- This issue is almost exclusive to voters in the city of Racine, and almost exclusive to inactive voters. A default phone number appears in some Inactive Voter Records in the city of Racine because of data conversion more than 15 years ago from the city’s own legacy voter registration system into the current WisVote system.
- The city of Racine’s legacy voter registration system likely required a phone number for all registered voters, and if one was not provided at the time a default phone number, which is a city of Racine number, was entered.
Here is more on why the repeat phone numbers appear in WisVote:
Prior to 2005, voter registration in municipalities with less than 5,000 in population was not required in the state of Wisconsin. In municipalities with more than 5,000 in population voter registration was required and was tracked in many different databases and spreadsheets maintained by those municipalities – not by the state of Wisconsin in any central location. The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (“HAVA”) required “statewide” voter registration in Wisconsin (and all other states with a population greater than 500,000) and it required the state agency overseeing elections to maintain a database of voters in all cities, villages, and towns in Wisconsin (approximately 1,850 across 72 counties).
To comply with federal and state law, the State Elections Board (succeeded by the Government Accountability Board, and later, the current Wisconsin Elections Commission) developed the original statewide voter registration database and election management system called SVRS. The SVRS has been succeeded by the current database and election management system developed and maintained by the WEC called WisVote.
Between the passage of HAVA and full implementation of statewide voter registration in 2006, municipalities with more than 5,000 in population that already had a database of legally registered voters worked to transfer the existing voter registration data from their own municipal system (“legacy system”) into SVRS. If a phone number existed for a voter record in a legacy system, that information was converted into SVRS and then into WisVote. See FAQ on other data conversion questions for 1/1/1900 dates of birth and 1/1/1918 registration dates found here: https://elections.wi.gov/resources/quick-reference-topics/why-does-statewide-voter-registration-database-include-multiple
Phone numbers are not required as part of a voter record or as part of voter registration, but some municipalities may have required a phone number in their own voter registration systems prior to the creation of SVRS and WisVote.
A recent blog post from an advocacy group stated that over 20,000 records in the city of Racine had the same phone number associated with a voter record. The reality is that nearly all of those records referenced are Inactive Voter Records tied to voters who have been inactive for many years. The phone number in question is a city of Racine number that appeared in the Racine legacy system, a number that was entered as a default when a voter did not provide a phone number during registration.
It is unclear why the municipality, pre-2005, chose to have a phone number be a required field in their registration system, which required a default number to be entered if none was provided by the voter. There are 384 active voters in Racine who have this default phone number listed in WisVote. Those voters have not updated their phone number since the city assigned the default number prior to statewide voter registration being required after 2005. It should be noted that a phone number has no bearing on a voter’s eligibility. WEC staff have analyzed the data associated with the 384 active voters in WisVote that contain the default phone number and there is nothing else unusual about the records or other data fields in common.
Many voters do not provide a phone number during registration to avoid being contacted by campaigns and other organizations that purchase voter registration data from the WEC. So, it is likely that these remaining voters have had no reason to update their voter record since they originally registered and therefore the default number remains in place.