August 11 Primary May See Waukesha Sheriff Race Distorted By Cross-Voting Confusion

WAUKESHA — With the Aug. 11 partisan primary eight days out, city and county election officials say the Waukesha sheriff's race is on track to repeat a pattern that has held for more than three decades: a meaningful share of voters will select the wrong party's ballot, diluting the very contest they came to vote in.

Wisconsin's open-primary system lets any registered voter choose either party's ballot at the polls, a single choice that applies to every race on that ballot for the day. There is no sheriff-specific carve-out. A voter who wants to weigh in on a contested Republican sheriff primary but picks up the Democratic ballot by habit, confusion, or force of the person standing in line ahead of them, does not get to vote in the sheriff's race at all that day.

"We assume 15 to 20 percent of voters will still misunderstand which box to check," said Waukesha election clerk David Voss, 56, who has staffed a check-in table for 19 of his 34 years with the office and has personally corrected the same confusion "in some form, at some table, every single cycle since 1992." Voss said his office has printed and distributed 4,100 clarification sheets to date, single-page inserts that use a flowchart and, as of this cycle, a second font size for the word "ONE."

The Ballot Fork

The confusion centers on a specific moment at the check-in table: a poll worker asks which primary ballot the voter wants, and the voter has roughly four seconds to decide before the line behind them registers impatience. Voss's office has timed this interval informally and puts it at 3.8 seconds on a normal day and 2.1 seconds after 5 p.m., when turnout skews toward voters coming straight from work.

One Democratic sheriff candidate, whose campaign released a statement Tuesday, argued voters should have the standing right to cross into the opposing primary if that is where the contested race happens to be this cycle. "An open primary is open," the statement read, in part. "If the real choice is happening on the other ballot, voters should be allowed to go find it."

"An open primary is open. If the real choice is happening on the other ballot, voters should be allowed to go find it."

— Statement from a Democratic sheriff candidate's campaign

The campaign manager for a Republican candidate in the race called the idea "strongly opposed" in a written response, warning that any organized push to cross over "would distort a race that voters within the party are trying to decide for themselves." The manager declined to characterize the disagreement as new, noting a nearly identical exchange occurred in the 2022 cycle "almost word for word, down to the word 'distort.'"

The Sheet

Voss's office has tried five distinct formats for the clarification sheet since 2014, including a laminated version in 2018 that poll workers complained reflected overhead fluorescent light directly into voters' eyes at the exact moment they were trying to read it. The current version, printed on canary-yellow paper "so it doesn't disappear into the stack," walks through the choice in three steps and includes a note in bold that reads: "This choice cannot be changed after you receive your ballot."

Poll workers at the city's nine polling locations will hand the sheet to every voter who asks a clarifying question at check-in, a group Voss's office estimates at around 30 percent of first-time primary voters and a smaller but steady number of repeat voters who "know they've gotten it wrong before and want backup this time." The office does not track how many voters who receive the sheet still choose incorrectly, calling that a metric "we've discussed and decided not to pursue."

What Happens At The Table

Common Council members briefed on turnout logistics Tuesday night were told the office does not plan to add signage beyond what exists, citing limited space at the check-in tables and a 2019 attempt at an additional sign that a poll worker described as "one more thing for people to not read." Councilman Gary Puchalski asked whether the clarification sheet could be handed out earlier, in the parking lot, and was told that poll workers are not permitted to approach voters before they reach the building.

Voss said the office's internal target, unchanged since he took the role, is not zero confusion but containment. "We're not going to get everybody," he said. "We've made peace with that. What we're trying to do is get it down from 20 to 15, and if we get a good year, maybe 12." Asked what a bad year looks like, Voss said 2016, without elaborating further, and returned to a stack of clarification sheets that needed folding before Monday.