December 31, 2021 marks the end of the current term of Election Inspectors. At a meeting in December, not later than December 31, 2021, the municipal governing body is required to meet and appoint Election Inspectors for a two-year term which begins January 1, 2022 and ends December 31, 2023. Wis. Stats. §§ 7.30(4)(a), 7.30(6). This process includes the appointment of election inspectors from lists of nominees submitted by the Democratic or Republican Parties by November 30, 2021. For more information on the appointment process, please reference our memo, “Appointment of Election Inspectors from Lists Submitted by Political Parties,” that was reposted on November 19, 2021 with FAQs: https://elections.wi.gov/node/7576.
All election inspectors, affiliated or not, are required to take the oath of office. Several Oath of Office templates are available for your use here: https://elections.wi.gov/forms/EL-154.
Here are some reminders about the appointment process and election inspector training requirements:
Party Lists
- All nominees on the party lists must be appointed by the governing body, unless there is a reason not to do so (does not meet minimum qualifications to serve, not available to serve, etc.). If the governing body chooses not to appoint an inspector nominee, this decision should be discussed with the political party who nominated the individual.
- If the municipality uses split shifts and there are not enough appointees from a political party to fill the positions, the political party appointee should be asked if they wish to work the full day.
- If the political party submitted the party list by the November 30 deadline via fax or email and is not followed up by the hard copy of the certified list postmarked by the deadline, the governing body must make the determination as to whether the certified list was submitted timely by the political party.
- If you contact political party appointees and they have not agreed to be on a list, document this information and bring it to the attention of the party chair.
- You must use a list even if you don’t receive one from both parties.
Training Requirements and Resources
- Current chief inspectors must take six hours of election training to renew their certification and must complete their training by December 31, 2021. New chief inspectors and regular inspectors can start their training after January 1, 2022.
- Baseline Chief Inspector Training is available online in The Learning Center (TLC) or in person with training conducted by a Certified Clerk Trainer: https://elections.wi.gov/clerks/education-training/schedule. For access to TLC, please fill out and submit this request form to the Elections Help Desk: https://elections.wi.gov/clerks/education-training/tlc.
- The municipal clerk must provide training resources for all election inspectors, regardless of affiliation. There is no minimum training required by law for regular election inspectors, but training must be provided prior to the first election they will serve as election inspectors. They should receive enough training to ensure they can serve competently in their election day role.
- An election inspector training curriculum has been created for use by all election inspectors that consists of nine different task-based topics. Each of the nine topics has a training outline, PowerPoint presentation, and prerecorded video that can be used for training. The outlines and PowerPoint presentations can be customized with any municipality-specific practices while the video series allows for training that can be taken virtually or viewed in a group setting. Clerks can also assign specific topics to individual trainees based on their anticipated role on election day and specific processes used by that municipality. These training materials are available in TLC, but they are also posted on our agency website. The topics include election day duties such as opening the polls, managing the poll books and voter registration: https://elections.wi.gov/clerks/education-training/election-inspectors.
- Recorded presentations from our 2020-2021 election administration webinar training series are available for viewing on our website: https://elections.wi.gov/clerks/education-training/webinars. These webinars are additional training options for both Chief Election Inspectors and regular election inspectors and several recent presentations provide training relevant to their roles on election day.
Please contact the elections Help Desk at (608)261-2028 or @email with any questions you have.