. There are often truck parks outside buildings that have traditionally been used as early polling places, such as community centers, he said. He added that using the truck allows for on-site voting without disrupting the works within the building.
He said people can walk up to the truck, register to vote, if they haven’t, vote at one of the truck’s five built-in booths and hand over their ballot paper to a city employee. who is driving the vehicle. The ballot papers are then secured in a closed container. People can turn in absentee ballots on the truck, just as they are allowed to do at brick-and-mortar early voting sites, but the truck has no slits for drop boxes and is not available 24 hours a day. Like a drop box, McMenamin said.
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CLAIM: The city doesn’t allow Republican observers to sit in the truck, allowing Democrats to cheat.
Fact: Lies. McMenamin said state law allows observers to personally watch early voting, so observers are allowed in the truck. She said GOP observers have been in the truck since the primary in-person voting window that opened on July 26.
“It will be exactly as if it was in brick and mortar (the early polling place),” she said. “(I would say) those who are more skeptical about the procedure, it follows the law of the state.”
If election observers believe they have been unjustly barred or kicked out of an early polling place, they can file a complaint with the Wisconsin Election Commission.
Some online blogs claimed that Democrats were working in the truck and would cast “fake ballots” from it. But the truck carries city election officials and its rules are the same as any other early polling place.
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It is part of the AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, which includes working with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to the misleading material that circulates online. Learn more about fact-checking on AP.
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